Gino Vannelli - The white voice of fusion

No one would dare question the spontaneity of a child. Coming out into the open, showing off one's talents, the virtuosity of baring oneself before the world with no veils and no regrets. The artist born from within, from a sacred fire that needs no other fuel to burn. Pouring out one's feelings freely, without mediation, pulsing shamelessly with song and instruments with no edges at the sides, soul laid bare before the mirror. Watching the world unseen from some hidden corner, whispering into its ear the torments of love, brotherly affections, lost faiths later regained. Shouting one's humble origins in its face, brazenly, without fear of failure.

Early 1960s. Little Gino plays with pots and tin cans, banging on every object within reach. In that house it's a whirlwind of notes and drumbeats, a curse for most parents but a godsend for his father Russ, a barber by day and an established jazz musician on the Montreal scene by night. Backing up his percussive escapades are his brothers Joe and Ross: all three will go on to study music with real results. At twelve we find him banging the skins in the rock band Cobras, but it's with his virtuoso brother Joe on piano that, at fifteen, Gino founds his first real group. Under the chilling moniker of Vann Elli, with a repertoire mixing covers lifted from the Motown catalogue with a handful of timid original songs, the two tour the French-speaking province far and wide in search of glory.

But Montreal is hardly what one would call a mecca for anyone wanting to make music their life's purpose: there's a modest tradition of jazz performers, which gave rise to the Festival only from 1980 onward, and zero outlets for a lover of rhythm'n'blues, musicals and the Motown sound.

With the stubbornness inherited from his grandfather of Molise descent running through his head, his father's jazz in his blood, and above all a voice that sends shivers down your spine just thinking about it, the Italian-Canadian and his trusty brother set off for New York in search of fortune. It's 1968. Too little time on the road to carve out any visibility among the rockers of the Big Apple, and too polished for the still-orthodox palates of black audiences of the time, the two struggle to find an audience, or even a single record label agent willing to actually invest in the project. Their only lifeline is a contract with RCA Canada that lets the two young men scrape by for a few seasons (in 1969 the premature single "Gina Bold/Never Cry Again" would come out under the name Vann Elli, suspended somewhere between beat and soul), though with frequent trips back to their homeland. Almost three years go by, and settling back in Canada for good, swallowing the bitter pill of defeat, is simply out of the question. Better to go even further, dreaming of California.

Not that things turn out much better in Los Angeles: after all, who could possibly be interested in a white singer, Canadian no less, with Black music on the brain, and that crazy idea of translating jazz, soul and exotic music into the most immediate codes of pop? Actually, there is one big name: Herb Alpert, already the trumpet-playing leader of the Tijuana Brass (their rendition of "A Taste Of Honey" is an evergreen of Italian radio, having been for decades the theme tune of "Tutto il calcio minuto per minuto"), who happens to share his father's passion, who happens to be a white jazz musician on loan to pop music, and who happens to be the co-founder of A&M Records, a solid giant of the American record industry. Great, but how to get close to him? Sometimes the crudest, most improbable method turns out to be the most effective. One morning Gino shows up bright and early at 1416 La Brea Avenue, guitar under his arm and barely the faintest idea of what to do next. He stands rooted to the spot in front of the gates for four hours, until Herb arrives at the office flanked by his bodyguard. A dash, a clean dodge around the bruiser, and there's our Canadian hunter standing before his prey, who, utterly caught off guard, reaches for a pen for the customary autograph. We don't know exactly how that impromptu exchange played out, but the fact remains that a few hours later the long-haired young man finds himself in the big boss's office for an audition.

Knowing exactly which buttons to push, it seems, since he lays out before him an unplugged set of rarefied bossa nova that leaves the record executive weak at the knees: "I managed to bring Brazil's Sergio Mendes to success in the States, so why shouldn't I manage the same with a long-haired Italian-Canadian?", he must have thought, basking in the sound of "Crazy Life" and "Hollywood Holyday". Just one condition, though: that he be handed full control of the production in toto.

