December.
In December, Rita debuts in a children show “Buongiorno Marziani”(“Good morning Martians”) at Alfieri Theatre in Turin, imitating Al Jolson singing his most successful hit “Swanee”. This first step will be Rita’s turning point .
In fact since that moment her bigger desire is to become a big artist herself.
With huge steam she starts to study and work by learning lots of Italian and international songs.
She loves the American classic 40’s and 50’s tunes, written by Irving Berlin, Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Hammerstein. Very famous songs that she sings in garbled English, but sold with effrontery as genuine English , imitating and pretending to be a big star hidden in the bath-rooms for hours.
At the age of 11 she’s bound to leave the School starting to help the family just as her brothers do, Papa Pavone’s wage being very low and poor, not enough for six persons.
So she finds a job as ironer in a men’s shirt small factory Minidonna
and ,during bank holydays, she reaches some small villages in Piedmont’s country side, performing as a singer, driven on a Lambretta scooter by her father, who continues to support her musical adventures.
In order to get her High Junior Schools graduation, Rita attends some lessons in local Technical Commercial School, but her hours schedule in the shirt factory being to hard for a teenager –wake up at 5.00 a.m. and back at home at 9.00 p.m - didn’t give her any chance to go on with the school and forced her to give-up this project.
But every Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon she still successfully performed singing in some students parties, suburbia dancing clubs and sometimes as an orchestra singer, in night clubs or movie- theatres of Turin. Her repertoire is different now. Rita now adores the “ new” American music : rock and roll.
Her act now is full of music numbers and very popular hits sung by the hottest pop singers of the period: Bobby Darin, Frankie Avalon, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Paul Anka, Brenda Lee, Bobby Rydell, Pat Boone, Fabian and so many others.
The audience likes Rita very much and she knows it.
So she starts to become a little name among local musical agents, who, at the beginning, were kind of sceptical by looking at that small girl, but then, after listening to her, becoming her greatest supporters.
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