Cirino Colacrai
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Cirino Colocrai was born in Brooklyn and was a accomplished child
musician, playing multiple instruments. He and Teddy Randazzo were
boyhood friends, and in the early 1950s wrote several hit songs
together, including "Rosemarie." Cirino's compositions "Runaround" and
"Foolishly" were both recorded by Randazzo's group, the Three Chuckles.
Cirino organized a group called "Cirino and the Bowties" to experiment
and demonstrate, and record Cirino's songs. The group recorded rock and
roll and teenage-themed uptempo love ballads for Roost Records during
the mid-1950s, their first records being "Anytime" and "Rosemarie,"
which sold moderately, and were a rocking lounge act. Rock and roll
disc jockey and promoter Alan Freed picked them as one of the most
promising groups of 1956, and heavily promoted the band that year,
putting them on the crowded bills of his lengendary rock and roll shows
at the Brooklyn Paramount and Fox Theaters, and also featured the group
in a starring musical role in his teen drive-in rock and roll
exploitation quickie "Rock, Rock, Rock," in which they sang "Ever Since
I Can Remember" and also backed up Ivy Schulman on "Rock, Pretty Baby."
In the late 1950s, the Bowties seemed to slowly break up, as they lost
their contract to Roost, and Cirino followed other, more
songwriting-type, projects. Cirino's songs were featured in the movies
"Jamboree" and "Country Music Holiday" during the late-'50s, such as
"Toreador," "I Don't Like You No More," and "Goodbye My Darlin'."
During the 1960s, Cirino continued to write more pop songs, some of
them moderate hits, but now is in obscurity if he is alive, and even I
don't know where the heck he is or what the heck he's doing now.
Probably retired and living happily in a nice house with some longtime
wife, and they had great, wonderful children, I'd like to think.