Rocco Granata - Belgian singer
Son of Italian immigrants in Belgium, Rocco Granata didn't want to go to work in the mines but preferred making music with his friends. They toured the regions with sentimental Italian songs and cheerful accordion music, having success with Manuela.
When a dance club owner suddenly presented Rocco the chance to record on vinyl in 1959, he hastily penned down a song: Marina. Now, forty-plus years later the balance stops at more than tens of millions of copies of the evergreen sold at the counters of music stores worldwide. Hundreds of artists have made a cover-version, among who are the likes of Dalida and Louis Armstrong.
In 1989 he let deejay/producer Serge Ramaekers create a disco remix of his Marina. A brilliant decision: the new-beat producer takes it all the way to number 1 in Belgium and other European countries (including the Netherlands, Germany and Italy) again, over 30 years after the original. Although Rocco Granata had continued to make music ever since 1959 and had sold many copies of his other songs (altogether he made it 9 times to the top 10 of the Belgian hit parades), the enormity of the success of Marina basically reduced Rocco to a so-called one-hit wonder.
Singer Rocco Granata also became a well-established music producer. He had his own record labels (Cardinal Records and Granata Records) and a few years ago it was revealed that Granata was the true discoverer of the talent of Sarah Bettens, star singer of K's Choice.
Rocco Granata's hit singles: