Aldo Rossi was born in Milan in 1911. He came up as a reed player inside the same small circle of Milanese hot-jazz musicians that produced Gorni Kramer, Italy's most important interwar jazz bandleader: Rossi performed and recorded with Kramer's orchestra from the middle of the 1930s, and also worked in smaller combos led by pianist Enzo Ceragioli and guitarist Cosimo Di Ceglie.

The most historically resonant surviving credit from that period is 1936's "Crapa Pelada," composed by Kramer with lyricist Tata Giacobetti. The original recording, billed to the Orchestra Circolo dell'Ambasciata di Milano with Kramer on accordion and vocal, credits Rossi on alto saxophone and clarinet alongside bassist Ubaldo Beduschi, drummer Giuseppe "Pinun" Ruggeri, guitarist Luciano Zuccheri, and others. Structured as a Milanese-dialect novelty song, it borrows a riff from Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" for its chorus response. The tune outlived every musician on the session: the Quartetto Cetra recorded a still more famous version in 1945, and it has been covered since by artists from Alberto Rabagliati and Mina to Franco Cerri, Raffaella Carrà, and Antonella Ruggiero.

In the mid-1940s, Rossi and Kramer co-led a larger ensemble, the Orchestra del Momento, cutting sides for the Fonit label. Discogs' own record of the group's lineup names a teenage Giorgio Gaslini among its members, alongside saxophonist Eraldo Volonté and arranger Roberto Nicolosi — an early stop for Gaslini several years before his own first recordings as a leader. Four Fonit 78s from the orchestra are documented: "My Guy's Come Back" / "It's Down Again" (1947), the only side billed under Rossi's own name as leader, plus three sides backing singer Natalino Otto: "Amado Mio" / "Non V'innamorate" (1947), "O Mama Mama" / "Topeka - Santa Fè" (1948), and "I Pompieri Di Viggiù" / "Prego..." (1948).

A later Fonit side from the same Otto/Kramer orbit, "Harlem Notturno" (1948), documents a direct studio pairing with another musician now profiled on this site: guitarist-turned-bassist Franco Cerri, who had joined Kramer's own group in 1945, plays bass on the track while Rossi plays saxophone behind Otto's vocal, per the credits on Fonit Cetra's 1997 reissue compilation Made in Italy - Volume 2. Rossi's other lasting documentation comes from historian Adriano Mazzoletti, who included him in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2nd edition, ed. Barry Kernfeld) — the sole citation behind his English Wikipedia entry — and who curated the 1963 Ricordi anthology 40 Anni Di Jazz In Italia, which reissued three further tracks featuring Rossi's reed playing from the 1930s: "S.O.S.," "Crapa Pelada," and "China Boy." He died in 1979.

Rossi worked squarely inside Italy's interwar hot-jazz and swing dance-band tradition, the same Gorni Kramer-centered scene that fused American swing repertoire and playing style with Italian popular song and novelty lyrics — "Crapa Pelada" itself is the clearest surviving example, an Ellington riff repurposed for a Milanese-dialect nursery rhyme. As a reedist he functioned as a section and combo player within that circle rather than as a documented solo voice: no surviving feature or solo recording under his own name has been identified, and his one 78 as a billed leader (1947's "My Guy's Come Back") fronts an orchestra rather than showcasing his own horn. His more durable legacy runs through the Orchestra del Momento's personnel roster, which gave a teenage Giorgio Gaslini an early bandstand years before Gaslini's own recording career began.