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Painesville, Ohio
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Pop
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1 MaleOrigin
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Born
1947
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1968 to Present...
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Joe Dolce
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Joseph Dolce (born October 13, 1947) is an American-Australian singer/songwriter, poet and essayist who achieved international recognition with his multi-million-selling song, "Shaddap You Face", released under the name of his one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, worldwide, in 1980–1981.
The single reached number one in 15 countries, it has sold more than 450,000 copies in Australia, and has remained the most successful Australian-produced single since, selling an estimated six million copies worldwide. It reached No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980.
Dolce was born in 1947, the eldest of three children, to Italian-American parents, in Painesville, Ohio, graduating from Thomas W. Harvey High School in 1965. During his senior year, he played the lead role of Mascarille in Molière's "Les Précieuses Ridicules" for a production staged by the French Club of Lake Erie College, which was his first time on stage, acting and singing an impromptu song he created from the script. The play was well received and his performance was noted by director Jake Rufli, who later invited him to be part of his production of Jean Anouilh's "Eurydice".
His co-star in "Les Précieuses Ridicules" was a sophomore, on a creative writing scholarship, at Lake Erie College, Carol Dunlop, who introduced him to folk music, poetry and the writings of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Dunlop later married the Argentine novelist Julio Cortazar. Dolce attended Ohio University, majoring in Architecture, from 1965–67, before deciding to become a professional musician.
While attending college at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, he formed various bands including Headstone Circus, with Jonathan Edwards who subsequently went on as a solo artist to have a charting hit song in the US ("Sunshine"). Edwards subsequently recorded five Dolce songs including, "Athens County", "Rollin' Along", "King of Hearts", "The Ballad of Upsy Daisy" and "My Home Ain't in the Hall of Fame", the latter song becoming an alt country classic, also recorded by Robert Earl Keen, Rosalie Sorrels, JD Crowe & the New South, and many others.
Dolce relocated to Melbourne, Australia in 1978 and his first single there was "Boat People"—a protest song on the poor treatment of Vietnamese refugees—which was translated into Vietnamese and donated to the fledgling Vietnamese community starting to form in Melbourne. His one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, performed in cabarets and pubs with various line-ups, including his longtime partner, Lin Van Hek.
In July 1980, he recorded the self-penned "Shaddap You Face", for the Full Moon Records label, at Mike Brady's new studios in West Melbourne. When in Ohio, Dolce would sometimes visit his Italian grandparents and extended family—they used the phrases "What's the matter, you?" and "Eh, shaddap", which Dolce adapted and used in the song. He wrote the song about Italians living in Australia and first performed it at Marijuana House, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy in 1979. Dolce paid A$500 for the recording and spent $1000 on the music video clip, which was created by Melbourne filmmaker, Chris Lofven.
It became a multi-million-selling hit, peaking at No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980, in the UK from February 1981 for three weeks, and also No. 1 in Germany, France, Fiji, Canada, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland. Dolce received the Advance Australia Award in 1981. The song has had hundreds of cover versions over the decades including releases by artists as diverse as Lou Monte, Sheila (France), Andrew Sachs (Manuel, of Fawlty Towers), actor Samuel L. Jackson and hip-hop legends, KRS-One. In 2018, the first Russian language version was released by two of Moscow's most popular singers, Kristina Orbakaite and Philipp Kirkorov. The song has been translated into fifteen languages, including an aboriginal dialect.
Follow up single, "If You Want to Be Happy" charted in Australia (No. 7) and New Zealand (top 40). Dolce's subsequent singles included "Pizza Pizza", "Christmas in Australia" and "You Toucha My Car I Breaka You Face" and he released two albums during this period, Shaddap You Face and The Christmas Album. With Lin Van Hek, he formed various performance groups including Skin the Wig, La Somnambule (1984) and the ongoing Difficult Women (1993). Van Hek and Dolce co-wrote "Intimacy", for the 1984 film, The Terminator's soundtrack, now part of the US Library of Congress collection. He was a featured lead actor in the Australian film Blowing Hot and Cold (1988). He has continued to perform solo and with Van Hek as part of their music-literary cabaret Difficult Women. In the past decade, he has also received extensive recognition as a poet and essayist.
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