Tango 1954
Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah with Jesús Mela · 2020-10-28 · 3:35:42
On the surface 1954 looks like 1950-52, but Lavocah argues the wide base of tango is shrinking: small venues are closing, imported music and a rising folklore boom compete, and a law that forced 50% Argentine live music ended up employing cheap second-rate folklore acts. The top layer is intact, with Pugliese (new singers Miguel Montero and Jorge Maciel arrive in mid-year, Alberto Morán leaves) and Di Sarli (back at Victor after three years on Music Hall) as Stenvoll's two lighthouses. D'Arienzo repeats his late-1930s style, new tangos are scarce so bands recycle foreign songs, and a hint of kitsch and reverb creeps into the sound. Soloists with guitars (Rivero, Marino, Vargas, Chanel) and Japanese singer Ranko Fujisawa add variety, and guest Jesús Mela, son of Pugliese's presenter Luis Mela, recites his father's gloss live before a Pugliese record, as it was done at the milonga.
What this episode gave Tangopedia
Facts said in the episode, each now cited to the minute it is said.
By 1954 tango's wide base of small venues is shrinking, with places like Café Nacional on Corrientes (where Pugliese debuted in 1939) closing; the top layer of recording orchestras looks unchanged. The song Qué te pasa Buenos Aires, recorded in 1956, is about this.
A law required at least 50% Argentine music in live shows, but because bands cost more than cheap acts, it ended up giving work to second-rate folklore artists in cinemas' ad breaks. Foreign music was imported more and more after the war, and the folklore boom was starting.
Stenvoll sees Pugliese and Di Sarli as the two lighthouses of the year, though much of what else he found is not danceable.
In the 1950s small kitschy elements creep into tango, and reverb is added to master tapes, giving a glossier sound; the big crossover hit of 1954 was Hernando's Hideaway, from the musical The Pajama Game, with tango versions by De Ángelis and Rodríguez.
Vargas tried to quit D'Agostino and go solo in 1943 but failed and had to beg for his job back. A 1950s magazine interview quotes him as saying he was finally earning his own money working for himself.
Records played · 44
Transcript
Transcribed by machine from the audio, then punctuated; names may be misheard. Tap any line to hear it. The episode is in English, and so is its transcript.
Now playing
Bell Bottom BluesAlma Cogan · Alma Cogan · 1954Pop song from the warm-up, played for contrast before the programme began.
♪ Music · 0:37 ·
“Tango music is this huge pyramid, isn't it? And we listen to the very apex of this pyramid... But by 1954 this big, wide base of tango is disappearing.”
So Alma Cogan having the blues for a sailor. What a wonderful variety of music you've been playing for us in the warmup. Yeah, I was playing contrast. I was thinking that for me, 1954 is a bit of a year for contrasts.
And before I give the word to your oracle brain, Michael, I just wanted to retrace a little bit about our earlier Tango by Year programs, because we already did 1950, 51 and 52. And there were a lot of new bands in the early 50s, and we enjoyed those. And then in 52, we talked about it and I turned out to play mostly the big four because they ended up being the best, having the best songs. But in 54, I don't know if it's, I've just been more open-minded this week, last week, or if it's different, but it feels more variation.
Well, I'm very curious as ever about what you're going to play, because of course I have no idea. Yeah, yeah, we might have some new listeners who don't know this, that of course Michael knows the year, but he doesn't know what I'm playing. So what's there to say about 54 in general?
Well, I mean, tango-wise, I'm going to completely disagree with you now. Yeah, good. So in 50 and 51, there were all these new bands. So we might expect that 54 is kind of just like the same thing as 50, 51, 52. Yeah, why not? You know, we've just walked down the road a couple more years. And on the surface, yes, it's kind of like that. But when you dig a bit deeper, it's not.
What do I mean by that? I mean, tango music is this huge pyramid, isn't it? And we listen to the very apex of this pyramid, the bands that recorded and we listen to the very best recordings. And all of that is supported by this huge bass. They say in the 40s, at least 250, maybe 400 typical playing live music on a Saturday night for dancing. How about that? But by 1954, that's not true. This big, wide base of tango is disappearing. How do I know it's disappearing? Because all the little venues that they play in are closing.
Chapter · 2:27
The tango pyramid is shrinking
In 1954 the base of tango started to disappear.
That's the theme of the tango, Que Te Pasa Buenos Aires, which is not recorded until 56. Two guys are standing outside the Café Nacional on Corrientes, the place where Pugliese made his debut in 39, and it's packed. Alberto Marino is singing there but the reason that it's packed is because it's his last night and the next day it's closing and it's going to be turned into a pizza joint. So the tango is shrinking, we're listening to the top layer and that seems more or less unchanged, but underneath it's becoming a much less massive phenomenon and the folklore boom is starting. You played a couple of folklore tracks in your warm-up and that's very nice. Um, it's nice especially to be able to enjoy both kinds of music, but that there's a bit of a feeling of competition.
There's foreign music as well being imported more and more since the end of the war into Argentina, and the government passes a law to try and protect local music which says that if you've got live music at least 50 percent of it has to be Argentine. And this backfires because of course if you have to pay for live music you're going to pay for the very cheapest music you can possibly get and this give work to to folklore artists but not the good ones, to the second-rate folklore artists. So they start populating the cinemas in the ad breaks and stuff like that.
Yeah, that's a general overview. Well, I guess I'll rephrase my initial comment that I think there are two great or two lighthouses in tango music this year. It's Pugliese and Di Sarli. For me, these are outstanding and at the top of the recordings. But there is a lot of other stuff that I found interesting preparing for this program. But of course, it's never heard at Milongas because it's not really, most of it is not danceable stuff, but there's a couple of nice dance tracks too that I really haven't heard before. That's the great opportunity we have here to broaden our listening.
Yeah. So should we listen to some music then, maybe? Yes, please. What are we going to start with? We're going to start with a candy, something soft and sweet. Muy suave, very soft. This is the instrumental tango by Domingo Federico, and it's his own composition. And I think it's the only recording as far as I know. Only one I've heard.
Yeah. And as you know, or some of you know that Federico, he played for Caló in the early 40s. And since tango is a lot about contrast, the second song I want to play is a Caló recording. And this is going from softness and sweetness to hell, living hell. And we'll hear Alberto Podestá singing Un infierno, which means the hell. And this I think this is the first time Podestá records with Caló since 43 or something, at the same time that Federico was right back in 41 I think. Yeah, so these are very different contrast again. Domingo Federico, Muy suave, and then Caló with Podestá singing about an infierno.
Federico's own composition, a soft and sweet instrumental with a pizzicato opening and, as far as Stenvoll knows, its only recording; chosen as the sweet half of a contrast pair.
Danced to it · 5 of 86
♪ Music · 3:24 ·
The contrast to Muy suave: a hellish lyric, and Podestá's first recording with Caló since about 1943.
Danced to it · 5 of 48
Pretty heavy stuff there. I want to read a quote from the lyrics. Your hug was a claw and your silk and satin skin, a cruel and eternal hell where my soul burned. Oh my god, yeah, and that's the end of the show. Thank you so much, good night, see you in two weeks. Yeah, it's pretty right. Um, yeah, Podestá, his voice hasn't lost it at all, isn't he recording since what, since 41? It's 54 now and his voice is growing and changing, still wonderful to listen to, but before that voice comes in the sound, well, is not so different from the Federico track that we listened to before. Is it? Not so different.
So I just want to be a bit provocative. When we listened to the Domingo Federico track, 10 years ago, I didn't like that so much. But I do now, but I appreciate it's something a little bit different. And there was a little bit of comments going on in the chat window, influenced by foreign music, maybe, or not really tango. But well, I think it's very hard to say it's not really tango. If that's not really tango then neither is Poema, in fact that's probably more tanguero in that sense than Poema, in terms of the marcación, the model of marcación that Federico uses. So yes, it's something different and a general thing, not just about tango music, but in the 50s we start to get little kitschy elements and sometimes they overwhelm the piece and sometimes they don't. Here I don't feel that they do, but there's one track, the great crossover hit of 1954, and I don't know if it's on your playlist or not, Dag, I suspect not. And that's the song Hernando's Hideaway, there is a place I like to go, from the Hollywood musical The Pajama Game, which was such a hit that there were tango versions of it. There's a recording, oh gosh, there's one by De Angelis. I just discovered a new one today by Rodriguez. Is a 53 track? 54 tracks, 54 tracks, wow. Yeah, and I mean, that's really kitsch.
Yeah. So the kitsch element is creeping into all music. Not into folklore, but perhaps because that's sort of young and new in terms of its expression. You can have a go at kitsch at the after party, maybe. Yeah, I think one maximum. Yeah.
Yeah, and I remember saying earlier program that Podestá, he wasn't like working for Caló, but he just came in and did a couple of tracks in the studio. He was so successful, he could do what he liked. And he joined many, many different bands for short periods. Yeah.
Well, let's continue with another Caló reference, Francini-Pontier, because they also played for Caló until 44 or 45, maybe. That's it. And I want to play the song, the tango, Perdóname, Forgive Me. And there are lots of other versions of this song, but I really like this one. What were they doing? I mean, we've played them before, so we have talked about Francini-Pontier before. You said last time, I think in 46, that sometimes Francini's violin takes over a bit. It goes a bit crazy.
Well, Francini could easily have been the first violin in a symphony orchestra. And we hear that quite a bit in the recordings of the Francini-Pontier orchestra. It's very much Francini-Pontier and not Pontier-Francini. He's got a very big influence on the overall sound. And sometimes for me, it just balances it a little bit, but of course an exquisite player. And musically, it's quite rich. It's rich. And this recording also is rich. The song, the vocalist is called Luis Correa. Never heard about him before, but... I like him. Yeah, he has a nice voice. So let's listen to this. Francini-Pontier, Perdóname, with Luis Correa singing.
Picked for its rich orchestral texture and the dark voice of Luis Correa; the last chords turn to a major key and change the mood.
♪ Music · 2:45 ·
I like that. Yeah, dark voice. I like that. And the change to a major key just for the last few chords kind of gives a happy ending because I'm reading that lyric and I'm wondering, what did he kill her yesterday? And now he's just fantasizing or something. But it actually changes the whole mood of the piece. Francini's violin I felt was tasteful and part of the orchestra, this little solo he played at the beginning quite restrained, and then when he did play more beautifully for me it didn't overwhelm the music at all, and the texture of the orchestra is really rich and interesting. There's a lot to listen to musically, but I like that. Thank you. It's complex. Thanks. Yeah, nice.
But after this heaviness I think we need something a bit lighter and I came across this waltz by a guy called Dante Rossia, Valsecito de antes, or is backed by guitars and for me this singer reminds me a bit of Corsini. Do you know about this guy? According to my database that I use, Tango DJ, there's just nine recordings all together and most of them are from this year, so I never heard about him before. I can't tell you anything more. There are no real new tango orchestras getting to record, that is, in this year, but there are new soloists getting to record. So I guess there's space for that in the public. And I like his voice very much, a bit darker than Corsini's voice, maybe, but a voice that really enchants. And I'm very glad to have these recordings with him. Let's hear it, Valsecito de antes with Dante Rossia.
A guitar-backed waltz by a soloist with only about nine recordings, most from this year; Stenvoll hears a darker Corsini. It is hard to recognise as the song D'Arienzo made popular in 1937.
Yeah, I just love the guitar. Sometimes it really brings some special mood to this guitar. Very charming and innocent. They bring an innocent quality, don't they? Something closer to nature and further from the city.
I wonder if we hadn't told people the title of that waltz, because Valsecito de antes is one of the really popular D'Arienzo waltzes from 1937. And it sounds so different, I'm listening to it, even though I know it's the same piece. Sometimes there's more than one song with the same title and the same rhythm. But no, I knew it was the same one, but it's so different, it'd be quite hard to guess. I really wonder how many people would have recognised it as one of your little things to do after the show, folks. Go and listen to the D'Arienzo Valsecito de antes.
Yeah, it's interesting how they can make so different versions out of the same compositions. Yeah, I guess partly because the melody was so strong there, whereas a D'Arienzo waltz is much more about the rhythmic bass pushing you forwards. Yeah.
So let's go to a band we don't really associate with the 50s, Ángel D'Agostino. And it's much slower and darker than the 1940s D'Agostino we know from Milongas. And I want to play a song called Carnaval de mi barrio, which you know from the Donato version mostly. And I like it because it's very different from the 1939 Donato recording with the Rita Morales singing. This is with a guy called Rubén Cané singing.
Yes, Rubén Cané has been chosen because he sounds very much like Ángel Vargas, who's now a soloist. The orchestra itself sounds very similar to how it did. It's a little bit more glossy, and as somebody's already pointed out in the chat window, the recording engineers by 1954 are beginning to dial in a little bit of reverberation, that kind of echoey sound onto the master tape. So there's a little bit of that also helps to make the sound more glossy. But in other respects, it's the D'Agostino we've always known, a bit slower, perhaps, a bit slower and not quite so spacious as before. That's the quality we know from D'Agostino, this kind of limpid clarity where you can hear the spaces in the music. And the sound presentation now doesn't really have that much space as before, but beautiful melodic treatment by both orchestra and singer, and then the less space and more condensed music. It's quite typical, the 50s, isn't it? That's more, yeah, I think that's right, more glossy.
Yeah, you mentioned Vargas also, who sang for D'Agostino in the 40s, and he was a soloist since, I think, 46, and he has a recording this year of another known song from Donato, El adiós. Of course known from other orchestras as well, but this is a nice one. And we mentioned before Teresa's project of comparing tango versions. She has a comparison of this song and she writes about this. It's a sad song about lovers who separate without drama and say goodbye, and then the man is suffering silently. Never heard about that theme in tango before. No. Oh, thank you for that, Teresa.
I'm always struck by the opening line, in the evening as the shadows die, not sadly or with anger or with hatred, but that's a very unusual thing they do. And Vargas' voice, it's still got all the quality that we remember. So these are two songs with different orchestras. Vargas is backed here by Armando Lacava. And the first one is Carnaval de mi barrio with D'Agostino, Rubén Cané singing. Are you ready?
A slower, glossier D'Agostino with reverb now added to the tape, and a singer who sounds like Ángel Vargas; set against the 1939 version with Rita Morales.
Vargas as a soloist, with more authority than in his D'Agostino years; the lyric (by a woman, Maruja Pacheco Huergo) is an unusually calm goodbye.
Ah, Vargas. Some great songs there. Just very quickly on the first track, on the kind of a comparison. So it's very difficult to compare a 1939 recording with a 1954 one, because in English we say we're comparing apples and pears in a way there. So, yes, we love the Donato recordings from 38, 39 of this kind of material, but the 54 ones are going to sound different. So I think we have to change our ears a little bit. I'd certainly love to dance to it live, this 54 one. On disc, yes, I probably prefer the 39.
But everyone seemed to really respond to Vargas' voice there. And very interesting comment from Gerardo, who's suggested that Vargas sings with more authority there. And maybe there's a relationship to the fact that Vargas is now a soloist, because Vargas was not really happy with D'Agostino, despite all the success that he had. He always felt that he was being a bit suppressed and pushed down by D'Agostino. He tried to quit and go solo in 43, but failed and was forced to come crawling back and beg for his old job. And I read an article, an interview with him from a magazine in the 50s where he said, finally, I'm earning my own money now that I'm working for myself. So he has got more authority. Maybe that's part of what we hear.
And I also wanted to pick up because you pointed out at the beginning what an unusual lyric that we have. The lyrics written by a woman, isn't it? It's written by Maruja Pacheco Huergo. So there's a woman's voice coming through all too rarely in the lyric there. Yeah, and we'll get to some real women's voices in a short while. But first, let's get some more energy into the listening and listen to a song by Rodolfo Biagi. And he only has four recordings this year.
But I was a bit surprised, not surprised, but when I listened to this Cielito lindo, my baby, I kind of thought that, well, this is Biagi. And it's almost like going back to the early 40s because it's really, it's not like the late 40s or later 40s stuff that it's more like melodic, a little bit more like it's quite sharp and accentuated, I'll say, with these really sharp beats. Yeah, I mean, it's very surprising that this recording exists at all because Cielito lindo does not start life as a tango, does it? It's a Mexican song from at least the previous decade, possibly even older, and it was Fresedo's idea to first perform it as a tango, for which reason, on some of the sites and on the CDs, often it gives the songwriting credit to the Fresedo brothers, but they just did the arrangement of this old Mexican song. I'll try and hump that out and post it to everyone later.
Is that typical of this age, that there are less new tangos? So they just take other foreign tangos and make tangos out of them. There are less new tangos. Absolutely, that's something that we'll see with Troilo. He really struggles to find the material that he wants to perform in this year.
And since we're in the rhythmic mood, I wanted the second song to play a D'Arienzo track. There's a lot of D'Arienzo recordings from this year, but I must say I'm not very, I don't find them very interesting. He's just repeating himself. I feel it's more, it's just the same all over again. But I want to play a waltz that I haven't heard at Milongas called Tristeza criolla, and this is composed by our friend Ignacio Corsini, who also recorded it a couple of times earlier. You know this waltz? I can't remember hearing the D'Arienzo version, and it's with Armando Laborde singing. But what happened to D'Arienzo, he just kept doing the same thing.
