TBY Lost Afterparty III - 1947
Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah · 3 Feb 2021 · 2:45:26
The third 'lost afterparty', revisiting 1947 ten months after the original two-hour show and playing everything that didn't fit the first time. Where 1944 was beauty and lyricism, 1947 is darker and more complex: the Golden Age has passed its peak and censorship is starting to bite, a year before the government bans Pugliese's orchestra and folk singer Atahualpa Yupanqui outright. The orchestras skipped first time round get their turn — Tanturi (now missing singers Castillo and Campos), D'Agostino (newly split from Ángel Vargas), and an unusually sophisticated late run of Canaro recordings with guest singer Nelly Omar. The second half belongs to the year's two giants, Troilo and Pugliese, including a 1947 Radio El Mundo recording of Troilo's 'Los Despojos' that was never commercially issued, and Pugliese's 'Bolero', which jokes about Latin dance music's growing threat to tango.
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Tango 1938Episode 31 · 10 Feb 2021 · 3:15:28What this episode gave Tangopedia
Facts said in the episode, each now cited to the minute it is said.
Piazzolla's orquesta típica — his only one; later groups were never típicas — was formed in 1946, playing complex arrangements from a book of around 120 songs for cafés and hipsters rather than dancers.
Marino's voice is easier to hear on his post-Troilo solo recordings because Troilo deliberately kept him further from the microphone to balance the singer against the band.
No version of La Cumparsita was recorded at all in 1947.
By 1947 Tanturi no longer had his former singers Alberto Castillo or Campos; the new pair, Osvaldo Ribó and Roberto Videla, replaced them.
Remembranza is usually associated with Pugliese and singer Alberto Massiel, but Massiel first performed it with the Gobbi orchestra before bringing it to Pugliese.
Comic opener Lavocah predicts will be the night's last laugh before 1947 turns serious.
Only in the episode
Chapter · 7:26
The Singer Troilo Kept Quiet
Troilo never let a singer get louder than the band. One of them got fired for turning up his own microphone.
Played to cover the Tanturi gap from the original show; compared with the better-known Pugliese-Massiel and Gobbi versions.
♪ Music · 2:25 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 7
A fully danceable reading of a tango that, in Pugliese and Morán's later version, breaks out of dance structure entirely.
The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 1
A tribute waltz mourning singer Magaldi's 1938 death, chosen to fill the De Angelis-shaped gap in the original show.
Only in the episode
Proof there was a Cumparsita connection in 1947 after all: the melody quotes La Cumparsita throughout.
♪ Music · 3:28 ·
Chapter · 27:58
Why There Were So Few Women Singers
A tango orchestra worked until 4am, six nights a week. No married woman was allowed to do that.
One of ten recordings Nelly Omar made with Canaro's orchestra over 1946-48; Lavocah says a great singer 'raises the level' of any tango she sings.
Watch it danced · 1
Chapter · 28:37
The Vanishing Co-Writer
He wrote a tango that won Buenos Aires's top prize. Then his own brother erased his name from it.
Second of the Nelly Omar/Canaro pair played back to back; listen for the mid-song shift into habanera rhythm.
Only in the episode
D'Agostino's spacious, stretched-out phrasing on a song usually associated with Alberto Podestá and Francini-Pontier.
An unusually tender milonga wishing Gardel, dead since 1935, had lived to grow old instead of dying at his most famous.
Only in the episode
Di Sarli recorded this waltz twice; this earlier version is chosen over the later remake with Oscar Serpa.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:10 ·
A little-known instrumental chosen over El Pollito for lack of time; prized for its weeping violin counter-melody at the close.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:50 ·
Podestá is Di Sarli's only singer this year; the refrain 'money, money' turns into a complaint that wealth ruined a happy relationship.
Only in the episode
From Piazzolla's only true orquesta típica (formed 1946); complex, colour-shifting arrangements built for listening, not the dance floor.
Chosen to demonstrate marcato en ocho — eight accents per bar instead of tango's usual four.
Only in the episode
By 1947 Caló has only Iriarte left and the songs have lost some earlier power, but it's still harmonious and pleasing.
♪ Music · 3:01 ·
Watch it danced · 116
Arranged and conducted by Troilo's favourite arranger, Argentino Galván, sounding so Troilo-like Lavocah says you'd believe it a Troilo copy.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 1:21 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A milonga candombe, part of the Afro-Argentine-styled stage repertoire Castillo built after his bitter 1943 split from Tanturi.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 4:20 ·
A rare duo between D'Arienzo's two singers of the era.
♪ Music · 2:22 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 15
A tune from Carlos Di Sarli's own repertoire, rearranged by Héctor Varela for D'Arienzo's very different, rhythm-first band.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:04 ·
Shows unusual-for-D'Arienzo sophistication: stop-time pauses, echoing Troilo, drop Laborde into a hushed half-voice before the band returns at full power.
♪ Music · 3:43 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 15
A second Laborde number in the same more dynamic, Varela-arranged vein.
Chapter · 1:52:51
The Tango That Lost to a Bolero
He goes to meet her family. She sits at the piano. She doesn't play a single tango.
A suitor realises mid-courtship his girl plays only boleros, never a tango — a joke about Latin dance music's postwar inroads into tango's turf.
Directly compared with the Troilo-Rivero version of the same 1947 song, played in the original April 2020 show; Pugliese can be heard stamping his foot to count the band back in before the Chan Chan.
Watch it danced · 75
An old Guardia Vieja tango reharmonised so thoroughly that Lavocah says Pugliese 'hears things in the original that the composer himself did not hear'.
Watch it danced · 5
Chapter · 2:09:19
The Composer Who Didn't Recognise His Own Song
Pugliese played a tango so differently that its own composer couldn't follow what he'd done to it.
Chosen over another 1947 Morán/Pugliese track, Café, as Morán's single feature of the night.
♪ Music · 2:07 ·
Watch it danced · 1
Normally an instrumental; this version is sung. As a soloist act within the band, Marino is finally close enough to the mic to show off his voice.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 0:46 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Chapter · 2:20:51
Two Clubs, Two Dance Floors, Four Bands
One carnival poster, four orchestra names. How did Buenos Aires's football clubs fit them all in?
Chapter · 2:23:55
The Record Censorship Buried for Five Years
He recorded three songs in one session. Only one ever got pressed on time.
Chapter · 2:32:00
The Tango Troilo Never Got to Record
Troilo's band played it live on the radio in 1947. Nobody heard it properly again until 2014.
From a live 1947 Radio El Mundo broadcast, never issued on shellac and recovered for the 2014 'Pichuco 100 años' reissue; the only studio version on record is by a different orchestra, Miguel Caló.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:49 · The lyrics, on the song's page
The closing waltz of the night.
♪ Music · 2:41 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 57
The play-out track as the hosts sign off.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 4:57 ·
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Tango By Year is Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah's, published here with their permission. The audio plays from SoundCloud.