Maurizio Majorana was a double bassist and electric bassist born in Bologna in 1938. He left formal music study around age fourteen but kept playing at home, moving from cello to double bass as he discovered jazz. In 1956 he was already working in a traditional-jazz setting with the Criminal Jazz Band, and by 1957 he had joined the trio of pianist Amedeo Tommasi, a group Discogs confirms him in as a formal member (alongside Tommasi and, at various points, Roberto Podio and Giovanni Tommaso). The Tommasi trio cut two singles for Cetra's "Jazz In Italy" series in 1960 - No. 10, with Belgian vibraphonist Jacques Peltzer, and No. 11, with the visiting American trumpeter Conte Candoli - and contributed the Sonny Rollins tune "Ecaroh" to RCA's compilation La Coppa Del Jazz the same year.

In 1959 Majorana also joined the Seconda Roman New Orleans Jazz Band, a dixieland group through which he met drummer Roberto Podio; the two would go on playing together for decades. The band recorded the LP Noi Le Suoniamo Così (RCA, 1961) with clarinetist and vocalist Gianni Sanjust, bassist and banjoist Carlo Loffredo, trumpeter Pino Saraceni and trombonist Peppino De Luca. His most substantial jazz recording as a sideman came in 1962, on a full hard-bop session credited to the Thomas-Jaspar Quintet: a quintet led by two touring Belgian jazz musicians, guitarist René Thomas and saxophonist/flautist Bobby Jaspar, with Tommasi again on piano. That same year Majorana played on Poeti Moderni Americani, a spoken-word session backing Italian readings of Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, alongside Podio, saxophonist Enzo Scoppa and trumpeter Cicci Santucci. In 1963 a track from the Tommasi trio, "Blues In Cantina," was selected for the historic two-LP anthology 40 Anni Di Jazz In Italia, curated by jazz historian Adriano Mazzoletti.

In 1964 Majorana was the credited bassist on one track of guitarist Franco Cerri's self-titled album, a session that also included drummer Gil Cuppini, saxophonist Gianni Basso, trumpeter Oscar Valdambrini and pianist Renato Sellani. Through the 1960s he was also the house bassist for RAI radio and television's jazz programming, including "Tempo Di Jazz" (hosted by Roberto Nicolosi and Mazzoletti) and "Chitarra Amore Mio" (with guitarists Cerri and Mario Gangi), a seat that put him behind touring names including Toots Thielemans, Mary Lou Williams and Thomas again; these broadcast dates are documented in his biography but, unlike his studio sessions, were not individually itemized on a commercial release. In 1965 he recorded on flautist and harpist Gino Marinacci's easy-listening session Arpa In Jazz.

Majorana held a staff position in RAI's Rome orchestra from 1963 to 1974, and by his own account his freestanding jazz work grew "increasingly sporadic" as that studio career took over. In the late 1960s he co-founded Marc 4 with three fellow RAI Orchestra colleagues - keyboardist Antonello Vannucchi, drummer Roberto Podio and guitarist Carlo Pes - a group whose name is an acronym of its four founders' first names. Marc 4 became composer Piero Umiliani's regular studio unit for library-music and film-score work through the 1970s, most famously backing his "Mah Nà Mah Nà" (1968, from Svezia, Inferno E Paradiso), the novelty theme that far outlived the film. This soundtrack and library-music work, not his jazz credits, accounts for the bulk of Majorana's nearly seventy-year discography: sessions for Umiliani's other Cinecittà scores, Armando Trovajoli's "I Solisti" series, and pop records for Mina, Fabrizio De André (Non Al Denaro Non All'Amore Né Al Cielo, 1971; De André has no profile on this site) and Lucio Dalla. In 1972 he also recorded with bandleader Enrico Simonetti's big band alongside trumpeter Michele Lacerenza and saxophonist Sal Genovese, a stint later documented on the Via Asiago 10 archival CD series and referenced in Gianni Oddi's own profile.

A genuine jazz thread nonetheless continued alongside the session work: in 1974 he played on Umiliani's own small-group tribute to Duke Ellington, reissued over the following decades under three different titles - Golden Memories "New Style" Duke Ellington (1974), as part of Giancarlo Testoni's historic Jazz A Confronto series (1977), and again as Ode To Duke Ellington (2000). Late in his career, archival RAI recordings featuring Majorana on bass alongside trumpeter Nunzio Rotondo were compiled and reissued as Sound And Silence (2005) and The Legend (2007), both catalogued by Discogs as straight jazz with no soundtrack or library crossover. Majorana eventually moved into production, acquiring Rome's Telecinesound recording studio. He died in Rome on November 22, 2023, at eighty-five.

Majorana's own playing sits almost entirely inside two jazz idioms formed early in his career: the dixieland/New Orleans-revival style of his time with the Roman New Orleans Jazz Band, and the hard bop he absorbed backing René Thomas and Bobby Jaspar and studying under Amedeo Tommasi. Those idioms never became his main professional identity, however. From the mid-1960s onward his working life was that of a Rome studio and orchestra bassist, moving fluidly between library music, film-soundtrack sessions and mainstream Italian pop - work that is genuinely his most prolific and most historically significant, through Marc 4's soundtrack catalog and its connection to "Mah Nà Mah Nà," but that belongs to library music and easy listening rather than jazz, and is not reflected in the Subgenres field above. His most purely jazz-identified late-period credit, the reissued Umiliani-led Ellington tribute and the Nunzio Rotondo archival releases, shows a bassist still capable of straight-ahead swing and cool-toned hard bop even after decades mostly spent elsewhere.