You've said, you've talked about this before. Well, he was successful. He was selling records. And he'd already, the die is cast, isn't it? At the end of 1950, when he chooses to go back to his late 30s style, rejecting the developments and the lyricism of the 40s. So having decided to go back a decade, how can you then go forwards? And it's popular with the public. So, yeah, he's just going to carry on. We're not really going to get any development there. And you could even say something similar about Di Sarli. There's not really much development in the 54 sound. Maybe not, but it's much better anyway. If I was picking my favorite D'Arienzo year, it wouldn't be 54. Let's put it that way. Yeah. So let's hear Biagi first with Cielito lindo, instrumental tango, and then Tristeza criolla with Armando Laborde singing a waltz.
One of only four Biagi recordings of the year; sharp and accentuated like his early 1940s sound. A Mexican song that Fresedo first turned into a tango.
♪ Music · 3:10 ·
A waltz composed by Ignacio Corsini that Stenvoll had not heard at milongas; used to show D'Arienzo repeating himself.
Now, how about Laborde? Good man. Yeah, he's my favourite D'Arienzo singer in this period. But yeah, maybe the style is a bit forceful for the lyrics. Someone's just suggested in the chat window, how would Vargas have sounded with that lyric? I think that's a really nice suggestion. Yeah, I can hear it immediately in my head. Can you record it from your head? We're working on the technology. We hope to have it available soon, next year. Look at that. Yeah, I think D'Arienzo is stronger in the instrumental numbers in this time.
Changing mood again. In the Tango by Year group, Michael, a couple of days ago, you posted this image of a couple of Japanese women taking a train out to Mar del Plata, I think. Yes, that's from the Archivo General de la Nación, the National Archive. They have a Facebook feed and they publish things on there. So it's always worth having a little dig around. And it was interesting in particular because this is around the time that the Japanese singer Ranko Fujisawa first came.
Chapter · 46:45
He gave a Japanese woman a stage
She did not speak a word of Spanish and Buenos Aires loved her.
Exactly. To Buenos Aires, sang on stage with Grela, the guitars of Roberto Grela in a Troilo event and was a huge hit. She'd come on holiday. She hadn't come to work. She'd come on holiday with her husband who ran the Orquesta Típica Tokyo. Exactly. Yeah. And this was the year before. That was at the end of 53 in the wintertime. And it turned out she didn't speak a word of Spanish, but she still had really good diction, but she'd done it all phonetically.
Yeah, because I was thinking about that because I was listening to her singing and I'm not a Spanish speaker, but it sounds really Spanish for a Japanese person. It does. Yeah, the Argentines were satisfied by the quality of her pronunciation. Special.
And I was looking through your Troilo book the other day also and I saw this photo from 1954, I think, with Troilo in this kimono. And you wrote that he got it from Rankita when she came back. Yeah, on her second trip, she presented him with this kimono as a thank you for putting her on stage. So let's listen to two of her recordings from 54. The first is a very slow waltz called Aquel pañuelo azul, the blue scarf, and she sings in a mix of Japanese and Spanish. I found this a bit charming. And after that, a milonga, a very slow and also sad and beautiful milonga called Solita, the lonely woman. And the only older recording I found with this milonga is with Rivero from 55 and with Pugliese and Miaciel from 64.
I think the Japanese, they're quite an introvert people, aren't they? Very sensitive people and with great feeling with tango music. So I'm looking forward to listening to these numbers with everyone. Me too, and this is not something people will hear at milongas, so enjoy this. Aquel pañuelo azul and Solita with Ranko Fujisawa.
A very slow waltz sung in a mix of Japanese and Spanish by the Japanese singer who had made a hit in Buenos Aires the winter before.
♪ Music · 2:45 ·
“She'd come on holiday. She hadn't come to work.”
A slow, sad milonga; the only older recordings Stenvoll found are Rivero 1955 and Pugliese-Maciel 1964.
Wow, go Japan. We have a lot to thank Japan for, we Tango lovers. Keeping Tango going through this dark period over the 60s, 70s. That last track created such a special atmosphere that's still lingering in my body. I feel it. It's lovely.
Milonga triste, someone compared it to. It's true. It's this really sentimental, sad feeling. Very much.
Yeah, and Tango and Japan had the best recordings until Tango Tunes, and now Tango Time Travel started releasing their stuff. They had all the best transfers from the golden age also. Yeah, well, the Japanese started collecting very early, didn't they? They started collecting in the 20s, actually. So we can't blame them for looking after the records and taking them out of the country, because they weren't being looked after that well, generally speaking, in Argentina.
Next song is, uh, a tango with a smashing title, Fatal y Tanguera. I mean, the title is the best, isn't it? Fatal y Tanguera. How do you translate it? Well, exactly how it sounds, you know, she's fatal and she's Tanguera. Yeah, and it was recorded about at least seven times this year, and yeah, it's one of the songs of the year very clearly.
Yeah, and the lyrics is about the mother who goes out dancing and drinking with rich men while her son starves at home. I mean, the lyric is a bit, you know, a bit anti-woman, is it, or do you have a post-modern reading of this lyric? I don't know. I mean, of course it's, it sounds really sad, but if you analyze it in today's term it sounds really moralistic, and I ask myself, well, where's the father? What's the context of this woman going out? Maybe she needs to turn a living or whatever, but she's been condemned as a single mother.
It is, she is also, yeah, so, um, yeah, I guess the double standard was also fierce in this society at the time. But there are different versions, and I chose the one with Roberto Chanel singing. As a soloist, he's accompanied by Ángel Domínguez. Do you know this version, Michael? I do very much.
And Chanel is also active in this time as a composer in his own right, isn't he? Not with this tango, but so the lyricist, his name is Aldo Querolo. I can't tell you anything about him, but I can tell you that Chanel also composed with him in this year a tango called Oracion Grande. I don't know if that's on your playlist or not. If it isn't, I'm going to play it in the after party. Good.
Yeah, so Chanel's finding some wings away from Pugliese, and this is a very strong number. It's very strong. I'll post the lyrics in the chat for those of you who have pieces you can read. Yeah, the lyrics are tough, and after this we'll move on to an orchestra that's associated with the Chanel.
One of the songs of the year, recorded at least seven times; Chanel's tour-de-force version about a mother who goes out dancing while her son starves.
Wow. I love the word Chanel since... Tour de force, isn't it? Yeah. Great arrangement. That's the perfect voice for this. Yeah, wonderful.
Maybe it's one of those where it's better not to know the lyric. Exactly, yeah. I had to take it ironically, maybe, as we talked about before, we can. Yeah. Or it's one side of the story. Yeah.
So we reached a highlight in tonight's program. I hope so too. I'm very excited. Yeah, it's Osvaldo Pugliese. And he has a treacherous singer this year. So he has Moran and the less known Juan Carlos Cobos going out. And in the middle of the year comes in Miguel Montero and Jorge Maciel. A great new duo. Yeah.
We have a special guest with us tonight. We do have a special guest. Gosh. Yeah. Wow. So there's something that we're all lacking when we have our modern Malonga experience, which is the experience you would have had back in the day. Every orchestra worked with a presenter who introduced the band, and they were poets, not the screaming front men that you get in salsa bands, but a lot of them worked as announcers on the radio or as poets.
And they wrote poems which we call glosses, which they would use to introduce the bands, to introduce the musicians, or even to introduce special tangos. Now in 1954 the presenter, the presentador, of the Pugliese orchestra was a guy called Luis Mela, and we've got his son with us tonight, Jesus Mela. Can you turn Jesus' microphone on?
I just speak a little bit also in Spanish. Because Jesus, you know, everyone knows that the Marabu Nightclub is one of our sponsors on this show. And Jesus works for, at the Marabu. Entonces, Jesús, un gran bienvenido de todos nosotros, and thanks for joining us this night.
No, on the contrary, I want to send you a greeting from here in Buenos Aires, and of course, I want to thank you, manifestors of our tango culture, in the far away countries of Europe. It is a pleasure for me to come to you with all of you through your invitation, Michael. No, please, a honor for us. I think... Mike, will you translate a little bit maybe in between?
Jesus is just really touched to be with us and is very pleased to see how much tango is loved by other guests from Europe and all over the world. So, Jesus, we invite you to present the orchestra of Osvaldo Pugliese, and then we'll pass immediately the theme without explanation, like at the time. So I'm inviting Jesus now to present the Pugliese orchestra with the glossary of his father, and then we'll immediately play the music without any explanation or translation.
