Jazz History Quiz #159

December 27th, 2022

The correct answer is Russ Columbo!

Russ Columbo, in a photograph published posthumously in Radio Stars, Dec. 1934

…..Born in 1908, Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolfo Colombo was known as Russ Columbo, a baritone singer, violinist, songwriter and actor, famous for romantic ballads like “You Call It Madness, But I Call it Love,” “Prisoner of Love” and “Too Beautiful for Words.”

…..In The All Music Guide To Jazz, the critic Uncle Dave Lewis writes that Columbo “helped set the standard for Italian popular ballad crooners. In his personal appearances, Columbo was trim, debonair, and favored a spotless white suit of the sort George Raft wore in movies of the period. Despite the all-prevailing importance and popularity of Bing Crosby as a singer in the early ’30s, it is impossible to imagine the advent of later Italian crooners such as Perry Como and Frank Sinatra without the influence of Russ Columbo. Likewise Columbo’s repertoire, some of which he had a hand in creating, was adopted wholeheartedly by other romantic balladeers, including Nat King Cole, Herb Jeffries, and with most enthusiasm, Billy Eckstine. While Columbo was too early to be a true jazz singer, jazz singing itself would not be what it is if Columbo had never been on the scene.”

…..Columbo’s popularity as an NBC Radio artist led to his being known as “the Romeo of Radio,” a vocalist who by 1931 was playing to sold-out theaters in New York.

…..In 1934, Columbo died at the age of 26 after being shot (under peculiar circumstances) by his friend, the photographer Lansing Brown.

Click here to read Columbo’s biography at All Music Guide to Jazz

Click here to visit Columbo’s Wikipedia page

Listen to the 1932 recording of Russ Columbo singing “You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love”