When you think of Italians and music, you might just think of the great opera composers, Verdi, Pucchini, Rossini, or the powerful voices of Caruso, Pavarotti or Bartoli. Perhaps your mind fills with the smooth sound of Sinatra and Martin but that is only part of our history. What if I told you Italians also made the best toe tapping, boot scooting, country AND western music, right here in California?

In 1924 in Monreale, Sicily, a hillside village best known for the Cathedral of Monreale, one of the greatest examples of mosaic art in the world, was born Guiseppe Quartuccio, later to be known as "Shorty Joe".

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Fonte: L'italo-Americano