Could there be a better pedigree? Of course not, and so in October '73 Crazy Life came to light, a delicate collection of nine pop miniatures that wink hard at bossa nova and swing, held together by an intimate approach that would become the common thread of his whole career. Besides containing the classic title track, the record maintains a good standard throughout: a soft-romantic atmosphere, a raw, whispered voice (at least compared to what we'd hear later), a hint of what would become one of the most crystalline falsettos in America, and arrangements leaning towards the minimal. Lovely stuff, in short, but you get the feeling of hearing a supercar engine fitted into the car used for the Sunday family outing. Speaking of Sundays (and beasts): if there's one record from which good old Fabio Concato drew the ink to sketch out the broad strokes of his career, it's precisely Crazy Life. Which nonetheless turns out to be something of a commercial flop.

1974. George McCrae shooting to number one on the American charts with "Rock Me Baby", and Barry White barging in through the front door of the main chart with "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" after sneaking in via the r&b back door, are clear signs that the new Black music has broken free of Black circles to worm its way into the ears of a much wider audience. The new disco aesthetic is a real godsend for Gino, not because he can be counted among the genre's authors, but because it makes his idiosyncratic, white-inflected take on soul music legible to the masses. With brother Joe at the console, already a seasoned alchemist of keyboards and synthesizers, Powerful People comes out that same year.

During the recording sessions, an episode occurs that would, as it turns out, work to his advantage. Taking advantage of a break during the sessions, one afternoon Gino dozes off by the hotel pool where he's staying when, half-asleep, he hears a familiar voice singing an even more familiar song. In an instant he realizes that the theme being improvised on a piano is his own "Granny Goodbye", which is enough to make him jump to his feet, trace the sound back to its source, and try to figure out who was singing it. In the lobby there's a Black man with mirrored sunglasses and braided hair, and beside him a friend who immediately exclaims: "Hey Stevie, the guy from 'Crazy Life' is here!". Incredible, but Stevie Wonder was indeed in that hotel, singing one of his own songs, and was enough of a fan to want him along for the upcoming tour.

The lasting effects of this bond allow Vannelli to win a strong following among Black audiences, a circumstance that leads him straight to the studios of "Soul Train", a hugely popular TV variety show devoted to Black music. With "People Gotta Move" he becomes the second white musician to appear as a guest on the show, then in its fifth season of what would go on to be a long run.

It may well be down to these lucky circumstances, but the album partly departs from the cheek-to-cheek atmospheres of its predecessor, opening up to a mixed-race funk sound with smooth jazz leanings, thus sketching the outlines of a sound that would soon become hard to mistake for anyone else's. We also find a bolder use of his voice, which finally reveals the enormous potential that had, up to this point, only been hinted at.

The album is carried up the charts by the intellectual funk of "People Gotta Move", a genuine gem that reconciles so-called serious listening with more instinctive dancefloor urges, but it's the record as a whole that deserves attention. From the tasty Broadway flavours of "Son Of A New York Gun" to the fusion tensions of the title track, by way of the measured virtuosity of "Jack Miraculous", it's a display of class put in the service of technical flourishes that are never an end in themselves. A dress rehearsal for a growth that would come to fruition a year later.

Aside from the unsettling cover portraying him in a white satin shirt with his hairy chest on full display, and the back cover showing, in order, brother Joe (keyboards), the ever-reliable, ever-present Graham Lear (drums, with Santana from 1976 onwards), John J. Mandel (percussion) and Richard Baker (keyboards: he would help Joe develop the synth polyphonies the latter had devised on the previous album using overdubbing, back when the instrument was still monophonic), all striking looks and poses every bit as flamboyant as his own, Storm At Sunup heads in the opposite direction from what A&M's management had hoped for in the wake of the success of "People Gotta Move". Aside from the partial concession of the funk-prog of "Mama Coco", the album conjures up and stokes the underlying unease of the American metropolis of the '70s: wet streets, swirling comings and goings, neon lights. Rivers of cars speeding along multi-lane roads, while inside, on the radio, the individual loneliness of an undifferentiated multitude plays out. With a voice never so polished, the elegiac intro of the title track leads us into an empty theatre with vibratos echoing amid keyboard inlays with orchestral ambitions, followed by a flight of percussion and free-jazz horns that hurls us outward before setting us back down right where we started. Like imagining Weather Report tackling the score of a musical. The long closing note is the thread used to embroider the romantic turmoil of "Love Me Now", of an almost paroxysmal poignancy that, further on, is matched by the equally admirable "Where Am I Going?".

