The Jimmy Roselli Story
by David Evanier
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A better singer than Frank Sinatra, a man of the people, and a would-be showbiz legend who never was: these are all fair descriptions of crooner Jimmy Roselli, who is a legend within the Italian-American community, and a virtual unknown outside of it.

With "The Jimmy Roselli Story," author David Evanier makes an attempt to explore the nuts and bolts of Roselli’s complicated personality and long career, and comes up with mixed results. Evanier’s prose is workmanlike, but adequate to the task of constructing a loose patchwork quilt of anecdotes and personalities that include Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Tony Bennett and a host of underworld goons and underbosses. As his description of Roselli unfolds, Evanier spins a tale of a plucky youth whose brilliant saloon-singing and tough attitude get him from Hoboken to (relative) stardom and wealth.

Perhaps most compelling is the constant comparison between Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Roselli, with Sinatra cast as the shrewd, hustling Hollywood sell-out, and Roselli as the tough, sometimes naïve representative of the less Americanized, Italian-speaking residents of East Coast saloons and Little Italys.

As "The Jimmy Roselli Story" was written with the cooperation and implicit blessing of Mr. Roselli himself, it does tend to stray toward praise, and away from the blistering condemnation of Roselli’s character that it might have otherwise become. Roselli is no angel: his vindictive personality and violent temper are cataloged in incidents that pepper the book’s pages.

"The Jimmy Roselli Story" is, by and large, a marginally good portrait of an arguably first-rate singer, but it also serves as a window into what it meant to be a recent immigrant, and a member of the East Coast’s vast and influential Italian-American community. Alone, it’s not an amazing piece of work, but it manages to make a respectable contribution to the ever-growing collection of literature on the American immigrant experience.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)