Chapter · 1:04:26
The gloss before Pugliese
At the milonga, the orchestra was announced with a poem.
Okay, I'll just make this little explanation so that you can transmit it. I'm going to present the orchestra as my father presented when Jorge Maciel and Miguel Montero in the cantables. So Jesus is going to present the orchestra as his father did when Maciel and Montero were the singers. And I can just say the first time they appeared together was on the 16th of July, 1954, at Club Huracán, en julio de 54. Very good, very well, we go with the presentation.
Played directly after Jesús Mela's recitation of his father's gloss, with no explanation, as at the milonga. Lyrics are a confession to a police officer ('Comisario, arrésteme, sargento') from a man who killed his unfaithful partner and friend.
Second Pugliese number after the gloss: an old man in La Boca, sole mio, mamma mia, drinking and crying for the past.
Thank you very much, Jesus. Fantastic. Yeah, yes. Jesus, thank you very much for maintaining the living tradition. Thank you for maintaining this tradition as a living thing. It creates the atmosphere before the music even comes and it makes it so much more powerful, so thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, wonderful, thanks for coming with us.
Mama mia, yeah, powerful stuff. We need to listen to some more Pugliese, I think. As I said, there were four vocalists for singing from this year and we need to play a song from the guy on the event photo, Alberto Morán, and his last recording with Pugliese in March 1954 was La mentirosa.
And Michael, you write in your Pugliese book that Morán left Pugliese this year as an ambitted man. What did you mean? Yes, well, you and I might imagine that Morán had had a great time, you know, singing with one of the top orchestras in the universe and with thousands, at times literally thousands, of adoring female fans screaming at him. You know, I mean, that's, it sounds okay to me, but Morán felt that he wasn't treated at the same level as the musicians in the orchestra. Another Pugliese orchestra in some respects was a musician's band, focused a lot on the instrumentals. You couldn't earn as much because of the way the system worked as a singer because you weren't arranging music.
Chapter · 1:13:30
Why Morán left Pugliese
Thousands of fans, and he still left bitter.
So although the Pugliese Orchestra was a cooperative, you earned less than the other guys. And you had, it was very, very demanding on the voice, singing with the Pugliese Orchestra. And Morán recalls one occasion where he said to Pugliese, look, I'm sick tonight. I've got a sore throat, could you play just a bit quieter? Pugliese, he played louder to force him. So yeah, he left bitter and he stayed bitter a long time, he gave interviews. I hope later on he could feel better about it because we just remember a great partnership between those two, yeah, for almost 10 years.
But I guess the last recordings are not his best, maybe. They're less played, at least. You mean his last recordings with Pugliese? Yeah, yeah. I think they're still outstanding. Some of those, perhaps, well, perhaps not 54, but some of his 50s recordings with Pugliese are extraordinary, at least as good as what he did in the 40s.
Well, let's listen to La mentirosa with Morán. But the second song, I also want to play the fourth singer this year, Juan Carlos Cobos. And there's a tango we know from Troilo with Fiorentino, but the much faster version from the early 40s, Te aconsejo que me olvides. This is a really special recording, one I'd like to hear more in the milonga. We'd probably have to make a mixed tanda as a DJ. Exactly. You can't make a tanda just of Cobos, but it's quite easy to make a coherent 54 tanda. And well, we'll hear Cobos has got a very special quality to his voice and it suits the orchestra. And it's much darker and slower than the Fiorentino version. Pugliese with La mentirosa and Te aconsejo que me olvides.
Morán's last recording with Pugliese, in March 1954; picked for the singer who left the band that year.
Danced to it · 5 of 138
♪ Music · 3:05 ·
A darker, slower rendition of a song owned by Troilo and Fiorentino; arranged by Julio Carrasco, and a performance that escapes comparison.
Danced to it · 5 of 13
Wow! Wow, pure power. And it's not easy to create a different interpretation of that song because it belongs to Troilo and Fiorentino until this moment. So to escape the gravity of that and do something that's really worthwhile and different is a great achievement.
That's one of the few tangos in the Pugliese Orchestra arranged by Carrasco, Julio Carrasco, generally thought of as like the third violin. But when Camerano retired, he's the violinist who was offered the job of first violin and he turned it down because he didn't want to be first violin. The girl, Flor de tango, that's the, if you can remember, Flor de tango from 1945, that really super attacking sound. Yeah, that's beautiful, 54 sound. God, I'd have died to dance to that. Yeah, oh my god, yeah. Don't say it if the girls weren't too busy listening to Morán singing.
Yeah, and yeah, and this has wonderful singers this year, but in my view there's also some really good instrumental tracks, maybe some of the best tracks from this year. So let's finish the 54 Pugliese chapter with two of those. As the last one, I want to play the only Pugliese recording of D'Arienzo's breakthrough hit from 1935, Nueve de Julio. And Michael, you use this recording in your lectures, examples of just beat, I mean the D'Arienzo recording. And this one is much more complex, let's say.
Well, there's a lot to say about this recording, actually. Shall I talk about it now or after? Sure. I can mention the second song I want to play. It's also the instrumental, Mi lamento. Exquisite tango. And Pugliese's version is the only one, I think, of this one. So it's beautiful. Yeah. So Nueve de Julio first, is that right? And then... Mi lamento first, I think. We'll finish with Nueve de Julio. Okay. Well, after Mi lamento, I may need to lie down for a little bit. I agree with you.
I think it's the only recording of this tango. There's another very famous tango called Un lamento. This is many recordings. This is not that one. Mi lamento. Camerano's violin just kills you. The violin solo in Mi lamento is quite stunning. Please leave about 10 seconds between the tracks so I can breathe a little bit. And all of us, all the other guests as well.
And then Nueve de Julio, this is kind of interesting because in the second half of the 1950s, the Pugliese sound really opens up, doesn't it? Something that we hear for the first time in La Tupungatina, this open, joyful, radiant sound. And that really becomes established in 55 with Gallo ciego and Emancipación, No cero soy, these kinds of tracks. But Nueve de Julio is a signpost on this journey towards the, let's call it the mature Pugliese sound, a transition track. So two very strong instrumentals, but Mi lamento in particular, just stunning. I'll leave the 10 seconds. Thank you. Between them. Osvaldo Pugliese, Mi lamento and Nueve de Julio.
An instrumental that is the only recording of this tango; Camerano's violin solo is called stunning.
Danced to it · 5 of 39
♪ Music · 3:15 ·
The only Pugliese recording of D'Arienzo's 1935 breakthrough hit, and a signpost on the way to Pugliese's mature, open sound.
“If there wasn't a Pugliese Nueve de Julio we would all say, impossible, no Nueve de Julio... it belongs to D'Arienzo.”
Power and beauty, as you say, Michael, power and beauty, exquisite. Has everyone recovered from Mi lamento yet? The Nueve de Julio, so the piece opens and we recognize it as Nueve de Julio but a bit different and then it just goes to completely unexpected places. This is something that's very characteristic about Pugliese arrangements. They go beyond the conception of the piece that the composer itself had. Think about the introduction to La mariposa for us. When we hear the Pugliese Mariposa, it's completely obvious that it has to begin that way, but it's not in the original sheet music, so they create things that don't really belong and transform the piece.
It's, watching in the chat window, people were wrestling like, oh no, but you know, for dancing, and someone said, don't think of it as a little bit of Julio. Think of it as another theme. So let's call it not the 9th of July, but the 10th of July, something like that. And then we can escape from the comparison. I mean, it is interesting to compare, but then we have to get away from that. Yeah, there's no point in saying this one is better than the other because they're so different.
Well, I mean, personally speaking, I do have that feeling. It just comes up in me. I have these kinds of thoughts. Oh, this one's the best and that one's not the best. But I learned that I already know which one I prefer, so this attitude doesn't help me at all. I can change that attitude and still have my preference. I don't have to pretend that I like the other ones more than I really do. No, but I listen to them allowing them to be different, allowing them to come from different decades, different eras, when the atmosphere was different.
We can all hear less so now that we're in the Pugliese segment, but earlier in the program you could hear that there weren't so many people dancing. It's clear in the music that comes into our ears. Yeah, yeah, the audience is changing. Yeah, and it's great to hear this truly as a treatment of these loved songs from other orchestras. I find it special and I mean, if there wasn't a Pugliese Nueve de Julio, we would all say, you, me, everybody here, impossible, no Nueve de Julio. I mean, it's so simple, it's repetitive, it belongs to D'Arienzo these days. The idea that the Pugliese orchestra could do it is inconceivable. That's what we'd all have said, but there it is.
Yeah, let's move on to calm down a bit after Pugliese, but still please, but still keep the beauty. Let's listen to a recording by Edmundo Rivero, Troilo's previous singer who has been on solo careers. Yeah, separated on a very happy note from Troilo and still they're still friends and he still works with him very occasionally. And the one from this year I like most is the tango you know from D'Arienzo also with Maure, Infamia, and it has music and really killer lyrics by Enrique Santos Discépolo. Rivero is accompanied, as he almost always is when he sings solo, by guitars, so it's a very different feeling from the D'Arienzo version.
We can say, I mean, there are quite a lot of recordings of Rivero backed by an orchestra directed by a guy called Víctor Buccino, but I prefer the guitar recordings. I feel that's what suits him and I imagine him singing in that basement club that he opened, El Viejo Almacén. That's the atmosphere, a small smoky club. And Infamia in English means infamy, but can you explain it for non-English speakers? What does it mean? Well, the phrase in English that comes straight to my mind, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the President of the United States said, a day that will live forever in infamy. So an infamous action is an action that is famous, but achieves notoriety, that's famous for all the wrong reasons. That's what infamy is, being famous for evil reasons.
It's a bit like Donald Trump. Let's leave him, shall we? Please? This is a free zone for that. Sure, sure. You can go back to doom scrolling on your phone after the show, but not now. Let's listen to beauty instead and hear Edmundo Rivero sing Infamia with guitars.
Rivero with guitars in a version Stenvoll prefers to his orchestral recordings; lyrics by Enrique Santos Discépolo, a song D'Arienzo and Mauré made famous.
♪ Music · 2:44 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Hmm, it's exquisite, Dag. That's not one that I listened to preparing for tonight. I thought you, if you played Rivero, I was expecting something else. That was just exquisite and again requires such force of character to give a completely different interpretation when somebody else kind of owned the song, another orchestra, another style. Lovely, he has the character that's needed for a different interpretation than the answer. Now I wonder how it would have sounded if Troilo had performed it. I've never thought that before, but I can't hear that one.
Well, speaking of Troilo, let's hear a couple of his songs. And we did listen to a couple of his 1954 song in the Troilo special this summer, Contrabajando, which was a tribute to the double bass player Kichu Diaz, and also the one with Raúl Berón singing Una Tango para Este Cita. Both beautiful and lovely songs. Yes, quite different. Of course, Contrabajeando, a joint composition with Piazzolla, so a really advanced, explorative theme. And then Un Tango para Este Cita so tender, and with a vocal line that's like weeping. Very different.
Yeah, but since we have a strong ethics not to repeat ourselves in this program, you can go to the SoundCloud recording of that, especially if you want to hear those two songs and Michael talking about them. And let's instead hear two other songs, two instrumentals, the tango El Pollo Ricardo. Ricardo the Chicken, and this is also a song that's mostly known from other bands, from Di Sarli and D'Arienzo.
Do you know, I was just listening to El Pollo Ricardo today. Everyone remember that melody now when you hear Troilo play it, he misses a note out. He does, yeah. It changes the rhythm, so it makes, because otherwise it's just, but he misses a note out, so which creates very subtly, you almost don't notice it, a kind of syncopated feeling in the melody to make it a bit more interesting. Yeah, try to listen to that.
And the second song is very different. It's a milonga called Taquito militar. Ah, no, Taquito militar, we had to hear tonight. That's from a film, isn't it? In 1953, Mariano Mores wrote that and performed it in a film. But most of the recordings are from 1954. So everyone can go and watch the bit of video from the film after the show. But there are many, many good performances of this piece. Yeah. The clicking of military heels. Yeah, it's very rhythmical and playful.
“In the event of a breakdown, wait to be rescued, and I think that's very good advice for dancing to certain complex tangos.”
And Mores, remind us, he was the pianist of someone. He worked with some guy called Canaro. Yeah, exactly. That's the guy. All the way through the 40s. I heard about him, yeah. He did for Canaro what Varela and Salamanca did for D'Arienzo in the 40s. Oh. You know, change the 30s style to upgrade it for a band leader who's actually getting a bit old now, to keep them relative into the next decade. Yeah, all right, let's see it shorter then: El pollo Ricardo and Taquito militar.
An instrumental in which Troilo leaves out one note of the melody, creating a syncopated feeling.
Danced to it
Mariano Mores' milonga from a 1953 film, rhythmical and playful, danceable partly because there is no singer.
That's fun. It's a trap. Yeah. It was a fun play there on the belong ground because people will be trapped dancing. Yeah. So have a good laugh. Very sophisticated, actually. But because it's so much fun and it's a milonga, you don't notice necessarily. But the more you listen, the more you hear going on in there. It's danceable. And it helps that there's no singer. So it makes it a little bit easier to dance to, I think. Yeah. And when you get to the bit where it just stops, just stop. Yeah.
In England, when there are roadworks on the motorway and it's a bit dangerous to get out of your car, but you know there's not space or anything there, there's a sign as you enter and it says, in the event of a breakdown, wait to be rescued. And I think that's very good advice for dancing to certain complex tangos. If you don't know what to do, just stop and wait for the music to come and rescue you. Yeah, good plan.
Okay, two truller instrumentals, and we heard Rivero before, and now we're going to listen to some song by Alberto Marino, which is another previous Troilo singer that I love a lot. And his voice is fantastic and it's sounding really good in the 50s. Exactly. And as you said before on the programs, his voice comes out even more as a soloist because he gets more space. Yeah, I think maybe he was too far from the microphone when he recorded with Troilo. I don't know, but that would be my guess.
So let's hear first is the tango Eras como la flor. And that's a tango you probably know from the power version from D'Arienzo with Laborde from the year after, and this is very different, it's much more introvert. And I checked it and it's a Roberto Rufino composition, and I didn't know Rufino was a composer, but they never recorded it himself.
There's another track. I can give things away because, you can't give things away because I need to not know, but I can give things away. Okay, a little quiz question. There's a very famous track that's recorded for the first time in 1954 that Roberto Rufino wrote the music for. We can give them three minutes, no, no looking up on the internet, no cheating. So you know, while you play the number, people can start guessing what's the super famous 54 track we haven't heard it yet. I'll give you a clue, Dag's already played the orchestra, so he's not going to play it. It's famous song, you all know it, you all like it, you all dance to it with Rufino, but that's not what we're hearing now. It's Eras como la flor.
A much more introverted take on a Roberto Rufino composition, with Marino's voice given space as a soloist.
Danced to it
♪ Music · 3:30 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Anyone guessed it, Michael? No. No. No one googled it, that's good. Yeah, well done, discipline. Yeah, yeah, so what was it? Oh, didn't know that, that's a feeling also. Yes, it seems that Podestá collaborated with him on the composition, which kind of suggests it was written a decade earlier, because the time Podestá and Rufino were hanging out together were when they were both in the Di Sarli orchestra.
And when Rufino had a problem with his voice, Di Sarli asked Podestá to look after him and to take him to the doctor, and it was in the doctor's waiting room where there was a piano and Rufino was mucking around on this piano and El Bazar de los Juguetes was there and put it coming out in his fingers and Podestá helped him to finish it, which would date this tango from, you know, 1942, 43, not from 54 at all. But that's just a supposition on my part. Yeah, fantastic.
Sorry, let's hear more Marino. One more Marino song, it's a waltz that intrigued me because there was something familiar with the melody. It's called Que nadie sepa mi sufrir. What does it mean? It means may no one know my suffering. Yeah, exactly, because it reminded me of a waltz I've heard by my friend the French singer Edith Piaf. And La Foule, exactly. It's La Foule, and that's from 1957, it's a distance earlier. It's a double bluff, because yes, the song is much older than either of these recordings originally, and then it's discovered by the French and becomes famous. And then it kind of gets re-imported back to Argentina. So it's really easy to think that this is a tango version of a French song, but it's a tango version of a French song of an Argentine song.
Chapter · 1:56:11
A French waltz that was Argentine first
Edith Piaf's La foule wasn't French.
That's so funny. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, so it's another example of tango drawing a bit up of new compositions and the bands finding foreign songs or songs from the region to make tango versions out of it. And there's more globalization, isn't it? People are more exposed now. During the war years in particular, Argentina was largely isolated from these influences. Yeah. So listen to this voice, this tango, this, sorry, this waltz. It's nice. The simple accompaniment really gives Marino's voice the space it deserves. So it's Que nadie sepa mi sufrir.
A waltz with simple accompaniment, a tango version of an Argentine song later made famous in France as La foule.
♪ Music · 2:19 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Almost too good. What a lovely voice. Really delicate version. When you mentioned the title, I was thinking, ah, Castillo. But no. Beautiful, surprising and intimate version. Very intimate.
So let's go to a different register. I discovered a couple of songs by a band we heard before, Donato Racciatti. We listened to it in 1952, and I checked, and he recorded almost 100 numbers in the 1950s. So it must have been a rather successful orchestra. Yeah, it's like D'Arienzo only simpler and with an upright piano. Exactly, yeah. We talked about that last time. The piano sounds different, like a bar piano. Literally highly strung, upright piano.
There is a waltz called Serenata de acordeones with a woman called Nina Miranda and a guy called Víctor Ruiz singing a duet. And as far as I know, it's the only recording of this waltz. And I think it's quite joyful and got a good swing. And then second song is a tango called El Oriental, an instrumental tango. It's composed by Racciatti himself, and there is, at the end, there's this ridiculously long variations, it's difficult to not start laughing because it's so long. You know this song? No, no, I mean the first one, yes. And I really like the female voices with Racciatti, Nina Miranda and another one in a different year whose names just escaped me temporarily. Someone's gonna type it in. Is it Tanya? No, it's not Tanya. No.
Olga Del Grossi, that's right. Yes, Therese types it at the same time. So he's great with the female singers. In the instrumental numbers I find my body moving to it, even as my brain is a bit irritated. It's a very strange feeling. It's like my brain is going, you shouldn't like this, but the body is going, come on, this is nice. Yeah. And this El Oriental to me, it was nice, and it was a nice surprise because I can't remember having heard it before. I don't know it, so this is going to be new to me. So Donato Racciatti, Serenata de acordeones, which is the waltz, and then El Oriental, instrumental tango.
A joyful, swinging waltz duet with an upright-piano sound; as far as Stenvoll knows the only recording of it.
An instrumental composed by Racciatti himself, with a ridiculously long variation at the end; likened to a house party of amateur musicians.
♪ Music · 3:00 ·
Does it what it's out the energy, it's not like one of the big four orchestras, is it? I mean... Not in any respect, but imagine you live in a barrio and there's some amateur musicians and they get together and they throw a party in their house and everyone's had a few drinks. The music would sound like that, you know, like a really good time, not the very best music, but everyone's having a fantastic time, and you just dance the whole night. Yeah, and it's more a live performance, or a feeling to it, because it just keeps going, and so it has a special energy. Yeah, they could probably have improvised that into a 10-minute version. Yeah, just extended the variation and the solos a bit. And the guitar was a surprise in the middle, just came in like that. Huge, yeah. Wasn't expecting that for a moment. Yeah, okay.
Before we end with some serious disorderly, let's hear the Tita Merello milonga that I posted about a week ago, I think. Has to be. That was the film version but this is the studio version where she's backed by Francisco Canaro. And her first recordings are actually from late 20s and we listened to one of them in Tango 1929, but she made a comeback this year, she had a long pause. You know what happened, she was in the movies or what happened to her in between? Well, she has gone into movies, hasn't she? When we hear in the 20s she's somebody who's trying to be like the other female soloists but she's abandoned that now. She's completely got her own character and personality and she's a no-nonsense girl, doesn't take any rubbish from anyone, and so this song really suits it, doesn't it? They say about me.
And my favorite bit is a line that says those that say I'm bow-legged haven't seen me in my nightdress. No me invisto in camisón. Yes, yeah, and check out the video on the Tango Way group if you want to see her performing this in the film because she has a great attitude in this when she sings this. She always has great attitude, that woman. Yeah, and this one, this is the recording, yet with the opening is very slowly and the bandoneon echoes it with these very low notes. Yes. So this is me, Tita Merello with Canaro backing.
Merello's comeback studio version with Canaro; a no-nonsense lyric ('those who say I'm bow-legged haven't seen me in my nightdress').
♪ Music · 2:57 · The lyrics, on the song's page
She's cool. She's the best. Not taking any rubbish from those men. Is she? I think that's the only person I've heard who can roll her eyes by singing. Mmm. Yeah. It's fun, very fun lyrics.
We come to the last band for the night and I want it to be Carlos Di Sarli because he's one of my favourites in this period. And you write in a Di Sarli book, Michael, that this is a year of change for this early, and he used the Claude Debussy composition La cathédrale engloutie, the submerged cathedral, as a metaphor for his music in this period. Yeah, I wrote that a long time ago but it's still really what I feel. So Di Sarli changes record label. He's been three years with Music Hall. They'd promised him worldwide exposure, that they were going to print these vinyls all over the world and so he'd be heard in the United States, and none of that happened. And we know as well that Music Hall had trouble with distribution because they were printing all these brand new vinyls and most people didn't have record players that could play brand new vinyls. They could only play shellacs.
So there were problems and he goes back to Victor and the sound changes when he goes back to Victor. Very clearly, okay, partly it's the technology that's being used and the recording engineer and the processing, but it's not just that. For example, the two versions of El choclo, we've got El choclo recorded twice in 1954 by Di Sarli, once with Music Hall and the second time with RCA Victor. And the second one is the one that we all heard a gazillion times in our tango lessons and it's smooth and beautiful, and when you hear the first one recorded, we don't know exactly when, six months earlier, it's dirty, it's really dirty. And with a sophisticated orchestra like Di Sarli, a bit of dirt does not go amiss.
Yeah, and I listened to the 37 or so tracks from this year and I find myself preferring the earlier ones, the dirtier ones from the Music Hall period. That really happens after a while, that they get to you, and the later stuff, which we do know and we still love it, it's missing this extra, it's missing that bit. Let's listen to a couple of the instrumentals from January. From January, and two of the best ones in my opinion were recorded on January 26th. And it's a Music Hall, it's Tinta verde, Green Ink, composition that I can guarantee that we'll hear again when we get to Tango 1938, because this is one of the two tangos that Troilo recorded, that first recording.
Can I just point out before you go any further that these dates are guesses? OK. We don't actually know the exact dates of the sessions that Di Sarli made with Music Hall. And these dates that we all have and use come from the CDs produced by Babasan in Japan, but he's unable to really explain where he got them from. And there were Japanese issues at the time of at least some of these records on a Japanese label, part of the Mercury company, called Seven Seas. So it looks like not the original master, but what they call mother masters, copies of the masters were sent to Japan for printing. So it could be that the original date really is that date and they put it on the box, or it's the date that they pressed it in Japan. We just don't know.
How come the dates are more uncertain from this period than from, say, 10 and 20 years earlier? Because we don't have the book. For the Odeon company, the book definitely survives, the register, and certain collectors have had access to it, and you can find photographs on the Internet. For the Victor company, the book survives, but it's much harder to get to see. I know people who've seen copies, but haven't actually seen the book. But from Music Hall and Taxi Art, the registers are completely lost, which is sad. Yeah. Well, we don't know exactly the recording dates, but we can listen to the music anyway. We can. And yes, let's say beginning of 54, that's the... Yeah.
So the first one, Tinta verde, and the other one is one called El cachafaz, the scoundrel, or it's a nickname of a famous tango dancer in the early 1900s you write about in your book, Michael. Yes, I mean, it ought to be about him but then when the sheet music was published, the author of the music dedicated it to somebody else and El cachafaz was a bit annoyed. Yeah, I love this song for its scrambling left hand, we talked about that before this. Yeah, also in El cachafaz it opens with this bandoneon discord, it really wails, and then the piano goes bang, bang, bang, bang. That's a fantastic opening. Listen to the bass people on these tracks. Get your headphones on and listen to the bass.
We don't usually talk about getting into the structure of these tangos, but this one, according to me, has this A, B, A, C structure. And I love the B and C parts. You can hear this. The A part comes back three times, but the B and especially the C part are astounding, I think. Really special. So let's listen to them. So this is Di Sarli, Tinta verde and El cachafaz.
One of two Music Hall instrumentals from January 1954 (dates uncertain), played for the dirtier sound and as a bracket with Muy suave's pizzicato.
♪ Music · 2:40 ·
Scrambling left-hand piano, a wailing bandoneón opening and an A-B-A-C structure with astounding B and C parts.
Groovy stuff. It's really groovy, isn't it? When the band halfway through the trio section, which was great, this attacking violin and then the bass crashing around, then it switched to pizzicato. And I suddenly remembered the song you opened the evening with, because you opened with Muy suave, which has a pizzicato opening. So it's going to make an interesting bracket for the evening.
So Di Sarli also uses pizzicato but manages to do a little bit more than the mink and, and you hear a lot of the, or this moaning bandoneon is in this, it's not so common maybe for Di Sarli, more about the violin. The opening note, isn't it, the opening crazy opening chord. Love it. Let's hear some, because this has good singers also at this point. He has Oscar Serpa on board, of course, and Mario Pomar. Serpa is my favorite out of those two. I like them both. They're a bit different. Serpa is my favorite. So let's hear two Serpas and one Pomar then, since it's your favorite.