Just a couple of tracks, not bad but at least ordinary (the slow piano-bar number "Keep On Walking" and the more varied "Gettin' High"), keep it from being a masterpiece.

The occasionally elaborate arrangements mark the early signs of the ambitious The Gist Of The Gemini (1976). In this new effort we find a now thoroughly well-oiled band, eager to flaunt its musical charms to the point of strolling nonchalantly along the thin line separating the abyss from the sublime.

A&M's ambitious hopes of turning Gino Vannelli into the white star of disco music, born in the days of "People Gotta Move", now seem to have evaporated. The new territory to conquer is now progressive rock, which carries the sound in and out of pop, before exploding into the wide-open field of rock symphony with the six-movement suite about war that takes up side B of the vinyl. But the climax already turns epic on side A, with an army of moogs running riot and Gino, now thoroughly uninhibited, scaling octaves with caressing ease, alternating full-bodied odd time signatures with atmospheric ballads. Those who don't love baroque excess shouldn't even go near this record, but for everyone else it's almost impossible not to be swept up in the taut synth-driven gallop of "Love Of My Life", or in the Sinatra-esque alter ego on display in "A New Fix Of 76", just as it's impossible to remain indifferent to the astonishing falsetto of "Fly Into This Night". The leitmotif is a shifting, dramatic theatricality that bursts its banks across the six wartime episodes, in which George Gershwin and Emerson, Lake & Palmer find common ground in the triumph of the most instinctive pomposity.

"The Gist", by its very nature, is the classic album that forces you to take a side. And yet, if you go along with its aesthetic and its message, it remains the highest artistic peak reached by the Canadian artist in the first phase of his career. "My best material is on 'The Gist Of The Gemini', which was nonetheless a difficult album to make. Difficult for the musicians, difficult because of the problems we ran into with the twenty-four-track recorders. Difficult because the sound engineer Geoff Emerick, who had been part of the Beatles' staff, worked twenty hours a day, never slept, and kept going on drugs..." Vannelli would later say.

The twenty-four-year-old North American is admired by many of his peers, who rightly consider him one of the most virtuosic vocal talents rock has ever produced; he's appreciated by a section of the critics (though opinion is split between those who worship him unreservedly and those who instead stress the opulence of his style), and he enjoys a solid following, which in fact takes him all the way to number 32 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling 450,000 copies.

And it's precisely those flattering sales figures that push him to indulge an old ambition: recording part of his new album, A Pauper In Paradise (1977), with the backing of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra — all of it done in London, at the Abbey Road studios. Side one introduces a few tentative developments that would actually come to fruition a year later (the funk-blues of "Mardi Grass", the female backing vocals winking at soul on "The Surest Things Can Change", the poppy little keyboard line of "A Song And Dance"), while the side given over to the orchestra alternates cinematic moments close to 1950s American comedy ("Black And Blue", and the first movement of the suite "A Pauper In Paradise") with a substantial revisiting of the vigorous atmospheres of The Gist Of The Gemini ("3rd Movement").

The album keeps up good standards, but, perhaps hampered by its own unwieldy production machine, it ends up on one hand merely reworking in disguise what had already been thoroughly explored, while on the other failing to fully develop the new ideas it nonetheless hints at. If we add to this the growing pressure from management over the prolonged absence of chart-topping singles from his catalogue (we're still stuck at number 22 with 1974's "People Gotta Move"), and a substantial decline on the album sales front too (just under 250,000 LPs sold), we can easily account for the shift that materializes in 1978 with Brother To Brother.

Pressed by the need to write songs with greater commercial appeal, and setting aside the emphasis and dramatic aura that had marked his previous two releases, Gino sets about forging his own perfect fusion sound. He does so by bringing in a brand-new rhythm section made up of Jimmy Haslip on bass (who has also played for Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau and Donald Fagen, and would go on to join the Yellowjackets) and Mark Craney on drums (who passed away in 2005), while also recruiting a student of Larry Carlton's, the debuting guitarist Carlos Rios (his subsequent resume is staggering, running from Chick Corea to Herbie Hancock, from Madonna to Fleetwood Mac, by way of Earth, Wind and Fire and Joe Zawinul). But by reversing the balance between keyboards and guitar — relegating synths to a more supporting role and replacing them with new signing Rios's electric contortions — the outcome changes considerably. And, if anything, for the better.

