Rino Zurzolo, born Gennaro Zurzolo in Naples on June 14, 1958, was the second of four children in a musical household. His brother Marco Zurzolo became a saxophonist and his youngest sister, Francesca, a singer. His father gave him a double bass and pushed him toward academic study, and he enrolled at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella. A performance of Stravinsky's The Firebird at the Teatro San Carlo sent him into the harmonies of Gesualdo's madrigals, the melodies of Pergolesi and Bach's counterpoint, played on the bass, before his interest turned toward jazz and fusion. He graduated with top marks and also passed the entrance exams for Milan's Teatro alla Scala.

At thirteen he was recruited into Batracomiomachia, a newly formed group of Neapolitan teenagers that included Pino Daniele, Enzo Avitabile, Rosario Jermano and Paolo Raffone. The band put him in contact with a city scene that also held Edoardo Bennato, the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, Osanna and Napoli Centrale. In 1974 he joined the progressive group Città Frontale, and Discogs credits him on bass on its 1975 album El Tor. In 1977 he was called into the lineup that made Pino Daniele's first solo album, Terra mia, where he is credited on both electric bass and acoustic double bass.

He stayed with Daniele through the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. Discogs credits him on Pino Daniele (1979) and on Vai mò (1981), which it tags as jazz, rock and blues, with the double bass on some tracks and electric bass on others; Italian Wikipedia lists Tony Esposito, Tullio De Piscopo and Joe Amoruso beside him on that record, and James Senese on the 1979 album. On September 19, 1981 the same group played Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples before a crowd that press accounts put near 200,000. He is credited on Musicante (1984) and on Ferryboat (1985, Sciò Records), where he also holds a studio production credit. Italian Wikipedia places Alphonso Johnson, Naná Vasconcelos and Mel Collins on Musicante, and Steve Gadd, Mino Cinelu and Gato Barbieri on Ferryboat. After a gap he returned for Medina (2001) and its live tour album, then for the 2008 reunion record Ricomincio da 30.

Away from Daniele's band he built a second career that the encyclopedia entries describe as jazz and classical. After the conservatory diploma he took advanced courses with the bassist Franco Petracchi from 1981 to 1983, played classical bass in the Alessandro Scarlatti orchestra of RAI Naples, and appeared in Roberto De Simone's theatre productions. In 1984 he founded Rino Zurzolo Jazz da camera, an ensemble that put jazz and chamber music side by side. His jazz sideman credits are real and specific: in 1981 he played bass on a version of "I Remember Clifford" by the Alfredo Golino Quartet for Il Jazz in Italia III, a Fabbri Editori anthology of Italian jazz that also carries Enrico Rava's septet and Massimo Urbani's quartet. From 1991 he is credited on the jazz-rock and soul-jazz records of the saxophonist James Senese and his group Napoli Centrale, including Hey James (1991), Jesceallàh (1992), Sabato Santo (2000) and Zitte! Sta Arrivanne 'O Mammone (2001), and he appears as a special guest on the 2007 album Pajsà. He also played on Joe Amoruso's Rosa del Mare di Mezzo (1992), Riccardo Zappa's Prenditi Tempo... (1986) and the guitarist Antonio Onorato's Volo d'Angelo (1995), where Discogs lists a double bass solo. Biographies of Zurzolo name Chet Baker, Don Cherry, Billy Cobham, Toots Thielemans, Trilok Gurtu and Bob Berg among the jazz musicians he played or recorded with, without dating those meetings.

His own records arrived in 1990, the year the magazine Guitar Club named him the best double bassist in Italy in a readers' poll. Fuorlovado (1990, DDD) paired his basses with Pino Jodice's accordion, Marco Zurzolo's saxophone and the flutes of Valentina Crimaldi, who is also his wife. Rua Catalana followed in 1994 (DDD, reissued on CD by Ricordi in 1999), Alchimusa in 1998 with South American coloring, and in 1999 Poemaverno, a set of songs with music by Zurzolo and words by the poet Carmine Lubrano. Wunderkammer (2003, Rai Trade and Suonidelsud) gathered his work between chamber music and jazz, and in 2003 he was a special guest on Tribu' e Passione, a Rai Trade album by Enzo Gragnaniello and James Senese. Live in Concert (Suonidelsud, 2014) documents a June 30, 2012 performance at Castel Sant'Elmo in Naples and came as a CD with a DVD. A last collection of his own pieces, E' la mia musica, appeared in 2017. He taught double bass from 1981, most recently at the Nicola Sala Conservatory in Benevento, and wrote a method for the instrument, Tecnica a Dita Sciolte (1996).

Zurzolo passed away in Naples shortly after midnight on April 30, 2017, from an illness that had been diagnosed only a few months before. He was 58. Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris called him the city's greatest double bassist. In September 2019 the Pomigliano Jazz Festival held a concert in his memory with the Orchestra Napoletana di Jazz under Mario Raja, with his brother Marco, his sister Francesca and his wife Valentina Crimaldi among the guests, together with Gavino Murgia, Antonio Onorato and Mino Cinelu.

Zurzolo was a conservatory-trained bassist whose public identity came from the Neapolitan pop and blues scene around Pino Daniele, while his own albums point somewhere else. Discogs files his leader releases under Jazz, Fusion and Folk, World and Country, and Italian Wikipedia gives his genres as jazz, fusion and classical. Both halves of that training show in his working life: a classical orchestra seat at RAI Naples, a chamber-jazz ensemble of his own, and a bass method for conservatory students.

On record he moves between instruments as the music requires. The credits on the Daniele albums switch from track to track between electric bass and double bass, and the Senese records of the 1990s and 2000s credit him on both, inside a jazz-rock and soul-jazz sound. According to Italian Wikipedia, Alchimusa carries South American color and Wunderkammer joins chamber music to jazz, and Discogs tags the 2014 live album as fusion.

His jazz work was real and lasted decades, but it sat beside a larger career in Italian popular music, where he was a studio bassist for Giorgio Gaber, Mia Martini, Giorgia, Nino Buonocore and Roberto Murolo. Most of the credits that survive are in that pop and Neapolitan-song world.