Mussolini's son dies

Romano Mussolini, a jazz musician and painter who was a son of Italy’s World War II dictator Benito Mussolini, has died, his daughter said today.

Mussolini, 78, who had been in hospital for more than two weeks with kidney and gall bladder problems, died this morning, according to the website of his daughter’s political party. The daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, leads a small right-wing political movement.

Mussolini, who was one of the dictator’s three sons and two daughters, was 17 when he last saw his father in April 1945, 11 days before the dictator was killed. He was the last living offspring of Il Duce.

Jazz music, like many other foreign cultural products, was censored in Italy during the harshest days of the fascist regime, but the ban didn’t reach the sheltered lives of Benito Mussolini’s family.

Romano developed a love for jazz and became one of Italy’s early connoisseurs of the new music, writing reviews in magazines and teaching himself to play the piano.

Benito Mussolini did not shun his son’s passion for jazz, but preferred classical music.

In recent interviews, Romano recalled with fondness the times when he played classical pieces with his father, who was an amateur violinist.

After the war, Mussolini shied away from his father’s tainted legacy and earned a living playing under assumed names with a band in the Naples area.

Success as one of Italy’s foremost jazz players came during the 1960s.

Using his own name in the Romano Mussolini All Stars band, his 1963 Jazz Allo Studio 7 record was acclaimed by critics and his international tours brought him in contact with such musicians as Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton.

“A personality that has contributed, in far away and difficult years, to spread and popularise in Italy the extraordinary artistic strength of jazz,” Rome mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.

Mussolini refrained from discussing his father’s legacy until 2004, when he published a book titled My Father Il Duce, in which he depicted him as a caring father who loved music and cried at the wedding of his beloved first-born daughter.

Mussolini leaves behind his wife, Carla Maria Puccini, and three daughters: Alessandra, Elisabetta and Rachele.

The first two are the daughters of his first wife, Anna Maria Scicolone – the sister of actress Sophia Loren.

A funeral service was scheduled for tomorrow in a Rome church.