Natalino Otto was born Natale Codognotto on December 24, 1912, in Cogoleto, a small town on the Ligurian coast west of Genoa. Italian Wikipedia says he was the second youngest of five children and that he started out as a tailor in Genoa while taking music lessons and playing drums in local groups. At sixteen he went to sea as the drummer on the liner Conte di Savoia, where he took his stage name and sang the choruses through a megaphone. English Wikipedia says the crossings, on routes between Europe and North America, were where he first got to know American jazz and swing. Italian Wikipedia adds that on a 1935 stay in New York he met Gene Krupa, who found him a booking with an Italian-American radio station, and befriended the violinist Joe Venuti, who urged him to move to America. He came home to Genoa on November 18, 1935, with records, sheet music and a microphone to replace the megaphone.

Back in Italy he sang and played drums with the dance orchestra of the violinist Franco Grassi, then with Armando Fragna in Rome and with the saxophonist Ettore Pierotti in Milan. In Turin he was the drummer in Pierotti's Orchestra di Swing at the Salone de La Stampa, in a lineup with Aldo Frazzi on piano, Amedeo D'Ambrosio on harmonica, Fausto Turchini on bass and Pierotti on saxophone and violin, and he made his first 78 rpm records for Columbia with the orchestra of the saxophonist Antonio Mulazzi. He met the pianist, accordionist and arranger Gorni Kramer in 1937, and their long partnership began in the summer of 1939 in Viareggio with a repertoire of jazz numbers. In January 1940, according to the Italian newspaper Avvenire, he signed with the Fonit label under his stage name.

The repertoire was the problem. Under the Fascist regime anything foreign was discouraged, so he translated titles and lyrics: "St. Louis Blues" became "Le tristezze di San Luigi" and "Mister Paganini" was sold as "Maestro Paganini." The state broadcaster EIAR kept his records off the air, and English Wikipedia says he became one of the few Italian singers of the period, perhaps the only one, to succeed on records alone. Italians danced to his swing numbers and called him the "Re del ritmo," the King of Rhythm. Italian Wikipedia says he and Kramer reached the radio in 1938 and were soon removed from it, toured abroad, and had their passports confiscated on their return. His daughter Silvia, interviewed by Avvenire, thinks the story of persecution is overstated and says the underlying obstacle was that American music was kept off state radio while Italy was at war with the United States. His records with Kramer's orchestra and soloists include the 1942 Fonit 78 "Polvere di stelle" with "Biri eiriei," the 1947 Fonit 78 of "Sweet and Lovely" and "As Time Goes By," and the 1948 Fonit 78 of "Harlem Notturno," whose 1997 reissue credits Franco Cerri on bass and Aldo Rossi on saxophone.

After the war the repertoire widened. His first great hit, "In cerca di te," dates from 1944, and "Mamma, voglio anch'io la fidanzata," "Ho un sassolino nella scarpa," "Op op trotta cavallino" and "La classe degli asini" followed. English Wikipedia says he recorded more than two thousand songs in all. He starred in Riccardo Freda's film Tutta la città canta in 1945, appeared in La casa senza tempo and Carosello del varietà, and entered the Sanremo Festival five times in the 1950s, finishing fourth in 1954 with "Notturno" and third in 1955 with "Canto nella valle." In 1950 he founded the publishing house Edizioni Bolero, which Italian Wikipedia says was the first to accept songs by Fred Buscaglione, a close friend. He married the singer Flo Sandon's on June 2, 1955, and their daughter Silvia was born in 1956. On the night of September 24, 1958, the couple heard a teenage singer with the Happy Boys at a dance hall in Cremona and offered her a trial recording session, and a month later the first single of Mina came out.

In 1960 he started the record company Telerecord, which Avvenire describes as jazz-oriented, and spent his last working years remaking his old songs with a small group called the Gentlemen. Italian Wikipedia names its players as Pupo De Luca on drums, Paolo Salonia or Giorgio Azzolini on bass, Cerri or Alberto Pizzigoni on guitar, Enrico Intra on piano, Giancarlo Barigozzi on flute and Glauco Masetti on saxophone. Fonit issued "Laura" and a new "Polvere di stelle" with the Gentlemen in 1960, and Telerecord issued the single "Tu, lei, lui" with them in 1961. He appeared with Flo Sandon's in television commercials in 1960 and, by his daughter's account, retired from performing in 1962 because he felt he had said what he had to say. He passed away in Milan on October 4, 1969, after a second heart attack a week after the first.

His songs lived on. Articolo 31 sampled the chorus of "Mamma, voglio anch'io la fidanzata" for their 1998 single "La fidanzata," the pianist Italo Salizzato recorded the tribute "A spasso con Natalino Otto" in 1983, and his daughter published the book and double CD Vendo ritmo in 2011. In 2024, on the 55th anniversary of his death, the Fidanza Jazz Combo released No Jazz: Omaggio a Natalino Otto, fifteen of his songs. Avvenire notes that Stefano Bollani is among later musicians who have named him as an influence.

Otto was first of all a popular singer, and that is stated here plainly: after the swing years of 1939 to 1945 most of his output was Italian pop, Sanremo songs, novelty numbers, Latin rhythms and television work, and his recorded catalogue is overwhelmingly 78s and 45s of light song. The jazz thread is real and documented. He was a working drummer before he was a singer, he learned his repertoire on transatlantic liners and in New York, and both English and Italian Wikipedia credit him with bringing swing to Italy; Italian Wikipedia calls him the father of Italian swing. Fonit pressed him singing American standards in Italian and in English, he recorded with Kramer's orchestra and soloists, and Discogs files several of his records under Jazz with the style Swing, among them the 1942 "Polvere di stelle" 78, the 1957 Fonit album I grandi successi di Natalino Otto and the 1961 Telerecord singles with the Gentlemen. Italian swing anthologies carry his sides beside Alberto Rabagliati, Fred Buscaglione, the Quartetto Cetra and the Trio Lescano. On the records he is a dance-band and radio vocalist singing swing songs with a light, rhythmic delivery and an occasional scat line such as the one in his debut "Biriei," not an improviser. Avvenire describes him as a crooner with a swing sense who loved jazz, and later swing-pop songwriters such as Sergio Caputo name the Italian swing of Otto's era among their models.