Gorni Kramer (22 July 1913 - 26 October 1995) was an Italian songwriter, musician and band leader.

He was born Kramer Gorni at Rivarolo Mantovano (Lombardy). Despite the exotic sound of Gorni Kramer in Italian language, which lead part of his audience to believe he was a foreigner or had adopted a fancy pseudonym, it was his real name. Gorni was in fact his family name, and Kramer his first name, after the US cyclist Frank Kramer who became road race world champion in 1912, who Gorni's father was a fan of.

Kramer learnt music at a very young age, thanks to his father, a musician. The first instrument he learned how to play was the accordion, with which he performed as a child in his father's band.

He then studied double bass at the Conservatory in Parma and obtained his diploma in 1930. He started working as a musician for dance bands, then in 1933, aged 20, he formed his own jazz group. This new American musical genre was forbidden by the Italian fascist regime, but Gorni Kramer could get to know it thanks to some fellow musicians who worked on board the liners connecting Europe and North America.

Raffaella Carrà (born 18 June 1943, Bologna, Italy), in Italy often simply known as la Carrà (the Carrà) and in some Latin American countries sometimes simply as Raffaella, is an Italian singer, dancer, television presenter, and actress. She is a popular figure in Italy, Spain, Malta, Greece and Latin America and Russia, both as a result of her many well-known taped presentations and records, and because of her many popular TV shows.

She was born Raffaella Roberta Pelloni, in Bologna. In her native town she had dance lessons.

Since 1961, Carrà has sung and danced on the variety shows of Italian television. In particular, since the early 1970s, they have featured elaborate choreography, mesmerizing elaborate themes, and her uninhibited style. She was the first television figure to show her belly button on camera. This was met with heavy criticism from the Vatican.^{[citation needed]}

Carrà had a hit song with the sensual "Tuca Tuca" (1970), written for her singing and dancing television presentations by her long-time collaborator and former boyfriend, Gianni Boncompagni. Similarly, in 1971 Carrà achieved another hit with "Chissà se Va".

Natalino Otto, stage name of Natale Codognotto (25 December 1912 - 4 October 1969) was an Italian singer. He started the swing genre in Italy.

Natalino Otto was born at Cogoleto, province of Genoa, in northern Italy.

His career as a singer and musician started in the clubs of his native region, Liguria. During 1930s he worked as an entertainer on board transatlantic liners on the routes between Europe and North America, which gave him the opportunity to get to know American music genres, especially jazz and swing.

In 1935 he was hired by an Italian-American radio station in New York. Back in Italy in 1937, Otto presented an innovative repertoire, strongly influenced by American music of that era. But he had to face Italian Fascist regime censorship, that banned anything foreign. He was forced to translate song titles and lyrics into Italian. The Italian state radio company EIAR did not broadcast his songs, and labelled them as "barbaric negro antimusic".

Banned from the radio, Natalino Otto worked for recording companies instead, together with two great Italian bandleaders such as Gorni Kramer and Pippo Barzizza. In a short while he won the audience with his records - one of the few Italian singers of those times, if not the only one, to achieve success without his songs playing on the radio. Italian people danced to his swing tunes, which earned him the nickname "King of Rhythm".

Franco Cerri (born January 29, 1926) is an Italian guitarist, born in Milan.

Franco Cerri is considered as “the best Italian guitarist” and “one of the best guitarist that European jazz has produced” and became popular in Italy thanks to his participation to the television show Buone Vacanze. He was not only one of the world's most popular and the most authoritative Italian guitarists, but was also one of the most important stylists of the European jazz world.

He began his long and prolific career in 1945 with Gorni Kramer and in 1949 he accompanied Django Reinhardt. In the 1950s he was near great jazz masters. Working with musicians from Chet Baker to Gerry Mulligan, and from Billie Holiday to Lee Konitz, and in modern jazz quartet or quintet, with musicians such as Tullio De Piscopo, Pino Presti, Gianluigi Trovesi, Flavio Ambrosetti and Jean-Luc Ponty, he became a leader in the Italian and European jazz world.

On January 1, 2006 he was named "Commendatore della Repubblica" (official title awarded for service to Italy) by President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.