Paolo Conte

Paolo Conte was born in Asti on January 6, 1937. His father was a notary with a ear for music, and his mother came from a family of landowners. As a child, he spent a lot of time on his grandfather's estate, where he learned the basics of the piano thanks to his parents, who loved both classical and popular music. During the war, his father secretly obtained foreign records, which gave Paolo his first contact with jazz. In an interview from the 1980s, he recounted how American music was banned, but people hid it and played it at home, using Italian names. Thus, jazz came into his life at a very young age.

As a teenager, he studied at the Liceo Vittorio Alfieri in Asti and later graduated in law in Parma. He worked in his father's office, but also devoted time to music, starting to play trumpet and vibraphone. He joined several local groups, such as the Barrelhouse Jazz Band, the Taxi for Five or the The Lazy River Band Society. With the first group, he formed the USMA, a union of students who met at the Alpine Club to play jazz. There they discovered artists like Rodgers, Gershwin or Porter, and played in bars and festivals. Although he was a great listener, he also entered competitions, such as the Quiz Internazionale di Jazz in Oslo, where he came third.