Thank you. Sueño de juventud. It's a waltz. You like this one? Yeah, I think. So Sueño de juventud, A Dream of Youth, it's a Di Cepolo composition. And Di Cepolo, I think, composed this around 1939. And we can work the date out from looking at the other recordings that exist at a time when Di Sarli wasn't able to record. Now, Di Sarli and Di Cepolo were very close friends. Di Cepolo was one of these self-taught people who couldn't actually write music down, so every time he wrote a new tango, he had to get someone to write it down for him, and Di Sarli is one of the people that used to do that. So we can be sure that although this is a 1954 recording, that Di Sarli would have been recording it, not recording it, excuse me, performing it more than a decade earlier, and that we just have to imagine how it would have sounded at the time of its launch. So that's very, very beautiful and a lovely just tiny little decoration in the violin line that's not in the original sheet music. This little link the violins play, that's pure Di Sarli, it's lovely. So I've said enough.
Well, you said before that there aren't so many Di Sarli waltzes and I think there's only about 20 altogether in his whole career, and this one he recorded three times, so he must have really loved this waltz. I think special for him, it's the only one I think he recorded that many times, so it must be all right. So that's with Serpa and the second one with Serpa is a tango that, you know, it's called Verdemar, green ocean, is that the right translation? It's a meridian theme, like many of the green, the green of the sea, green, green, which of course was a theme that belonged to Rufino. So again, take something to create your own interpretation. Yeah. So let's listen to the combination of Di Sarli and Oscar Serpa. Sueño de juventud and Verdemar.
A Discépolo waltz composed around 1939 that Di Sarli recorded three times, one of only about 20 waltzes in his career.
Danced to it
♪ Music · 2:30 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A song belonging to Rufino, reinterpreted by Di Sarli and Serpa; about grief, with a final chord that leaves some light.
Sounds like a tragic lyric, so let's not talk about that because you're going to go to sleep after. Yeah, it expresses grief actually, doesn't it? It's about grief, someone's died. Yeah, and the other person doesn't feel they can go on. Yeah, that's real life. Which direction, what am I going to do now? But somehow just the last chord kind of melts it a bit, just the way they finish the tango. They leave you with some sense of light and hope that don't leave you totally crushed.
Good. So before we leave this early and go to the compositor, let's listen to the last one of his recordings and this is with RCA Victor with Mario Pomar singing No me pregunten por qué, Don't Ask Me Why. It's interesting to listen to this one because the recording I have, it has an introduction, a glosser, and when I looked into it I found out it's no one less than Di Sarli himself. Yes, so I mean it's not really a glosser, Di Sarli's returning to the recording studio after... Have you got the text or shall I tell people? You can tell people. Yeah, he says, a mis amigos de todas mis horas de artista, to my friends from all my hours as an artist, bajo el homenaje de mi emoción más profunda. I render my most deep homage. Hoy y siempre, today and always, con la música que más quiero, with the music I most love, el tango.
Chapter · 2:33:59
Di Sarli's own voice
The only time Di Sarli speaks on a record.
And it's unusual, isn't it? I can't remember having heard any examples of this Arlie having this introduction to his songs. I can't think of any other band leader recording an introduction. We hear Canaro's voice is like a chorus singer. And it's crystal clear. And I was a bit surprised when I heard it because for some reason I didn't imagine this was what this Arlie sounded like. I don't know why, but...
Well, a man of few words, isn't he? He's famous for that. He would have these moods where he wouldn't speak, and his friends and his musicians would say, Ja, entró en la cámara. He's gone into his room. And I remember earlier we listened to Troilo in 1950, I think it was, talking to Rivero. And Troilo has a much warmer voice. It's a very different feeling than listening to Di Sarli. Maybe it says something about personality. Well, I think, yeah, we do hear those different personalities. Di Sarli was a very upright man, difficult man, and a good man, but because of his nature also quite misunderstood.
“Di Sarli was a very upright man, a difficult man, and a good man, but because of his nature also quite misunderstood.”
Well, let's listen to it. It's a beautiful song.
Di Sarli's return to the studio with RCA Victor, opened by a spoken introduction by Di Sarli himself to his friends and 'the music I most love, the tango'.
Just one thing to say about the introduction. So people are talking about the El choclo. It's the first record, isn't it? So he didn't say this thing twice. He recorded it once on the tape. And then when the first record comes out with one song on each side, on both sides, his spoken introduction to his new era with Arcea Victor appears. And that's why we're used to hearing it with El choclo. Although that, of course, only from the CD in 2001 in the series Arcea Victor, 100 años, the 100 year anniversary. Before that time, we'd never heard the introduction before.
So yeah, this is super nerdy, Michael, wonderful. Well, because everyone's going in the chat window, what about the other tango where he does it? I just wanted to explain that because people are saying otherwise, I wouldn't have mentioned it. Fantastic. So we come to the end after a long, a long night of, uh, surprisingly not a long night of 1954. I really enjoyed the music from this year, I must say. And Mela's appearance was something really special, wasn't it? It really, uh, somebody said puts you in the mood before the music starts. I think that's exactly what it does. And the power of it, I can't imagine how it must have been, you know, having that going on the whole night. Goodness. Yeah, wow, yeah.
So, uh, thanks to you, Michael, again for sharing your knowledge, and thank you to you for your exciting and often unexpected selections. And I think for a lot of people you've given them a much broader feeling of what these mid-50s years are like than what they've had up till now. I'm surprised myself because most of the music I play, or not most of it but some of it, I have never heard before two weeks ago. So getting into this period is really interesting. I mean, there are some good stuff, not maybe all for dancing, but also for dancing, but especially for listening. Yeah, there were a couple of new things for me as well, so I like that. So thank you for that too.
Let's really thank our sponsors. So of course, uh, our home tango communities, Tango Obraco in Bergen and Tango Norfolk, but especially to the Marabou, because it was through them that I was able to, uh, speak to Jesus Miller and invite him. And I think you could all see he's such a friendly and kind man, and he was thrilled to be able to join us. I thought that was super. My dream is that one day, Michael, when all this is over, this COVID thing, that we'll be able to do a Tango Bayou show from the Marabou nightclub in Buenos Aires together. Now that... Highlights from Tango Bayou. That would be something. Directly from Buenos Aires, Marabou. That would be something. A dream. Something to dream about.
Let's talk. Let's talk. Because this will be over. Of course it will be. And we've got many more dancing years in our legs, even if we have to pause for a bit longer. Yeah, exactly. And we'll be more into the music after this, um, this period of really listening to the variations of tango. Now, have you got an idea for next time? Oh, I didn't think about that.
Um, we'll go early. We haven't, I mean, I've started thinking, we haven't that many years left. We have, we have quite a few. I think about 10 years left from the, yeah, I was looking over. We've still got 28, which is an amazing year, and 34. Yeah, I think there'll be one of those because we need to go a bit back in time now. We've been to the 40s and 50s, so let's go to the 30s or 20s next, or in two weeks. So we'll announce that in a couple of days, I think.
And yeah, so let's end, as the tradition is, with La cumparsita from the year. And there are at least four versions from 54. And the one I want to play is the one by Héctor Varela, which was the, of course, the arranger and bandoneon player of D'Arienzo in the 40s. And we haven't listened to much of his music because he has his own band in the 50s. But well, let's say it's not top of my list. But this is an interesting cumparsita, interpretation, I think. It has some nice piano parts, especially that appeals to me. So, and I also wonder if the variación at the end, if that's Varela himself, or if he was just conducting at this point. I believe he's still playing. Yeah, he's still playing. So it could be him. Okay. Yeah. So with that, good night. And yeah, maybe something will happen after. We could play a few more. Night's still young. So La cumparsita, Héctor Varela, is an instrumental.
Closing track, as the show's tradition: one of at least four 1954 renditions, with nice piano and a variation Stenvoll thinks may be Varela himself.
♪ Music · 2:43 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Thank you so much, Dag. Thank you very much. That was nearly a three-hour program. Yeah, yeah, with the huge pullezy segment in the middle. So, um, yeah, we'll play you a couple more things. Not too many because we've already gone on quite a long time. So I'd like to play something that's not too serious, not 100% essential, just so you can run and refill your water glass. So something from 1954 from the pianist Juancito Díaz, who was the replacement pianist for a while in the D'Arienzo Orchestra, substituting for Fulvio Salamanca. And in the 50s, he started making solo recordings. There's a nice Taquito militar, but we've already heard Taquito militar tonight. So let's play, we'll choose another one. This is Juancito Díaz, two minutes, short little two minutes solo version of Milonga sentimental.
