TBY Love Special
Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah · 30 Dec 2020 · 4:08:21
A special on love in tango music: Stenvoll plays only tangos, waltzes and milongas with 'amor' in the title, from 1926 to Pugliese live in 1992, while Lavocah gives the short version of his lecture on how tango lyrics grow up. Early lyrics are naive (La morocha, 1905), then from Mi noche triste (1917) come about three decades of blame, forgiveness and revenge, and finally a nuanced grey zone in later Manzi and 1950s tangos where people plead for another try. In a long Lost-After-Party-style closing set Lavocah drops tango altogether and plays love songs from France, Colombia, Cuba, Lebanon, Portugal, Mexico, Turkey and Russia. The show also announces that Lavocah will host 'lost after parties' for 1941, 1944, 1947 and 1951 on the off-weeks.
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TBY Lost Afterparty I - 1941Episode 26 · 6 Jan 2021 · 3:18:27What this episode gave Tangopedia
Facts said in the episode, each now cited to the minute it is said.
Tango lyrics about love grow up over time: early ones (La morocha, 1905) are naive and happily-ever-after; from Mi noche triste (1917) the man is abandoned, and for about three decades most lyrics are blame, anger, shame (often put on the woman), with only two options: forgiveness or revenge. Later lyrics, such as Manzi's and a 1956 tango, reach a nuanced grey zone.
In La morocha (1905) the woman makes the man's mate and keeps house, and he rides off as a gaucho and comes home to a tidy house; Lavocah uses it as the naive period of tango lyrics.
Troilo rated Le Pera highly as a lyricist: just as there is a big four of tango orchestras there is a big four of lyricists, and Troilo said Le Pera was 'number five'. Gardel and Le Pera wrote a huge number of works together.
Acuña's Cuando el amor muera is one of the rare Di Sarli vocals without Rufino: when Rufino returned, the stand-in singer was always kept on briefly, but would get fed up and leave.
By 1958, with few dancers left, the surviving bands become more symphonic and operatic in delivery, as heard in Di Sarli's last recordings with Horacio Casares.
Chapter · 2:47
From 'happily ever after' to 'forgive or take revenge'
Tango lyrics grew up in three stages.
A Gardel composition about love's two sides, joy and pain; its theme is forgiveness, and Maida's velvety voice softens Canaro's martial beat.
♪ Music · 2:19 ·
Chapter · 12:18
A cattle baron who lost it all
Firpo tried to retire and become a rancher.
Firpo made two recordings with this title in 1929, a waltz and this tango; played as an example of early happy love.
♪ Music · 2:11 ·
A rare Di Sarli vocal without Rufino, with Acuña filling in; a sad lyric about a love that will end.
Only in the episode
One of Di Sarli's last recordings, in 1958, symphonic and operatic; heard as 'Call me my love'. Lyrics promise to arrive on silver moonbeams.
Only in the episode
A Schiammarella milonga in lunfardo about love as a game, with chat-up lines.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:45 ·
A funny milonga about an old man in love who wears a corset at night and does not smile for fear his false teeth fall out.
Watch it danced · 29
A conversational Lomuto track from a very good year for the orchestra; lyric 'love is like a dream or an illusion'.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 1:42 ·
A restrained, Caló-like Maderna track about love lost or wasted, with a callow ending, unusual for his piano-heavy records.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:27 ·
One of the few post-1938 Canaro tracks Stenvoll likes; Roldán's darker voice fits the lyric about a last kiss.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 0:02 ·
Chapter · 50:10
Getting Salamanca out of jail
D'Arienzo missed a rehearsal to bail out his pianist.
Salamanca's own orchestra after leaving D'Arienzo; a lost-love lyric seeing the ex on another man's arm.
♪ Music · 2:17 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 13
A bitter waltz serenade to a lost love; the last word is 'traición'.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 1:51 ·
Piano-and-guitar accompaniment from a Paris record; a song known across South America that says an old love never says goodbye.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:24 ·
A hit from the stage show La muchachada del centro; Falcón's voice and held notes, and a counter-melody by a muted cornet or trumpet.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:33 ·
A high-octane tango; Mauré holds the vowel in 'amor' for about five seconds.
♪ Music · 3:15 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 362
Valdez, young in the band, begs for a single minute of love, in a party-piece vowel stretch like his Remembranza.
Watch it danced · 1
Chapter · 1:22:55
The saw that sold 20,000 records
A tango musician became famous for playing a saw.
An early instrumental played for its title ('Orgies of Love'); it sounds more mellow than orgiastic.