Making the concept crystal clear right from the start is the opening track, "Appaloosa", a powerful slice of jazz-soaked funk driven along by a full, lush bass, with our man's voice bolstered by female backing vocals and pushed forward by a guitar straight out of the jazz-rock primer. "The River Must Flow" develops along the same lines, though adapted to softer tones, and stands as the ideal meeting point between Earth Wind And Fire and the Bee Gees of "Saturday Night Fever", while the long-awaited payoff for A&M arrives with the third track: the simmering "I Just Wanna Stop", with its admirable interplay of lead vocal and backing vocals, its soul leanings, and Ernie Watts' silky sax, shoots to number one on the Canadian charts and number four in the US, becoming over time a true classic of the American ballad of the 70s. The biggest hit of his entire catalogue is credited to his brother Ross, caught one day strumming its melody on guitar and immediately put in charge of finishing it off. All this after years under the dictatorship of the staff lines imposed by Gino.

"Love & Emotion" edges close to the sophistication of Steely Dan, whose leader Donald Fagen he greatly admires, and the connection resurfaces with "Feel Like Flying", nicely embellished by Haslip's slapped bass. The title track is breathtaking, a shining display of muscle and talent in which the individual musicians take turns stepping into the spotlight. It's a seven-and-a-half-minute slice of prog-fusion that holds nothing back: from Craney's beefy breaks, to Rios' swift guitar flourishes, from Joe Vannelli's brazen moog to Haslip's liquid, flowing bass, all stitched together by vocal swoops that seem placed there specifically to draw together all that abundance, amid shifting time signatures and assorted displays of skill: a manifesto for fusion, but also for a career. "Wheels Of Life" is another lighters-in-the-dark ballad confirming that "I Just Wanna Stop" was no fluke (indeed it's also the second single pulled from the album, reaching number twenty-four on the American charts), "The Evil Eye" is a lush soul number propped up by a huge rock riff, while the tribute of thanks to his whole family, "People I Belong To", closes out at mid tempo an album that reaches number thirteen on the charts, selling over a million copies in the US alone and earning platinum status. Contributing to the success of the whole enterprise is Ross Vannelli, joining the two brothers in production for the first time.

"I just wanna stop", sings the curly-haired Canadian in his hit, and so he will. Up to this point, in fact, he had accustomed us to one album a year, but, satisfied with the success of Brother To Brother, exhausted from the long tour that followed, and frustrated by some tensions with his father, he decides to take a break and, at the same time, to end his run with A&M.

Having signed a new deal with Arista and kept the tried-and-tested family trio in the producer's chair, 1981 sees the release of Nightwalker. With Mike Miller on guitars (Chick Corea, Frank Zappa), the Zappa-esque Vinnie Colaiuta on drums (let's skip over his résumé, since it would be quicker to list which greats he hasn't played with), and Neil Stubenhaus on bass (the same applies to his pedigree, not to mention the six hundred-odd albums he's featured on), the new record stands out for the remarkable technical skill with which it's performed, for a production straight out of the American-pop instruction manual, and for Gino's performance, by now competing on the same turf as his teenage idol Frank Sinatra. While not abandoning the usual fusion framework (nor could it, given the lineup playing on it), "Nightwalker" veers decisively toward adult-oriented pop, where the winking melodicism perhaps takes over a little too much: the result is a collection of formally flawless slow songs ("Nightwalker", "Put The Weight On My Shoulders", "Sally" and the single "Living Inside Myself", which would also pop up at a flattering number six among the best-selling 45s in the US), which nonetheless show a touch too much self-satisfaction.

Aside from the composite blue-eyed soul of "Seek And You Will Find", and the lush rhythm and blues of "Santa Rosa", which wouldn't have been out of place on the previous LP, the impression is that energy is spent above all on polishing the packaging and, why not, on racking up a good number of sales: from that standpoint, reaching number fifteen on the charts rewards the effort.

