Rina Ketty

Rina Ketty (1 March 1911 – 23 December 1996), whose real name was Cesarina Picchetto, was an Italian singer, notably of the legendary song J'attendrai. The song reached superstatus during WW2 and was appreciated by Allied soldiers and Axis soldiers alike (equalled only by Lale Andersen's Lili Marlene and perhaps by Vera Lynn's We'll meet again.)

It is often thought that Rina Ketty was born in Turin, Italy. However, in reality she was born in Sarzana, a small village in Liguria, on 1 March 1911 in the part of town known as Vetraia. Her birth certificate number 586 is kept by the parish of Saint André. She went to Paris in the 1930s to meet up with her aunts, where she became enthralled by the artist communities of Montmartre. She loved to visit the cabarets and started out to sing in 1934 in the Lapin Agile cabaret with songs by Paul Delmet, Gaston Couté, Théodore Botrel, and Yvette Guilbert. In 1936 she recorded her first songs (on the French Pathé Records label): "La Madone aux fleurs", "Près de Naples la jolie" and "Si tu reviens". These first songs did not really achieve wide acclaim. Things changed for the better in 1938, when Rina Ketty recorded the French version of an Italian success song "Rien que mon coeur", which won the acclaimed Grand Prix du Disque, and with the song "Prière à la Madone". Her name as a singer became well established with the song "Sombreros et mantilles"; the text of which had been written by Chanty and the music by accordion player Jean Vaissade, whom she married that same year.

In 1938 Rina Ketty recorded that famous song "J'attendrai" ("I will wait"), which is actually a translation of the Italian song "Tornerai" (music by Dino Oliveira and text by Nino Rastelli); it had been a huge hit for Carlo Buti in Italy the year before. The French text was written by Louis Poterat. Rina Ketty's version of "J'attendrai" was released by Pathé Records and from the very start became an enormous success. Later it became an emblem of World War II. Rina Ketty's Italian accent highlighting the French text of the song, worked wonderfully on the radio of those days, but also on various subsequent recorded versions.

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