Rocky Roberts

I'm going to Italy at the end of March, so I've been nostalgizing about the old country. When I lived there in 1995 and 2001, I bought a bunch of compilations of Italian hits from the 1960s. One of my favorite singers was Rocky Roberts, and American who had two big hits in Italy, "Stasera Mi Butto" and "Sono Tremendo." Rocky was a soul singer in the James Brown mode who had a pronounced American accent. According to his Italian Wikipedia entry, he was a sailor, then a boxer, and then was part of a soul group in France called the Airedales



Accent or no, dude could get down. Here's "Sono Tremendo:"


His song "T-Bird" was also featured on the opening titles of Italian sixties freak out "I Ragazzi della bandiera gialla"



His career declined after the sixties, so I'm not sure what he's doing now.

There is also a country singer named Rocky Roberts who has nothing to do with Italy or soul.