Zucchero

Adelmo Fornaciari, the Italian artist universally recognized by the stage name Zucchero, first received that nickname from an elementary-school instructor. His initial forays into music took place in Reggio Emilia, where he concentrated on guitar-driven blues and R&B. While still a teenager in the early 1970s he assembled the band Le Nuove Luci; four years later he launched Sugar and Candies and simultaneously began composing, supplying Italian pop material to other performers while reserving his more blues-inflected songs for his own use.

His profile rose sharply after capturing the Castrocaro Festival in 1981, an achievement that secured invitations to the Sanremo Festival in both 1982 and 1983. That visibility prompted the release of his debut solo album, Un Po' Di Zucchero, in 1983. Two years afterward he returned to Sanremo with the Zucchero & the Randy Jackson Band and the song “Donne,” which, although it did not take the top prize, became a major hit and introduced his distinctive fusion of Italian pop and electric blues to a wider public.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s Zucchero ranked among Italy’s most commercially successful acts and enjoyed broad popularity across Europe. He appeared at the 1994 Woodstock Festival and shared stages with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, the Scorpions, and Luciano Pavarotti, yet his international reach remained modest. Entering the new century he sustained his stature both as a live performer and as an award-winning songwriter. The 2002 solo album Shake proved especially successful, while Zu & Co. arrived in 2005 as a set of duets recorded with predominantly non-Italian artists that included Eric Clapton, Macy Gray, and Sheryl Crow. The following year he issued Fly, tracked in Los Angeles under Don Was’s supervision; the record earned platinum certification in Switzerland and a rare diamond certification in Italy.

Zucchero again turned to California for his next major project, Chocabeck, which appeared in 2010. Produced by Was and Brendan O’Brien, the album featured contributions from Brian Wilson and Bono, topped the Italian charts, and found strong audiences in Germany and Switzerland. In 2012 he recorded La Sesiòn Cubana entirely on the island of Cuba, and a live counterpart, Una Rosa Blanca, followed in late 2013. His twelfth studio album, Black Cat, surfaced in April 2016 and contained the track “Streets of Surrender (S.O.S.),” whose lyrics were supplied by Bono and whose guitar part was performed by Mark Knopfler.