In October of that same year, the Italian-Canadian goes into the studio to record his new album for Arista, but something goes wrong with the record company. The project presented to the label is titled "Twisted Hearts", but its sound doesn't sit well with the executives, who block its release: judging from the promo single "The Longer You Wait", which did see the light of day and which is said to be the legitimate offspring of that long-distance standoff, we can't really fault their decision all that much. The track, swing-inflected and grandiose beyond all reason, would be inappropriate even as a soap-opera theme, while the instrumental b-side "Bandito" would be perfectly suited to a Japanese cartoon. Slim pickings, in short. His pride is nonetheless wounded, to the point that the musician's entourage takes legal action against the label, a circumstance that will force him into a break of more than three years while waiting for the contract to be terminated.

The artist who turns up with Black Cars at the end of 1984 is light years away from the one we'd grown used to. Starting with his look, no longer the curly-haired macho man with his chest on display but a dandy with short hair and a dark suit, and continuing even more so with the music. The 80s marked a profound technological shift for pop. The keyboard polyphonies that Joe used to build with great effort in the studio through bold overdubbing are now the province of expensive but efficient digital machines such as the Yamaha DX1, the Fairlight and the Kurzweil K250, and getting to grips with the new instruments has the same dazzling effect on him that the Land of Toys had on Pinocchio.

The songwriting is tailored to fit the new instrumentation: tracks that rarely run past four minutes, a vocal timbre unusually rough and often reshaped by filters, likewise the drums, often juiced up by assorted digital effects and handled alternately by Dave Garibaldi (a well-regarded funk drummer, previously with Tower Of Power, who will back him increasingly through 1990 and then on Slow Love in 1998), Mark Craney, and Gino himself, reviving his old passion.

The result is an album that falls into the most classic and widespread trap of the mid-80s: a sound that felt illusorily futuristic in 1985 but, once the collective high wears off, shows its wrinkles within just a few seasons. Even more so now. And it's not so much a matter of "plasticky-ness" (tons of synthetic "material" are still in rude health today) as of sounds so distinctive and dominant that they end up flattening everyone who uses them into sameness.

Setting aside these necessary caveats, the collection can't be called unworthy. Besides containing one of the most-played radio hits of 1985 (the powerful, catchy title track, especially well known in Europe), it also includes the slow-burner "Hurts To Be In Love", the ethereal "Just A Motion Away" (truly his own "Loving The Alien"), and more broadly an elaborate piece of studio work that's absolutely worth noting.

Though it still suffers from many of the limitations of its predecessor, Big Dreamers Never Sleep (1987) curbs the side effects, giving us back a voice well-calibrated against the instrumental performances and free of overly invasive console tricks; truth be told, even the quality of the raw material is preferable: "Big Dreamers" (whose title quotes a famous line by Edgar Allan Poe) is still an 80s pop record "Made in USA", with everything that implies, but anyone without a bias against the genre can still appreciate its craftsmanship. Thoroughly glossy, unashamedly aimed at the mainstream audience, yet capable of flashing moments of real substance and tracks with a certain class.

Standing out above all is undoubtedly the single "Wild Horses" (not by chance the least "of its time" track in the bunch, and indeed it's still played on the radio today), a refined mid-tempo number driven by brushed drums and a sinuous bass, over which plays out an explicit lyrical nod to the Rolling Stones song of the same name ("Wild horses could not drag me away… from you"): all set within a context of twilight romantic turmoil that stamps the final seal certifying another of his evergreens. Alongside it sit the solid ballads "Young Lover" and "Something Tells Me" and livelier tracks, "In The Name Of Money" and "King For A Day", whose synth-bass sounds as if lifted straight from the Art Of Noise arsenal with the aim of crafting a kind of rock soul for cybernetic hearts.

Only the financial situation, which had become precarious following the poor management of the millions of dollars earned up to that point, can explain a release like Inconsolable Man (1990).

The parade of talent that also distinguishes this LP, the meticulous care taken over the production, and the commendable attempt to make the sound leaner and more in step with the times don't save it from dullness: we're faced with an album of the kind that came out by the dozen in the mainstream America of that era (and still does today, to be honest), on top of it all put together with the ambition of landing a hit. And even if there are, here and there, scattered confirmations of what we already knew, suffice it to say that the best track is "Sunset On L.A.", clearly borrowed wholesale from "Wild Horses". The rest of the tracks alternate between uninspired blue-eyed soul numbers ("Rythym Of Romance", "Shame") and more intimate songs that rarely rise above the level of a classroom exercise (against a passable "The Joker's Wild" we find the forgettable "Moment To Moment" and "Bound To Cry").

