Paolo Zavalloni

El Pasador, also known as Paolo Zavallone, pseudonym of Paolo Zavalloni was an Italian singer-songwriter, keyboardist and arranger who rose to prominence in the second half of the seventies. He is the father of the singer Cristina Zavalloni.

Since the fifties he has used the pseudonym Paolo Zavallone, riffing off the names of two major Italian artists like Fred Buscaglione and Renato Carosone.

He began his activity as a musician in the early fifties, playing keyboards in the group that accompanied Henghel Gualdi, and then, in 1957, establishing his own band, which featured, among others, trumpeter Al Korvin and singer Luciana Sasdelli.

In 1959 he also made his debut as a singer, first recording for Carlo Alberto Rossi's CAR Juke Box, then for Club, a label distributed by Dischi Ricordi, and then for Italian Yank, a label owned by Alessandro Celentano, Adriano 's brother.

During that era he also wrote songs for other artists, including "Le Notte Lunghi", included by Adriano Celentano in his 1965 album <em>Non mi dir</em>, and "Non mi capirai", with lyrics by Vito Pallavicini, which Lalla Leone presented at Un disco per l'estate festival 1967.

In the second half of the seventies he started using the pseudonym El Pasador: the characteristic hoarse voice and the truck driver's mustache made one think of something exotic, suggested by his pseudonym.

Author of numerous Rai television theme songs ("La sberla", "Non stop") and other titles in the disco music style such as "Amada mia, amore mio" and the exotic "Kilimanjaro", he directed the orchestra at the 1978 Sanremo Festival.

With "Amada mia, amore mio" he also participated in Festivalbar 1977, and with "Mucho Mucho" in Festivalbar 1978.

In 1980 he had a part in the cast of <em>Bamm!</em>, film by Francesco Abussi and debut as leading actor of Ezio Greggio.

Together with his daughter Cristina, then eleven years old, in 1982 he recorded "Papà ha la bua", the theme song of a children's TV program, Tip Tap.

In the eighties he met the Friars of the Antoniano, and began to take care of the musical arrangements of the Zecchino d'Oro from 1989 until 2001, when he retired from television screens.

He then disappeared from the scene, in 2009 he was a guest on the television show <em>The Best Years</em>, hosted by Carlo Conti.

In 2012 "Amada mia, amore mio" was included in the soundtrack of the film To Rome with Love by Woody Allen.

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