Only in the episode
A Gardel song where the lover has torn up the letter saying he would never return; Gardel makes an average lyric sound great. Canaro recorded an instrumental of it in 1927.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 1:56 ·
Chapter · 1:33:40
Troilo and the lyric that is about you
One day you will realise the song is about you.
A nuanced, mature lyric: a man who has had thousands of love affairs but knows he still has more to learn about love.
♪ Music · 2:56 ·
Watch it danced · 5
A dramatic late Pugliese vocal on Polygram, about being torn between two loves; Lavocah notes the lyric dates back to 1932.
♪ Music · 2:45 ·
A very slow, feel-good waltz sung from a male perspective, accompanied by a trio of typical players.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:39 ·
The three important things in life in an Argentine man's order; the Lomuto version was in Tango 1939.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:31 ·
Vargas, who we do not usually associate with love songs, in a song by Luis Tasso that De Angelis also recorded; Lavocah thinks Troilo would have found the lyric not sophisticated enough.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:04 ·
Ruiz re-sings a 1943 De Angelis hit, with free phrasing; a lyric about someone literally dying of love.
♪ Music · 2:58 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A hit of 1956-57 with 12 recordings; Stenvoll finds nobody 'puts more petrol on the fire' than Morán, though he thinks it shows few great compositions in the late 1950s.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:07 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A Biagi waltz that had everyone dancing in their windows.
♪ Music · 2:10 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 63
'An absolute classic' from an earlier era, 'crazy from love'.
The lyrics, on the song's page
Watch it danced · 82
Pedro Laurenz's milonga in Charlo's solo version with guitars: a nostalgic longing for the past and for the old village.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:48 · The lyrics, on the song's page
An instrumental by the composer of En sueños, with a Hawaiian guitar and a melody with an 'inherent logic'.
♪ Music · 2:21 ·
A wonderful Lamarca voice in a Maurano composition about a sweet new love.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:21 ·
Chapter · 2:36:45
Dizzy Gillespie at the Rendezvous
A jazz giant recorded four tangos with Fresedo.
A track with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, recorded when he visited the Rendezvous club in 1956 (with Vida mía, Adiós muchachos and Preludio no. 3); not a tango for dancing.
♪ Music · 3:45 ·
Chapter · 2:45:30
Waiting 40 years for a singer
Pugliese kept a tango in a drawer for four decades.
A live performance by an 87-year-old Pugliese, of a tango he wrote in the late 1940s for Morán, who rejected it; he waited decades for Guida.
Only in the episode
The 'compasita' of the night: a very romantic Fresedo waltz, here with a harp introduction on the new Tango Time Travel compilation.
♪ Music · 3:02 ·
Watch it danced · 1
After-party: the oldest love song Lavocah had access to; the melody was later borrowed for an Elvis song.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:11 ·
After-party: a French orchestra plays a Piaf song as a tango, from a record in a listener's private collection; it opens by quoting the first song.
♪ Music · 0:02 ·
After-party: an instrumental interpretation of the question Cole Porter asked in 1929.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:09 ·
After-party: a live recording from the Théâtre de l'Étoile in Paris; Lavocah praises her naturalness.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 6:31 ·
After-party: a joyful Colombian song, 'voy a robarte en secreto la noche', played to move from French to Spanish-language love lyrics.
Only in the episode
After-party: an intimate Cuban cabaret song by a singer-pianist nicknamed Snowball for his round head.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:13 ·
After-party: Lebanon's biggest singer, 'the Arabic Edith Piaf', whose voice sits between Eastern and Western; English title 'Laura's Lover' as heard.
Only in the episode
After-party: Holiday on the lighter side of love, from her early years with the Teddy Wilson orchestra.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:45 ·
After-party: a Portuguese fado from an album with all music by Alain Oulman (Lavocah calls it possibly the worst song on the album, and mentions As mãos que trago).
Only in the episode
After-party: Mexican trio with a requinto, the original line-up, singing a nostalgic song about 'a ray of light that went out'.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 0:22 ·
After-party: Lymon was 13 when he performed it.
Only in the episode
After-party: a Turkish song by a deep-alto singer, 'the sea of love'; Turkish 'aşk' is passionate love.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 3:00 ·
After-party: a late recording by a once-famous Russian tango singer, made shortly before his death.
Only in the episode
♪ Music · 2:49 ·
After-party: a song from Meet Me in St. Louis chosen because it says this Christmas is rubbish but perhaps next year will be better.
Only in the episode
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Tango By Year is Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah's, published here with their permission. The audio plays from SoundCloud.