Into the disco universe of Baby Records.

The legendary Italian record label made pop, disco, electronic and italo disco history.

If there is a label that produced a sound that became the melodic representation of 1980s Europe as a whole, that has to be Milan’s own Baby Records.  While far from being avant garde or particularly high brow, Baby Records came at the right time at the right place, just when disco started gaining popularity, and when stodgier singers were looking to reinvent themselves. No other label did what they did: they were perhaps the only ones who managed to produce records that were played both in discotheques and at Sanremo music festivals. 

Baby Records was, by all means, a crossover label. It hosted 1960s stars in need of a second act, Italo Disco acts, Italo schlager productions, and even children’s music. These include  Den Harrow, Gazebo, Albert One, La Bionda, Pino Presti, K.I.D., Spargo, DD Sound, Gepy & Gepy, Kimera, Stephen Schlaks, Santo California, Al Bano & Romina Power, Ricchi e Poveri, Dario Farina and the baroque switched-on-disco act  Rondò Veneziano. The label had quite a unique strategy then imitated by many others that had a distribution on the Italian market: it pumped out traditional pop acts on the market in the mid 70's, capitalized on the peak in popularity of disco music of the late 70s by both licensing acts from international labels and producing local artists, and  de facto ignited (together with Discomagic)  the Italo Disco wave that lasted deep into the late 80’s.

Freddy Naggiar’s Baby Records, founded in 1974, was already doing big business by pressing artists such as Albano e Romina, pianist Stephen Schlaks and pop sensation Pupo, whom Naggiar had recruited ‘like the government recruits civil servants, by placing an advert in a magazine’ (Billboard 1976). Pupo abandoned Naggiar early on over financial disputes.

Regardless, he was another astute and internationally minded businessman, whose network and knowledge gave him a long-sighted vision of music as an industry; he turned to disco and Italo around 1979–1980, and by ‘dressing the melody up’ became one of the genre’s biggest players. 

He is the one who released the La Bionda brothers (considered by many as the fathers of Italo disco) hits like  Disco Bass, 1,2, 3, 4…Gimme Some More and One For You, One For Me. 

The mainstream success came from Gazebo’s “Masterpiece,” originally released by a small Roman label. Gazebo was actually the stage name of Paul Mazzolini, a Beirut-native. His follow-up single, “I Like Chopin,” brought Gazebo’s and Baby Record’s sounds as far as the United States and Japan. Gazebo also penned the lyrics of Dolce Vita, to be performed by Fabio “Ryan Paris” Roscioli. 

Baby Records also orchestrated the whole narrative arc of Den Harrow, a local talent who pretended he was from Boston, and who rose to fame with the single “Future Brain” and the album “Overpower.”

For mainstream audiences, Baby Records is best known for reviving the careers of singers of decades past. It’s thanks to Naggiar that the former quartet known as Ricchi e Poveri released “Sarà Perché Ti Amo.” Despite only placing third at the 1981 Sanremo music festival, it became a continent-wide success, and it was the most successful single of the year in Italy and France. Songs like “Made in Italy,” “Mamma Maria,” and “Voulez-vous Danser” rode the coattails of “Sarà Perché Ti Amo” and were commercial successes.

Naggiar also brought back the career of Italian crooner Al Bano, telling him to join forces with his wife Romina Power on a more consistent basis. The first experiment in that direction was the new age-y “Sharazan” in 1981. The following year, “Felicità,” presented at Sanremo, became as iconic and representative of an era as “Sarà Perché Ti Amo.” Power recorded “Il ballo del qua qua,” (The Chicken Dance) as a foray into kids’ music. Eventually, Al Bano and Romina won Sanremo in 1984 with “Ci Sarà.” 

Naggiar was aware that anything ‘different’ would get attention from music consumers; indeed he also had an eye for classical crossover. In the 1970s and 80s, Renaissance-inspired music was quite popular in Italy, thanks, mostly, to singer-songwriters like Angelo Branduardi, who accompanied each song with his violin. 

Thus, Naggiar and composer Gian Piero Reverberi put together a classical-crossover ensemble, who was usually made to perform in full Rococo regalia. Enter Rondò Veneziano and their pop-operatic earworms. Their eponymous single was chosen by Silvio Berlusconi himself as the opening theme of his then-nascent TV network in 1980. Their follow up La Serenissima, whose single “Colombina” became the theme of the 1981 Sanremo music festival. As for the actual track titled “La Serenissima,” it became the opening theme of BBC’s Hospital Watch. Their subsequent album Scaramucce is, by all means, a concept album, combining Venetian ballroom dances with elements of electronica. To this day, Rondò Veneziano remains a cult ensemble, with an enduring legacy around the world.

Baby Record’s mixed compilations—the Mixage and Bimbomix series— were a gateway to all the aforementioned genres.  “It is also worth mentioning that the target audience  was hugely varied, and the eclecticism of the mix is also part of a ‘something for every one’ mainstreaming logic, able to capture all tastes and also, crucially, all age groups,” writes Flora Pitrolo in Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s. “Freddy Naggiar’s Baby Records explicitly aimed its Mixage and Bimbo Mix compilation series to teenagers and even children, broad- casting adverts for them in children’s TV programmes via the cartoon character Cin Ciao Lin known as ‘il cinesino’”.

Mixage and Bimbo Mix Compilations from the 1980s

Despite the great number of mainstream acts and hits, Baby Records also dedicated  a small space to more experimental productions  that, though passed completely unnoticed at the time, are today some of the most sought after records by collectors. These include “Disco Shitan” by composer and producer Pino Presti, “Bahamas” by  Kangaroo (recruiting  German engineer Harald Thumman) and “Arabian Dance” by Antares.  

At the dawn of the 1990s, however, Baby Records started losing steam. Ricchi e Poveri and Al Bano and Romina jumped ships, and the Italo Disco acts started getting old. By 1990, Naggiar gave his catalog to BMG Records, and while it rebranded into Baby Disco International in 1994, it mainly did so to capitalize on the revival of 1980s sounds around the new Millennium.

Despite its short-lived lifespan, however, it defined the sound of an entire decade and paved the way for global cultural phenomena: through Bimbomix, it played a leading role in creating that 1990s Europop sound that has that distinctive cross-generational appeal. Through reviving Al Bano and Ricchi e Poveri, it exported a very romanticized and nostalgic view of Italy worldwide. Through the Italo Disco Acts, it went on to influence artists like Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys.