Many words were spent on the long and fruitful collaboration between Piero Umiliani and the director Luigi Scattini: new light has been shed recently on some of their works, in lieu of the reissue of soundtracks such as “Angeli bianchi… angeli neri”, “Questo sporco mondo meraviglioso” along with “La ragazza fuoristrada”, “Il corpo” and “La ragazza dalla pelle di luna” (the famous trilogy starring Zeudi Araya as a main character).
In 1977 Scattini, a world famous Mondo Movie author, directed “Blue Nude”, one of his masterpieces: shot in New York, the movie falls between fiction and documentary, and investigates the world of hardcore pornography (Rocco Spinone, the main character, is an Italian porn actor). The movie is raw and uncompromising as demanded by the script, and anticipates Paul Schrader’s more popular “Hardcore” by a couple of years. “Blue Nude” relied on Piero Umiliani’s expert hands for its soundtrack. The Maestro decided to return to his jazz roots and composed fifteen tracks, recorded with some of the best Italian musicians of the time: Cicci Santucci, Sam Genovese, Roberto Scoppa, Enrico Pieranunzi, Franco D’Andrea, Bruno Tommaso, Gegè Munari, Carlo Coppotelli and Antonello Vannucchi.
Unexpectedly, the soundtrack wasn’t released simultaneously with the movie and the music ended up being used by Umiliani one year after in an unusual music library LP, released in 300 copies under the moniker of ‘Rovi’ and titled “Due temi con variazioni” (Two themes with variations). The two themes are ‘Blue’ and ‘Easy’, and gave name to all the compositions. The soundtrack had been eventually released on CD in 2014 by the Rome-based label Beat Records, while now we can finally get our hands on the Sound Work Shop LP thanks to this reissue, destined to all those who love scores such as “I soliti sospetti” and Umiliani’s jazz works.
Stefano Gilardino
