Michael John "Jimmy" Roselli (December 26, 1925 – June 30, 2011)[1][2] was an American pop singer and pianist.
His mother died two days after he was born and his father abandoned him, leaving him in the care of his aunts and his widowed grandfather, Michael Roselli, who spoke no English.
He received his first break in 1954 when Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola arranged for him to appear with Jimmy Durante at the Boston Latin Quarter.
[5] At the beginning of his career, with appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, with Jimmy Durante, and at the Copacabana, critics were calling him a "miracle".
[7] In 1970, Roselli refused Joseph Colombo's offer to sing at a concert that supported the Mob-controlled Italian-American Civil Rights League.
At times, he was relegated to selling his music out of the trunk of his car parked in Little Italy in Manhattan (he was the founder and owner of M&R Records).
Jimmy Roselli is a favorite among Italian-Americans and his signature tune "Mala Femmina" is featured twice in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.
A book in the late 1990s entitled Making The Wiseguys Weep: The Jimmy Roselli Story was published by David Evanier.
Joseph Pistone mentioned an incident he witnessed regarding Roselli during the Feast of San Gennaro in the former FBI agent's book, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia.