Freestyle Roots: Jacques Fred Petrus & Mauro Malavasi

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Music Roots

Jacques Fred Petrus & Mauro Malavasi

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Jacques Fred Petrus (1949-1986) was a native of Guadeloupe, French West Indies. During his teens he was a fanatical collector of R&B records, a musical passion that would determine the course of his life and professional career. After he finished technical school, Petrus worked as a diesel-engine mechanic on a cargo ship for a few years until he decided to move to Paris in the late sixties where he became a DJ. One of his first significant gigs was at the legendary jet set club François Patrice St.-Hilaire, a chic place situated in Rue de Rennes, frequented by the rich and famous of that time like Aristoteles Onassis. His next stop in the Paris nightlife was the White Chapel club at Place Mabillon. During summertime he performed as a DJ in Sicily (Italy) or in Spain, at discotheques like Tiffany’s in Marbella. In the early seventies he settled in Italy together with his brother Alex Petrus, one of the few confidants in his life. There he handled the turntables at the Staco Matto club in Rome and later played music at the Good Mood in Milan. The prosperous city of Milan with its sophisticated fashion appeal and exuberant nightlife was the ideal place for Petrus to settle down and spread his wings. Eventually he began to import Disco music from the U.S. because he quickly understood how to respond to the Milanese DJ's demand. In the early days he used to order a couple of boxes of vinyl every week because the demand was limited. He used to sell Disco maxi singles to other DJ's, who were working at clubs like the Nepentha and the Charly Max. Gradually some customers of the clubs became very interested in the music he was playing and bought records too. In Milan in 1974 he started up the specialised import shop Goody Music, which, besides Carù in Milan and Ronchini in Parma, was the only importer of Disco music in Italy and the business went well. It seems that Petrus also created his very first record label Master Music around that time. When private radio stations were legalized in Italy in 1975, Goody Music sponsored a radio program on the first private station: Radio Milano International, which is called 101 Network today. Soon every private station was hosting a Disco show and Disco music became really huge by 1976. It appears that Petrus was even one of the first radio DJ's of Radio Milano International but he was fired after a dispute with the head of the radio station. The success of Goody Music allowed Petrus to open several more Disco import record shops in Italy. About 1978 Petrus invested in a 24-track recording console in Bologna and began producing music himself with partner Mauro Malavasi. They already met in 1975 while attending the Music Conservatory of Bologna. The story goes that Petrus helped his friend graduate at the Conservartorio di musica di Bologna through some financial backing. The two associates extended Goody Music into a production company and record label with the aim of becoming the Italian Gamble and Huff. The very first (4 track) album that Petrus published was a co-production with the French artist and arranger Elvin Shaad in 1978: Live For Love. Goody Music Production was based in Milan, Via Friuli 51, Milan C.P. 20135 and later Via Pietro Mascagni, 15, Milan C.P. 20122. Little Macho Music was the name of their publishing company in New York. The small office of Little Macho Music was situated on 1775 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, New York 10019. Before long Little Macho Music entirely took over Goody Music as Jacques Fred Petrus mainly operated from his head office in New York towards 1981. His concentration on lucrative deals with major American record companies combined with financial problems caused the final closing of the Italian Goody Music Records label and its sister label Memory Records in 1982. During six years executive producer Petrus and fellow producer Malavasi would represent the perfect symbiosis between project manager and sound architect until the power duo split up in 1983 due to severe economical troubles and an unbearable professional relationship between the two partners.

