condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (lamination creasing)

Gatefold sleeve.

It is easy to laugh at Fausto Papetti and Italy did, for forty years, while buying his records by the million. The joke is the covers: a woman, some light, less fabric with each volume. The music is another matter. Papetti played alto, not tenor, with a breathy, almost lisping tone and a rhythm section (often the cream of the Milan studio scene) that could turn a Sanremo winner into something close to Stan Getz phoning it in from a beach.

The Raccolte were numbered like encyclopaedia volumes and functioned the same way: each one a year's worth of Italian and international hits, instrumental, played straight, pressed on Durium with the heavy card sleeves the label used until the end. The 18th is from the early seventies, the hits of that season under Papetti's alto. Kitsch, if you like, but kitsch with an embouchure.