Alessandro Alessandroni & Gianni Ferrio

Alessandro Alessandroni isn't a household name in popular or film music, but his contributions to the two fields have made his work among the most familiar of any musician to emerge since the 1950s. Born in Soriano nel Cimino, north of Rome, in 1925, Alessandroni never aspired to formal music training -- he was entirely self-taught, and started learning the guitar and the mandolin by listening to and watching the men who made music at the family's barber shop. He listened to classical music on his own and bought his first mandolin at age 13. He also discovered as a boy that in...