CURRICULUM VITAE OF GEPY & GEPY

Gepy & Gepy, real name Giampiero Scalamogna, began his artistic activity when he was young.

His real start was at the Piper Club in Rome. Its owner and creator, Mr Alberico Crocetta became at once his manager and his band’s producer. It was the first Rythm & Blues and Soul music Italian band.

They had such a great success in Europe that they spent six or seven months per year abroad.

It was the first Italian band to play in Great Britain, after being asked by New Namesis Enterprises which belonged to Mr. Steegoowood, a famous movie and record producer ( such as Bee Gees, "Saturday Night Fever")

They played at the Blasis Club in London, a nightclub where Beatles made their debut. After that, they went to play to the Speak Easy and to the Saville Theater where they had a great success.

A famous English musician who met this band at the Piper Club in Rome, that is to say Brian Auger came to listen to them at the Blasis Club even in company with John Lennon. That night Gepy & Gepy’s band brought the house down.

One week later, they played at the Great Hall of Southampton University with another famous band, an English group of psychedelic music The Birds, in front of twenty thousand students. That night there was the consecration of Gepy & Gepy’s band.

We have dwelt upon the beginning of his career to show you how much he was influenced by this kind of music that he has always loved. After that, Gepy understood that his time in the International music was over. He dissolved his cool band and moved abroad: Munich where he lived for about one year, Paris, London and New York.

Back to Italy, he decided to be a songwriter and a producer, not a singer anymore. In the following time he also published the "Piramide Azzurra" featuring Piero Colasanti. In this period he was an important producer and worked with Patty Pravo, Antonello Venditti, Ricchi e Poveri and Ornella Vanoni. He appeared as a singer in Ms. Vanoni’s first record produced by himself. "Più song" became an Italian and International hit, so that he came back on TV. Actually Ornella Vanoni and Gepy & Gepy made three or four shows on TV having twenty, thirty millions of people watching them. At that time Gepy was very fat, he wore nothing else than a salopette and close to Ms. Vanoni, they gave the idea of a fairy-like couple such as The Beauty and the Beast. After some months Gepy became a big. Soon after that, he recorded and produced two International hits , "Blu" and "Chi io", with a very beautiful mulatto girl called Melissa. Eventually he decided to try to play alone and he recorded his first LP, Body to Body which became an International hit . It was a dance record of Rhytm & Blues. So, it was a temporary return to the kind of music he had first loved. Other new hits follwed it: "Angelo blu, Teneramente, Sera sarà, Serenata per una notte blu, Per lei".

Now, let’s talk about Blues.

At the beginning of his career he was a Rock and Roll guitar-player and a singer. He was influenced by the greatest black music singers such as Little Richard and by the most important Blues singers like Louis Armostrong, Ella fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and above all Mr Ray Charles who represented his source of inspiration. He studied everything about him, his notes, his way of breathing, the inflexion of his voice, but he didn’t forget to pay attention to Mr Ray Charles’ popular pupils: Joe Cocker, Chris Farlow, David Clayton Thomas. During all these years he had been close to these great musicians, not only imitating their technique (which reached the level of perfection now) but also their way of "feeling", as Americans say.

In 1980 he recorded his most famous LP in the world, Body to Body, a dance and Rythm song. More than seven millions of copies were sold out and in the Canadian hit parade he had been first with a single, Body to Body for three months and for other three months with another single from this same album.

30% of these records were imported in States and sold in Northern towns, Washington, Chicago, Seattle and New York where Body to Body was played in the famous nightclub "Cita". That’s why, at the beginnig of the 90’s , he decided to move from Los Angeles to California where he wrote and play only Blue & Soul music that he loved so much. Sometimes he came back to Italy to play with different people, that is to say with a big band or a trio, or alone accompanied at the piano.

These are shortly the most important events which marked Gepy&Gepy’s career and which let him be able to represent Soul music as one of its greatest modern interpreters.