For Gino, it's a difficult period, and not only in material terms. His inner turmoil (hence the album's title) drives him to seek answers in esotericism and Eastern religions, as well as to leave Los Angeles and move with his wife Patricia and son Anton to a more modest home, better suited to the family's new budget, in Portland. That same year he sets off on a world tour, something missing from his schedule since the days of Brother To Brother, and the excellent Montreal concert of November 18th would be released on vinyl the following year.

Joe and Gino (bolstered by Mike Miller's monstre guitar work) are on blistering form, drawing on their vast repertoire and ranging indiscriminately across the 70s and the entire following decade, to the point of finally doing justice to several more recent tracks that had originally suffered from the well-known production gaps. True to the cliché that paints the Canadian brothers as peerless talent scouts, the world tour introduces Swiss-born, Los Angeles-based drummer Enzo Todesco, hired just two weeks earlier to replace Vito Rezza, who, after passing the auditions, pulled out at the last minute. The pressure of picking up the baton once carried by Mark Craney, Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Garibaldi doesn't faze Todesco, who in fact delivers memorable performances, including a "Brother To Brother" that outdoes the original album version in sheer pathos.

Live In Montreal, besides being an essential must for fans, is an album whose recording quality and high level of musicianship make it worth hearing even for those approaching the sound of this talented singer of Italian descent for the first time.

The exhausting demands of front-man duties prove draining once again, and that, combined with newfound financial security and a desire to distance himself from showbiz, leads to a five-year absence from the recording studio — setting the stage for a comeback that, without this context, might seem unexpected: the new Yonder Tree (1995) is in fact released by Verve Forecast, the label under which Polygram licenses its jazz catalogue.

The man who, from the stages of the seventies, could rival Freddie Mercury in sheer showmanship, and whose electronic "Black Cars" was danced to in every eighties disco, now takes on the role of the intimate, reflective jazz crooner, musing on faith ("Little Bit Of Judas", "Jehovah And All That Jazz") and poetry ("Walter Whitman Where Are You?") using the vocabulary of two great paternal loves: jazz music and Frank Sinatra. And it is indeed to his father, who had died a few months earlier, that the album is dedicated.

Backed by the trumpet of Chuck Findley (B.B. King, Miles Davis, Steely Dan), the piano of Randy Porter and the bass of Phil Baker (Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Pink Martini), as well as the trusty Joe Vannelli and Graham Lear, Gino delivers a classy performance, often sustained by that sincere expressive urgency so necessary when tackling material this close to genre standards. Yonder Tree makes for pleasant background listening, balancing intimacy with swinging momentum, further proof of a natural versatility. Only a handful of excess filler keeps it from being the album of a potential rebirth, leaving behind the slightly bitter aftertaste of a missed opportunity.

Encouraged by the nonetheless positive experience in territory he had never explored so explicitly, Vannelli attempts to carry what he's learned over into adult pop, further aided by the numerous singing lessons that sharpen — if that were even possible — an already uncommon command of his voice.

And so in 1998 comes Slow Love, which lands somewhere between acoustic pop (one can even catch an echo of the Latin-tinged atmospheres of "Crazy Life") and a well-mannered but insubstantial piano-bar set. No one denies how pleasant it is, in theory, to listen to a performer like this over a cocktail, in some retro lounge, perhaps in good company — but these ingredients alone aren't enough to make Slow Love (this time dedicated to his wife Patricia) a good album: the ordinariness that had been shown the door on the polished Inconsolable Man sneaks back in here, acoustically, through the window.

The lukewarm reception given to both releases dampens Gino's enthusiasm, and he even toys with the idea of stepping back from performing in person to focus on production, with at most the occasional live show.

The chance to try his hand at this new role comes courtesy of Danish pianist-composer Niels Lan Doky, whose "Haitek Haiku" (2001) — a compendium of genres and styles filtered through jazz — he produces, though he struggles to stay behind the scenes, appearing in many tracks as co-writer and performer as well. It's one of these, titled "Parole Per Mio Padre", that sparks the idea for a new solo project, one that would take shape a couple of years later. The song, sung in Italian with a neo-melodic flair and penned by Pino Daniele (this isn't the first time Gino has brushed up against our musical world: in 1995 he lent his voice alongside Gianni Bella on "Belladonna", and even earlier, in 1981, he gave Mina his "Put The Weight On My Shoulders", which became "Tu sarai la mia voce"), premiered at the Christmas Concert in the Vatican before Pope John Paul II on 16 December 2000.

