| Peter Nero (born Bernard Nierow, 1934, Brooklyn) is a pianist and New York native who started with Paul Whiteman, then moved up to symphony until the early 1960's, when RCA Victor signed him and successfully promoted him into a pop music interpreter. "Piano Forte," Peter Nero's first album, was released in 1961 and he began touring the country. That same year, he won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Nero's popularity continued to rise throughout the early 1960's; his jazzy hybrid of pop, classical, swing, and bop became one of the most popular mainstream sounds of the era. Eventually, he became the musical director of the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra, where he frequently performed classical arrangements of pop songs. By 1975, the early years of disco, Nero was signed to Arista Records. Feeling the need to stay on the cutting edge of popular music Nero took a stab at disco. "Disco, Dance And Love Themes of The 70's" was released in the spring of 1975. The album was a pastiche of current hits done ala Nero's piano playing style. Some songs are quite good, some worse than dreadful....think Muzak disco and you'll get the main point. "Feel Like Makin' Love," "Love's Theme," "Brother Louie" and "Nothing From Nothing" are quite enjoyable but "Jazzman," "Emmanuelle" and "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" are best left to the originals. The album owes any of it's goodness to producers Tony Silvester and Bert De Coteaux and engineer Tony Bongiovi. All of whom had better successes in the disco market. Thankfully NO 12" singles were issued from the album and withit's failure Nero returned to playing jazz in trios, though he still made orchestral records occasionally. |
