Caterina Valente is a born Italian, naturalized French multilingual singer, guitarist and dancer. She speaks six languages and sings in eleven. Her brother—Italian musician, singer and film actor Silvio Francesco – performed with her, sang many duets, danced, and played the clarinet in the shadow of his famous sister. While she is best known as a performer in Europe, Valente spent part of her career in the United States, where she performed alongside Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others.
In 1955, she was featured on The Colgate Comedy Hour with Gordon MacRae. In 1958, she filmed the musical comedy ‘Hier bin ich – Hier bleib ich’ (Here I Am, Here I Stay) which featured a guest appearance by Bill Haley and His Comets. During Haley’s segment, Valente sang a duet with Haley on a newly recorded version of his song “Vive la Rock and Roll”.
In Germany, she was a major performer of Schlager music. There, she recorded Cole Porter’s I Love Paris under the German title ‘Ganz Paris Traumt von der Liebe’, which sold more than 900,000 copies from its release in November 1954 to December 1958, according to Der Spiegel’s report of January 1959. By a report from 1978, Valente’s single ‘The Breeze and I’ has sold more than 1,000,000 copies, making it her best-selling record. Both songs were published by the German Polydor label; their success made Valente a star. In the same year, 1959, she was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In the mid-1960s, Valente worked with Claus Ogerman and recorded material in both Italian and English that he arranged/conducted and/or composed on the Decca and London labels. Valente was a favourite of singer Perry Como, making eight guest appearances on his NBC Kraft Music Hall television program from 1961 to 1966. In 1964–65, she was co-host (with Carol Burnett and initially Bob Newhart) of The Entertainers, a CBS variety show for which she was awarded the recognition of best female vocalist on American TV . She was a frequent guest on The Dean Martin Show. Valente also made three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.
In 1970 she appeared in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium singing Before the Parade Passes By and The Breeze and I. A briglia sciolta, the Italian jazz CD recorded in 1989 and re-released in later years under the titles Fantastica and Platinum deluxe, was her best-selling CD worldwide. In 2001, she released a new album, Girltalk, with harpist Catherine Michel. She retired in 2003.
In 2019 her hit song from 1959, Bongo Cha Cha Cha was included in the soundtrack of Spiderman Far From Home, directed by Jon Watts, becoming viral and risen to new popularity. In 2021 the song went viral on social media platform TikTok, thanks to its use for a trend that has collected over 250 million views, started from Latin countries and South America, and then popularized also in Italy and Germany.
