Ciribiribin

This article is about the song. For the Benny Goodman album, see Ciribiribin (album).

"Ciribiribin" is a merry Italian ballad in three quarter time, composed by Alberto Pestalozza in 1898 with lyrics by Carlo Tiochet. . It quickly became popular and has come to be recorded by many artists. The distinguishing feature of the song is repeated use of the five note phrase that forms the song name. In the lyrics the name is always given the pronunciation “chiribiribee”.^{[citation needed]} This allows singers to hold the vowel at the end as long as they like, giving their performance great flair and drama.

In the same way the song is a spectacular natural for the trumpet. By the 1920s it had become such a solo piece for that instrument that if a boy was invited to play in a variety show in those days it was a safe bet this would be the song he played.

It was the favorite song of Harry James, who grew up in that period. He studied trumpet rigorously from the age of ten under his father, the band leader for a circus, and no doubt knew every trumpet piece in the book. When he arrived at the peak of the swing music world in the Benny Goodman band and had a chance to display his virtuosity as a soloist, it was this tune that he chose. His lyrical expression, his mastery of the triple-tongue and his ability to reach high notes set his performance apart from anything the public had heard out of a trumpet until then. The fame arising from the record he cut of Ciribiribin with Goodman gave him the courage to launch his own band in February 1939, and he naturally chose it as his theme song.

Shortly after starting his band James found Frank Sinatra singing in a local night club in New Jersey and hired him as a singer. They recorded 10 songs on the Brunswick label (remastered and reissued by Columbia in 1995) before Tommy Dorsey lured Sinatra away. One of those songs was “Ciribiribin.”

It is said that when James hired Sinatra he urged him to assume the name "Frank Satin", which did not divulge the singer's Italian heritage, but that Sinatra refused. (He must surely have known that the word is usually sung “chiribiribee” in English, but on their recording of Ciribiribin, Sinatra pronounced the final “n” in the song name, following the spelling in the text.)

Grace Moore famously recorded the song with Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1936.

Artists who have recorded the song in Italian include Mario Lanza, Claudio Villa, and Renato Carosone.

The song is that which Warren Beatty's character essays on the clarinet in the 1978 motion picture Heaven Can Wait.