Pepito Pignatelli

9-10-1931 Mexico City, Mexico / 1981 Rome, Italy Giuseppe Pignatelli, known as "Pepito" Pignatelli, was drummer, concert promoter, owner of jazz music venues, but mainly a pivotal person for the diffusion and the development of jazz in Rome and also in Italy. Descendant of one of the most prestigious Italian aristocratic families (even a Pope, Innocent XII, at the end of the seventeenth century), Pepito cultivated his passion for the jazz as a child, a passion that indelibly characterized, even in an extreme way, all his life. At the age of twenty he founded Mario's Bar, the first Italian jazz club. While still very young, he met the prison for a wild drug affair. Together with his inseparable wife, Maria Giulia Gallarati, known as Picchi, married in 1959 and also passionate about jazz music, at the end of the 60s he founded the "Blue Note" and in 1971 the "Music Inn", both located in the downtown of Rome. During the 70's "Music Inn" became a rather important venue hosting musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Chet Baker, Mal Waldron, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones, Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy, Gato Barbieri, but also Italian jazz musicians such as Massimo Urbani, Maurizio Giammarco, Danilo Rea, Roberto Gatto, Enrico Pieranunzi, Antonello Salis, Giovanni Tommaso, Franco D'Andrea and Gegè Munari. Pepito died in 1981 of a heart attack, his wife followed him eleven years later committing suicide.