Volume 1 (Vol. 1º) is the second studio release by Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André and his first true studio album. It was first issued in 1967 on Bluebell Records. It is a collection of re-recordings of De André's early singles, previously issued on the Karim label.

Track listing

The songs

"Preghiera in Gennaio"

"Marcia nuziale"

"Spiritual"

"Si chiamava Gesù"

"La canzone di Barbara"

"Via del Campo"

"Caro amore"

"Bocca di Rosa"

The song tells the story of a foreign girl (Bocca di Rosa, who is not a prostitute since - as the song states - she never asks for money), whose passionate and libertine behaviour upsets the women of the small town of Sant'Ilario. Seeing her conduct as unacceptable, the women turn to the Police commissioner, who sends four gendarmes to put her on the first train out of town. All the men in town gather at the station to send their regards to the woman who "brought love to the town". At the following station, she is greeted by even more people, including the priest, who wants her to be by his side during the subsequent procession, not far from the statue of the Virgin Mary, thus "carrying around town sacred love and profane love". Bocca di Rosa's character was reproposed, with different connotations, in the novel Un destino ridicolo, co-written by De André and writer Alessandro Gennari. According to newspaper Il Secolo XIX, the inspirer of the song died June 14, 2010, aged 88, in Sampierdarena hospital, in Genoa. De André's widow, Dori Ghezzi, and his longtime friend Paolo Villaggio both denied De André ever meeting her, despite the singer having stated otherwise to newspaper Repubblica in 1996.

Controversy

"Bocca di Rosa" was re-recorded with different lyrics for the first reissue of the album. The fictional town of Sant'Ilario, named after an actual suburb of Genoa, was renamed "San Vicario". Also, after "polite pressures from the corps of Carabinieri", a line was taken out of the lyrics which criticized the law enforcement corps (with explicit mention of the Carabinieri). This "censored" version of the song would be featured in every following reissue. The original version was included in the posthumous 2005 compilation album In direzione ostinata e contraria.

"La morte"

"Carlo Martello ritorna dalla battaglia di Poitiers"

Martel, returning victorious after the Battle of Tours, is "feeling love yearnings more than body wounds" and uses his position as king to obtain sexual favors from a beautiful peasant girl. Then, when the girl demands payment for her "services" afterwards (thus revealing herself as a prostitute), Martel quickly hops on his horse and rides away in a comical fashion. The song imitates an ancient Occitan lyric genre, the "Pastorela", which revolved around the meeting of knights with shepherdesses in bucolic sets such as brooks and stretches of water. The idea for the song was born on a day of November 1962, when De André and Paolo Villaggio were at Villaggio's house in Genoa, both waiting for their wives to give birth. De André played the melody on a guitar and Villaggio, very fond of history, immediately thought of writing lyrics to it about Charles Martel. A week later, the lyrics were ready. Several poetic licenses are used in the lyrics:

Release history