Jacques Fred Petrus (picture), the bright and ambitious French-Italian entrepreneur, mainly concentrated on the business aspects of the company such as masterminding and financing the numerous Discoprojects and shopping around for gainful record deals. Jacques Fred Petrus, who was usually called Fred Petrus or just "Freddie" by his friends, was not a musician but he had an excellent musical taste and he definitely had an input into the musical direction and the overall vibe. His DJ experience connected him with the pulse of the Disco scene. Jacques Fred Petrus had a flawless nose for scouting and enlisting promising American vocalists, first class Italian musicians and American songwriters. He relied heavily on hired studio help to create his music. In Italy Petrus recruited the top musicians Celso Valli, Marco Tansini, Paolo Gianolio, Rudy Trevisi and foremostly Davide Romani for their composing and arranging skills. Petrus understood the importance and the talent of those young eclectic musicians. Therefore he decided to engage them exclusively, paying them a monthly salary. Together they formed the Goody Music Orchestra and became key figures of Goody Music Production. Many of the Goody Music productions were accompanied by The Goody Music String Ensemble led by William Righi (first string). Once the music was recorded in Italian studios in Bologna and Modena, the tapes were taken to New York where the vocal parts were added. Petrus enrolled talented but relatively unknown black session singers to assemble his studio aggregations Macho, Revanche, Change, High Fashion, Zinc, the B.B.&Q. Band and the Peter Jacques Band. In New York the mixing and post production took place too. The Goody Music label also released music from groups and singers that were not produced by the Goody Music Production staff. Such acts were: Theo Vaness, Caprice, NH3 Band, Geraldine Hunt, Pacific Blue, The Royal Rasses, Sheila Hylton, Blood Sisters, Ras Midas, Elvin Shaad, Jo Lemaire & Flouze, Carlo Lena and Random. Several of these releases were exclusively licensed from other labels for the Italian market.
It's striking that Jacques Fred Petrus appropriated the producer credits of most of the Goody Music Production/Little Macho Music realisations while in fact he merely acted as an executive producer and certainly not as a musician. The creative musician Davide Romani on the other hand deserved producer credits but never received any. By 1982 Petrus' realm started crumbling off due to an economical malaise within his company and shifting trends in the music industry. He had become quite a controversial if not corrupt business figure. It is known that in this period Jacques Fred Petrus didn’t treat his personnel very nicely. Many people who worked for him just didn't get paid out decently or received no payment at all. Petrus had signed very lucrative contracts with many major record labels and this had made him a very rich man. But all this wealth made him lose the contact with reality, and in a short time his manias of greatness brought him to sink slowly and always deeper in economic problems. Petrus was only thinking about accumulating money for himself without recognizing the merits of his musician's work. This situation resulted in an enivitable creative crisis of his production team that consequently began to dissolve. In 1984 Petrus' association with his Italian partners was over. A frustrated Paolo Gianolio already left the Little Macho Music production team in 1982. Malavasi, Romani and Trevisi, who also got tired of their relationship with Petrus and the economic turmoil, left Little Macho Music as soon as the running projects were rounded off in early 1983. Jacques Fred Petrus carried on alone with variable success until 1985. But for Malavasi this was just the end of the first chapter of an impressive musical career in Italy.

Mauro Malavasi (°1958) (picture) was the musical genius who created the sensational Disco sound together with the staff musicians at Goody Music Production/Little Macho Music. Malavasi was an accomplished piano player. The credits on the albumsleeves also reveal that he was omnipresent as a keyboard and synth wizard during recording sessions, not to mention the musician’s essential role as a composer, arranger and conductor. He also mastered several wind instruments like trumpet and used to play in a jazz band. Mauro Malavasi graduated from the Conservatory of Bologna in orchestra/choir direction and composition. This classical background seemed no obstacle for a career as a disco producer. Mauro's incredible gift for classical orchestration brought about a brilliant concept for dance music. From a production standpoint, he was very attuned to the dance music sounds coming out of the U.S., particularly impressed with the Chic sound, the Salsoul sound and the Philly Sound, which were sophisticated, richly orchestrated, greatly structured and funky as hell. Marzio Vincenti, alias Marsius who would become lead vocalist of the first Macho project, convinced his very young friend Malavasi to produce his first record Save The Tiger, published on the Munich (Germany) label Saar in 1977. This first trial was anything but a commercial success. It all changed after Malavasi and Petrus joined forces for the Macho-project in 1978. The legendary U.S. disco label Prelude obtained the rights of Macho's I'm A Man record and immediately it hit the American disco charts. This first victory became the starting shot of a tremendous musical adventure that would bring wealth, glory and successes…