The sacred allure and the treacherous pull of Italian melody play a cruel trick on him: in 2003 Canto is released, and the title alone promises nothing good. And indeed it delivers on that promise. What comes out of those grooves is an awkward hybrid of Bocelli-style aspirations ("Dea Speranza"), heavy-handed Spanish flourishes ("Mala Luna"), ill-judged nods to Charles Aznavour ("Joli Coeur") and clumsy neo-melodic gropings (besides the aforementioned "Parole Per Mio Padre", audaciously revived here, there's "Canto" piling it on further: “Guardo la notte nascere/ Il cielo abbraccia il mare/ Il sole saggio va/ Così agli occhi miei una lacrima…”. Presumably poetic clichés that nobody was crying out for).

Thankfully the hangover doesn't last long, and the following These Are The Days (2006), made up of seven new tracks and seven classic hits, marks a decisive return to a radio-friendly soul-pop that, while lacking any real highlights, at least doesn't make for uncomfortable listening. What remains unclear is the point of the exercise, given that the market is already saturated with "best of" compilations, and that with three or four more new songs, he could have recorded an entirely fresh album — and, all things considered, not a bad one at that.

In February 2009 comes A Good Thing. Gino has been living in the Netherlands for some years (in Amersfoort, near Utrecht), and for this record he relies heavily on local musicians, including the fine pianist Bert Van Den Brink (formerly with Chet Baker). The album, sold packaged with a collection of twenty-three unpublished poems, lingers — not without a touch of mannerism — around the already familiar dictates of jazzy soul, without adding anything substantial to his body of work.

From this release, as well as from the following one that same year (The Best And Beyond, which reworks several classics from his catalogue, including 80s material, in a west coast soul vein), one gets the impression of an artist playing for the love of music, in pursuit of vocal nuance, instrumental embroidery and formal perfectionism, but also for the simple pleasure of still surrounding himself, even now, with musicians of his own calibre. As well as to please the devoted fanbase that has followed him faithfully for decades: a stance that shouldn't be held against him, especially considering his history as a true artist, and as a man fiercely devoted to his loved ones and his roots.

Even so, a new album of original material takes a while to arrive (in the meantime the live album Live In L.A. is released); indeed, a full ten years pass between Still Hurts To Be In Love and the Wilderness Road project.

The record is the most intense and accomplished since Nightwalker; the songwriting on these twelve new tracks far surpasses the quality of his most recent releases, giving Gino Vannelli's audience an album that stands well apart from the slapdash efforts of Canto and A Good Thing.

Proof of its excellence is a small gem titled “Gimme Back My Life”, a soft-jazz-blues of rare lyrical intensity that deserves a place alongside the musician's classics. But the whole album exudes class and refinement, with tour-de-force moments that would put many aspiring crooners to shame, such as the complex harmonic scales of “The Long Arm Of Justice”, the refined intimacy and closeness of “A Long Dry Season”, and the dramatic piano ballad “The Woman Upstairs”.

A perfect gauge of Gino Vannelli's state of grace is the new version of “Wayward Love”, originally included on the album Canto, an intense, refined reinterpretation that forgoes needless embellishment to capture the song's poetic essence.

The quality of the arrangements and production, the technically flawless and deeply felt vocal performances, and the absence of any weak spot confirm Wilderness Road as a worthy continuation of the career of one of the most refined and iconic songwriters on the American pop-jazz scene.

Largely thanks to his prolific seventies output, Gino Vannelli deserves recognition as a key figure in pop fusion, and should certainly be counted among the select few names standing alongside genre pioneers Steely Dan.

Famous worldwide for a handful of highly distinctive hits, sometimes cited - against his own wishes - as an example of the worst excesses of the 80s (writing successful singles apparently being a grave sin, especially in that particular era), he in fact possesses, as we have seen, a far deeper and more varied background that deserves to be reconsidered in its true light. Restoring his rightful standing is already a good place to start.

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