Giulio Camarca was a guitarist born in Turin on 6 April 1941 who spent his whole career in the city and died there on 3 January 2021, aged 79. Over five decades he played beat music, progressive rock, Brazilian music, blues and swing, but the jazz label is the one that stuck: the Jazz School Torino called him one of the pioneers of jazz guitar in Italy in its farewell notice, and Wikidata describes him as an Italian jazz guitarist.

He started on violin as a child, moved to trombone (which he studied at Turin's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory) and learned classical guitar privately. In the 1960s he played in orchestras and beat groups, and toward the end of the decade he turned to jazz. His earliest credit on Discogs is not a jazz record at all: classical guitar on Vecchie Canzoni Del Piemonte (Cetra, 1969), an album of Piedmontese folk songs by the vocal trio I Cantastorie.

In 1975 he formed Gialma 3 with the bassist Aldo Sperti and the Brazilian drummer Mauricio Chiappeta. The trio's debut, Rain's Dream (Drums Edizioni Musicali, 1976), is filed on Discogs as Jazz with the style Jazz-Rock, while Italian Wikipedia and the Bandcamp reissue call the group progressive rock; it also came out in Japan. Its eight tracks include "The Little Florists Of Po Street", "Pavane Pour Une Fleur Morte", "Baubles Bangles And Beads", "Brushes Samba" and "Blues Samba". Camarca left the group after that record, and Discogs does not credit him on its later albums of 1979 and 1982.

His next move was to Brazilian music. Samba Do Amigo (Shirak, 1978), credited to Giulio Camarca & Trinidad, is a bossa nova and Latin jazz LP whose two-part "Trans Amazonica" suite shares its name with his 1993 album; a Chicago dealer describes it as a rare Italian bossa record with added rhythm guitar and wordless vocals from the women of the quartet. It was reissued in the mid-1980s on American Records and again in 2006 on Dejavu, and its tracks "Birimbao" and "Manha" have since turned up on compilations. In 1983 he recorded Been There Before (Shirak) in Turin with the American blues guitarist "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks, an album of country blues with Ricks on vocals and guitar and Camarca on electric guitar; the tracklist includes "Po River Blues" and "V. Nizza 352", named after a Turin street. Italian Wikipedia adds that he also opened a musical-instrument shop in Turin. That shop, Tuttomusica in the Lingotto district, specialized in jazz and vintage instruments and was a meeting point for young and older musicians alike; he also organized the International Vintage Guitar Show, a fair for collectible guitars, and wrote instruction manuals for rock and jazz guitar.

The most straightforwardly jazz record under his name is Honeysuckle Rose (Drums Edizioni Musicali, 1989), a duo album with Bob Romanini. Discogs files it under Jazz, style Swing. Its side A is a run of standards: "Honeysuckle Rose", "Sweet Sue", "Nuages", "All Of Me", "Avalon", "I'm Confessin'", "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Sheik Of Araby"; side B turns to Neapolitan and Spanish popular songs, among them "Funiculi Funicula", "El Relicario" and "Recuerdos De La Alhambra". Discogs does not itemize Romanini's instrument or any other personnel. The following year Discogs credits him with classical and electric guitar on Isola Del Tonal (Drums Edizioni Musicali, 1990), issued under the name Gialma, an album of Brazilian music dedicated to a friend and admirer of the genre, with his son Massimo Camarca on electric bass.

In 1993 he made Transamazzonica (Blue Bird) with the drummer Furio Chirico, known for Arti e Mestieri, as the Chirico Camarca Project. Camarca is credited on guitar and as producer, with Massimo Camarca on bass, Beppe Crovella on organ (also producer, recording and mixing), Diego Borotti on tenor saxophone and Laura Ghirardi on vocals. Discogs files it as Jazz with the styles Latin Jazz and Contemporary Jazz, and its fourteen tracks include "Tribop", "Fucsia Splendida", "Love For Sale" and "Blue Bossa". According to Italian Wikipedia the project toured England and the United States. He appears again on Chirico's solo album Furiosamente (Electromantic Music, 2001), on electric guitar with Massimo Camarca on bass. In 1993 he also played guitar on one track, "Bad News", of the drummer Gianpaolo Petrini's Professione Batterista (High Tide), alongside Borotti on tenor saxophone.

Italian Wikipedia says that through the 1990s he often played as a quartet with his son Massimo on bass, Petrini on drums and Fulvio Chiara on trumpet, or with the singer Lucia Di Donato, and that he had a successful run at Ronnie Scott's Club in London with the trumpeter Dick Pearce and the pianist John Donaldson. It also lists a 1998 album, Double Image (Jazz Mobile Records), made with the saxophonist Alfredo Ponissi. Biographies say that he played, among others, with the Neapolitan drummer Tullio De Piscopo, the guitarist Franco Cerri and Chet Baker; none of these appears in a Discogs credit alongside him, and the sources give no dates or recording titles.

In his last years he led a trio with his son Massimo and the drummer Giorgio Diaferia, and played the Due Laghi Jazz Festival in 2015. Diaferia, who recorded a CD with father and son marking Camarca's sixty years as a musician, remembered him after his death as a player who "looked for swing" above technique and who idolized Wes Montgomery. He died at the Molinette hospital in Turin after a head-on car crash that left him in intensive care and needing repeated surgery, survived by his wife Rina and their sons Stefano and Massimo. The association In Tempo opened a fundraiser for the family, and in January 2025 the association House of Jazz Torino Piemonte staged a memorial evening at the Capolinea dell'8 club in Turin with his sons Massimo and Stefano, the guitarists Max Gallo and Max Carletti, the keyboardist Massimo Artiglia and the drummers Petrini and Diaferia.

Camarca's own recordings cover swing standards, Brazilian bossa nova and samba, Latin-tinged contemporary jazz and country blues, played on both classical and electric guitar. Discogs assigns the Jazz genre to all six releases on which he is credited as leader or co-leader (Samba Do Amigo, Been There Before, Honeysuckle Rose, Rain's Dream, Isola Del Tonal and Transamazzonica). His progressive-rock group Gialma 3 and his early folk and pop session work sit beside that jazz core rather than replacing it.

The one named influence comes from a friend's tribute: Diaferia wrote that Wes Montgomery was Camarca's great idol, and that Camarca cared about swing more than dazzling technique. His Brazilian phase, from Samba Do Amigo in 1978 to Isola Del Tonal in 1990, ran alongside his swing and standards work, and the two strands meet on Transamazzonica, which pairs original Latin pieces with "Love For Sale" and "Blue Bossa".