After-party: a short two-minute solo piano version by D'Arienzo's stand-in pianist.
♪ Music · 2:17 · The lyrics, on the song's page
That was fun, wasn't it? There's a lot more of those. Seek them out. Now, we were a bit mean on D'Arienzo, although, you know, I quite agree. For his strongest year, maybe we'd have gone to another year. But it's kind of a pity not to play a D'Arienzo instrumental. So let's just play one. And it's the 54 recording of El internado. Now, once again, special bonus for those who've got their headphones on. And it's not bass notes this time. So you know that D'Arienzo plays always very loud. And that means that the bandoneon players are getting the air. They're using a lot of air and they open their instruments really, really wide, and then you've got to reset your instruments in order to be able to keep on playing. And you can hear that in the opening 10 seconds of this song. The band starts really, really, really loud, the bandoneons run out of air, and all five of them go, and you can hear the sound of them all pushing their instruments shut really fast in order to carry on with the next phrase. And we're able to hear that in the 54 recording because they're using tape masters. The same thing probably happened with earlier recordings, but this sound didn't make it onto the master. And of course, there's a fabulous running variación at the end from the bandoneons. So the 54, El internado.
After-party: Lavocah points out that on this tape master you can hear the bandoneonists snapping their instruments shut after running out of air in the first 10 seconds.
Danced to it
♪ Music · 2:10 ·
Great. Love the comment from Matthias. Enough to start a riot at the beginning of a tanda. And now for something completely different, uh, another Miguel Caló recording with the voice of Alberto Podestá from 1954, the waltz Sueña.
After-party: a waltz with an amazing Podestá vocal, played for the Podestá-Caló pairing.
Danced to it · 5 of 6
♪ Music · 3:30 ·
It just gets better, doesn't it? This gets better. Amazing vocal from Podestá there. Let's play also a tango that we spoke about earlier, El bazar de los juguetes. A bazaar, a bazaar, a shop, it's a toy shop. And the guy, the plot of the lyric is that a man walks into a toy shop on the night of three kings, which in Spanish speaking countries is the night that children get their Christmas presents. And buys all the toys in the shop so that he can give them out free to children because he remembers when he was a child, he was so poor that the best present he could get on Three Kings night was a piece of bread.
After-party: a lyric about a man buying every toy in a shop on the Night of the Three Kings for poor children, because as a child he had only bread.
Danced to it · 5 of 32
♪ Music · 2:47 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Beautiful sentiment as well, as well as a beautiful performance.
So, who's next? Who's next? Let's listen to one version of the tango Oración rante, which is one of the songs of the year, one of the songs that really had a lot of performances. Now, oración is a prayer. Rante is the same word as atorante. It means a vagabond, a vagabond's prayer, a street guy's prayer. And it's a prayer of the good criminal, if you like, who suddenly gets all religious because his mum's really ill and he's worried that his mum's going to die. So he starts praying, please, God, don't let her die. And that's the rough plot of this lyric.
Now, it's not so easy to perform a lyric like that without the thing sounding a bit kitsch. So I listen to all the different versions. And for me, the person who escapes being kitsch 100% is someone that we heard a bit earlier, Edmundo Rivero. Just performing very simply with guitars, he gives an interpretation that I can believe in as really coming from the heart. So we'll listen to Rivero's version then of Oración rante, a tango from this year, from 54. And the lyricist is the same lyricist as Fatal y tanguera. And the composer of the music is none other than Roberto Chanel.
After-party: Rivero's guitar version avoids kitsch in a song about a criminal praying for his dying mother; music by Roberto Chanel, same lyricist as Fatal y tanguera.
That was a bit intense. Ah, goodness. So, and now for something completely different. A few people have been chatting away in the chat window saying, what about Horacio Salgán? Well, yes, let's listen to a really innovative and important composition from Salgán, A fuego lento. Fuego, fire, A fuego lento, on a slow heat, on a low heat. Very influential. Salgán himself was a musician's musician. The people who went to listen to him were other musicians, mostly, didn't have a big following from the dancers. And you'll hear why, but fascinating music that was picked up by many other bands.
After-party: an innovative and influential composition by Salgán, a musician's musician with little following among dancers.
♪ Music · 3:07 ·
Well, that went down okay. Blimey. I don't think I've ever heard that at a Molonga. We didn't set up any polls, but raise your hand if you'd dance to that at the Molonga. No, no, too much. You can enjoy it now. Okay, well, in the same vein, let's listen to one more by Salgán then before we move on. Now, one of Salgán's singers in 1954 was a guy called Roberto Goyeneche, who's going to find fame with Troilo in just a short time. So here he's learning how to accompany a totally wild orchestra.
So I'll play a waltz now. Normally, waltzes, because you've got this one, two, three, one, two, three, the structure gets pinned down, so there's less room to do crazy stuff. And at the beginning of the waltz that's how it appears, but the last 30 seconds the whole thing completely goes off piste. I wasn't planning to play this, but there was such an interesting reaction to the Salgán piece. We'll play this one more. This is the waltz, also from 54, Por el camino, On the Way.
After-party: a waltz whose last 30 seconds goes completely off the rails; Goyeneche was learning to accompany a wild orchestra before finding fame with Troilo.
♪ Music · 1:57 ·
That's mad, isn't it? Mad as a box of frogs.
Dag, earlier on we were chatting about the difference between the Di Sarli sound at the beginning of the 50s when he's playing on Music Hall and the sound in the late 50s when he switches to Victor. So let's just really make that obvious with the people by playing them like the first 30 seconds of the El choclo that we know and then we'll play them the El choclo they don't know. Yeah, that's the plan. So first of all what you normally hear is this.
Chapter · 3:16:07
The dirty El choclo
Di Sarli recorded El choclo twice in 1954. One is dirty.
After-party: the RCA Victor version, the one everyone knows, played in contrast to the Music Hall one.
♪ Music · 0:48 ·
So not quite so crystal clear, but still pretty good. Six months earlier, it sounded like this.
After-party: the earlier, dirtier Music Hall version (about six months earlier), which Stenvoll prefers for its emotional contrast.
♪ Music · 2:41 ·
Yeah, the dirty one's good, isn't it? And what I noticed just playing it now for listening with all of us together is that when we got to the delicate piano part, it made a really big contrast to what happened before when it got... Emotionally, it made a big contrast because suddenly it wasn't dirty. And then it went back to being dirty again. And that kind of emotional contrast, you just don't get at all in the other recording.
So I'm glad you like that. Glad you like that. That makes me feel good.
So just a few more, because it's been a long night. I need a bit more Di Sarli. Let's listen. Why not? I know we're trying to enjoy ourselves, but let's listen to Di Sarli and Mario Pomar staring into the abyss of existential dread. Existence angst for the German speakers? Exactly. Tormenta.
After-party: Di Sarli and Pomar staring into existential dread, a Discépolo song.
Blimey, where do you go after that? There is more good Di Sarli from 1954 because there are no bad Di Sarli tracks. But I think we've heard some very nice Di Sarli already tonight. So let's wind our way to the finish. I want to play one Troilo number, the last tango, the Troilo number. And then there'll be a classical surprise. I don't do it deliberately every week, but that's what happened last time. And you seem to like it. And then we'll go straight on to the end.
So first Troilo, a track with Berón singing from 54. Corrientes angosta. So Corrientes refers to the street, Corrientes. But as you know, the city was modernised all through the 1930s. And angosta means narrow. So originally, Corrientes, the main nightlife street, was a tiny narrow street and theatres and houses were torn down all down one side. The whole street was demolished to make it wider.
So this is a sentimental tango about how everything was much better before they did that with the voice of Raúl Berón. Not a number that we hear in the milonga.
After-party: a sentimental tango about the narrow old Corrientes street before it was widened; not a milonga number.
♪ Music · 3:13 ·
Grand stuff. So we've come to the end of our evening. Thank you so much for being here. It really means so much to see your faces and your reactions and to share music with you. Both Dag and myself really appreciate it.
So the little surprise before we play it with the Peer Gynt suite. So here's a number from someone who became a huge star in 1953, burst onto the scene, not the tango scene, a different scene. Someone who I think all of you know. Well, perhaps not everybody, but many of you will know. And the particular track I'm going to play was used as the theme tune of the French film Diva, if you know that. A wonderful film about being obsessed with an opera singer. I am, of course, talking about Maria Callas, the voice of the century. This is the aria from the opera La wally.
Lavocah's classical surprise: Callas, who became a star in 1953, in the aria used as the theme of the film Diva.
♪ Music · 4:38 ·
Tango By Year is Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah's, published here with their permission. The audio plays from SoundCloud.