Vannelli was born to an
Italian family in
Montreal, Quebec. His father, (Joseph) Russ Vannelli, sang with the Montreal dance bands of trumpeters Bix Belair and
Maynard Ferguson. His early ambition was to be a drummer. He admired
Gene Krupa and
Buddy Rich, and he played drums in a pop band while he was in high school. In 1969, at the age of seventeen, he signed a contract with
RCA Records, using the name Vann Elli. He studied music theory at
McGill University in Montreal. Buddy Rich later covered Vannelli's songs "Storm At Sunup" and "Love Me Now" on his album
Speak No Evil. Vannelli and his brother,
Joe, moved to
Los Angeles in 1972. Desperate and broke, they waited for hours in the parking lot outside
A&M Studios, hoping to get a record deal. When
Herb Alpert, the co-owner of
A&M Records, finally emerged, Vannelli ran toward him and gave him a demo tape while being chased by security guards. Alpert signed Vannelli and released his debut album,
Crazy Life, in the summer of 1973. Vannelli was one of the first white artists (
Dennis Coffey being the very first in January 1972) to appear on the television dance program
Soul Train. In 1974, he was invited to tour with
Stevie Wonder. That same year, he released his second album,
Powerful People, which contained his first major hit, “
People Gotta Move”. , De Vorstin, 10 October 2018 Vannelli released an album,
The Gist of the Gemini, in 1976 through A&M Records. His 1978 album
Brother to Brother, also with A&M, produced the single "
I Just Wanna Stop", which reached No. 4 on the
Billboard magazine chart, No. 1 in Canada, and received a Grammy Award nomination. In 2008, Vannelli became a symbol of sorts for the
National Basketball Association championship run by the
Boston Celtics. After each blowout home victory during the 2008 season, the video crew at the
TD Banknorth Garden played a clip from Dick Clark's
American Bandstand that featured a bearded disco dancer clad in a tight Gino Vannelli T-shirt. The tradition became known in Boston as "Gino Time" and Gino T-shirts became common at Celtics games. The
Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that the dancer in the Gino shirt was a young man named Joseph R. Massoni, and that he had died of pneumonia in 1990. He was 34 years old. "People Gotta Move" became a small hit again in the Netherlands in 2008 after this song was used in a commercial on TV and radio of the
ANWB (Dutch road assistance). On May 13, 2014, Vannelli's
Live in L.A. CD/DVD compilation was released by the Sono Recording Group. The presentation was recorded live onstage at the historic
Saban Theater in Los Angeles on November 8, 2013, which represented Vannelli's first performance in Los Angeles in more than 15 years. The recording also marks the first on-stage collaboration in many years between the three Vannelli brothers (including Ross Vannelli as producer, editor, and mixer). Vannelli resides in
Troutdale, Oregon, where he is active as a music teacher. He continues to perform throughout North America and Europe. ==Awards and honors==