Volare

Volare: Bobby Rydell's Summer Conquest of 1960

The summer of 1960 had a distinctly international flavor. Volare, the Italian song that had already become a global phenomenon in 1958 via Domenico Modugno's original, was proving to have a second life as a template that pop singers across the Western world could inhabit. Bobby Rydell, the twenty-year-old Philadelphian whose career was moving very fast indeed, recognized what the song could do for a young American voice, and his version spent the summer of 1960 proving him right.

Bobby Rydell at the Beginning of Everything

Bobby Rydell was one of the most commercially potent young singers of 1960, a product of the South Philadelphia Italian-American music scene that had also given the world Frankie Avalon and Fabian. He had broken through in 1959 with Kissin' Time and We Got Love, and his appeal was built on a combination of genuine vocal talent, matinee-idol looks, and the kind of high-energy charisma that translated equally well to television variety shows and the teen-magazine spreads that drove pop-star careers in that era. Rydell was not simply manufactured; he could sing, he had timing, and he had the self-assurance of someone who had been performing since childhood.

The Song and Its Italian Heritage

The song that would become Volare in its English-language versions was originally titled Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu, a phrase translating roughly as "in the blue painted in blue," describing a dreamlike state of being free in a sky of impossible color. Modugno's 1958 original had won the San Remo Festival and subsequently won two Grammy Awards, an extraordinary achievement for a foreign-language recording in the American market. The melody's soaring quality, its sense of joyful liberation, had made it immediately adaptable, and Rydell's version delivered the English lyrics fitted to the Modugno tune with the bright confidence of someone who understood exactly what the song was selling.

Fifteen Weeks and a Number Four Peak

Rydell's Volare debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 18, 1960, at position 60 and began an extended, powerful climb. By early August it was in the top 30, then top 15, before peaking at number 4 on September 5, 1960. The record spent fifteen weeks on the chart, a substantial run that demonstrates the kind of durability that separates genuine pop hits from lucky one-weekend spikes. Number 4 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1960 means Rydell's Volare was among the most-heard recordings in America for that entire season; radio played it constantly, jukeboxes turned it over, and the television appearances that accompanied it amplified the exposure still further.

Teen Pop at Its Commercial Peak

The summer of 1960 represents something close to the high-water mark of pre-British Invasion teen pop in America. The machinery of the idol-making industry, centered on Philadelphia labels and the television programs that promoted their artists, was running at full efficiency. Rydell was at its center, along with a cohort of similarly groomed young singers, all competing for chart space and teenage attention. In that context, Volare stood out because it gave Rydell a song with genuine dramatic heft; the soaring melody suited his voice in a way that the more modest teen-pop fare did not always do.

An Enduring Performance

The 111,000 YouTube views this recording carries are a small number given how significant it was in its moment, but those views come from listeners actively seeking it out across a distance of more than sixty years. The performance holds up; Rydell's voice is bright and controlled, the arrangement is generous without being cluttered, and the song's fundamental joy translates without any interpreter. There is also something instructive in the sound of a voice this young and this confident: Rydell at twenty was not performing assurance, he simply had it, and that quality is audible in every phrase. Press play and hear exactly what a number-four summer hit sounded like in 1960.

“Volare” — Bobby Rydell's singular moment on the 1960s charts.