Track Listing

1. Stornelli Amorisi - Claudio Villa
2. Il Pescivendolo - Matteo Salvatore
3. La Strada Del Bosco - Claudio Villa
4. Art Of Art - Gary DeMichele
5. Oh Marie - Louis Prima
6. Mambo Italiano - Rosemary Clooney
7. Love Of My Life (O Sole Mio) - Louis Prima and Keely Smith with Sam Butera
8. Dinner - Gary DeMichele
9. Tic Ti, Tic Ta - Claudio Villa
10. Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days - Louis Prima and The Witnesses
11. Don't Take Your Love From Me - Keely Smith
12. Buona Sera - Louis Prima
13. Angular Dissent - Gary DeMichele
14. Mo Ve'la Bella Mia Da La Muntagna - Matteo Salvatore
15. Pascal's Waltz - Gary DeMichele
16. Big Night Theme - Gary DeMichele

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166339 in Music
• Released on: 2006-02-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English, Italian

Album Description
This 1996 film about two brothers struggling to keep their Italian restaurant open stars Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott, and Tony Shalhoub. The soundtrack album features a great line up of beloved ‘50s era Italian-American classics including several cuts by the one and only Louis Prima. Out of print and unavailable for several years.

Amazon.com
The great acting by Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, and Tony Shalhoub explains only some of the magic of Big Night, for the trio share the screen with shot after shot of mouthwatering food and a lively Italian-American score featuring Louis Prima, Rosemary Clooney, Claudio Villa, and Keely Smith. The appearance of Prima himself at a restaurant opening plays a crucial role in the film's plot, but his music included here tells a different, much more joyous and carefree, story. This is one of the few retro soundtracks that don't resort to kitsch or lounge clichés, and all the Italian-American tracks work together well. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews

Made me wish I was Italian!
I love this CD. The music is joyful, emotional, funny, melancholy; it will make you laugh and cry (while smiling). The Louis Prima cuts are superb. Rosemary Clooney's Mambo Italiano is a classic. The whole collection of songs makes you long for more like them. Play it while you're cooking - play it loud. This is one of the best CDs I own. I've ordered copies for friends, because I know it will make them feel happy when they listen to it. Highly, highly, highly recommended!

Great intro to Italian-American experience
My husband is a second generation Italian-American and played this CD so much that it started growing on me. Actually, he played the movie from which this sound track was derived until I went nuts and got this CD for him. Although the movie is wonderful until you've seen it more than ten times, then it gets old, this soundtrack is timeless, and all the more so when my husband tells me what it was like growing up in his culture and listening to Louis Prima and other Italian and Italian-American music.

Everything on this CD by Louis Prima is excellent. My favorite track of his is Buona Sera, but I also love the rendition of O Sole Mio with Sam Butera's fantastic saxophone work. Rosemary Clooney's Mambo Italiano is the sort of song that stays in your head even when you wish it would leave. It's delightful, but a tad too catchy. A bit of history: this was a successful hit for her, but she didn't like it, nor did she understand why it became a hit.

Claudio Villa's "Strada del Bosco" (road through the woods) and "Tic-Ti Tic-Ta" are two of my favorite Italian tracks, with "Pescivendolo" (fish monger) a close third. Of course, if you saw the movie, the first track, "Stornelli Amorisi" by Claudio Villa will be immediately recognizable and will stick with you.

I was not keen about the instrumentals ("Art of Art", "Dinner", "Pascal's Waltz", or "Big Night Theme"), but that may be because those tracks were so integrated into the movie that they just didn't sound right on a CD. I was also not too keen about Keely Smith's "Don't Take Your Love from Me". It just didn't have the same energy as some of the recordings she made on other records with Louis Prima. They were made for each other, and this track without his strong (overpowering?) presence and style shows it.

All in all, this is a well put together set of tracks that capture the very essence of the Italian-American experience of my husband's generation, and that before him. It will also give you an aural reminder of how delightful the movie - The Big Night - was the first time you saw it. And if you haven't seen it, you should.

This CD captures many flavors of Italian music
This collection of music gives you a wide range of what is considered popular Italian music. From the traditional troubador songs of Claudio Villa to the diletto songs like 'Muntagna',to the swingin' jazz style of Prima, Big Night gives you a tasty sampling that echoes the tasty samplings of musical style much the same way the movie itself gives you samples of Italian cuisine. It's all about spice and flavor and passion! A lot of the songs on this soundtrack mention food or have food themes in them. Very enjoyable, whether you understand the language or not. You can feel the passion of the people in the music, and that's what popular songs are all about.Abondanza!!