Troilo special
Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah · 2020-07-08 · 4:24:19
A special for the second edition of Michael Lavocah's book on Aníbal Troilo (more than 25 new tracks, more on the post-mid-40s orchestra). For once Lavocah knows the orchestra but not the tracks or order, and Dag Stenvoll plays from Troilo's career in a deliberately non-chronological order, from his first recordings in 1938 to his last in 1971, avoiding the songs already heard in earlier shows. They trace the three phases of his career: traditional dance music to the late 40s, a transition in the early 50s as he embraces Piazzolla, and the later concert era. They go through the singers (Fiorentino, Marino, Ruiz, Rivero, Berón, Rufino, Goyeneche, Nelly Vásquez) and the pianist Orlando Goñi, with Lavocah giving detail on Troilo's character, generosity, grief for Homero Manzi and the story of La última curda. The talk ends with a Tango Tunes transfer discussion (missing bars in old CD transfers) and a 1943 La cumparsita.
What this episode gave Tangopedia
Facts said in the episode, each now cited to the minute it is said.
Astor Piazzolla joined Troilo's band in 1940 after a lucky audition: he had watched Troilo's fingerings from a café table, and when Toto Rodríguez fell ill he ran home for his bandoneón and played Troilo's piece with a bass-note variation Troilo himself didn't play; Troilo told him he was hired by saying he must wear a blue suit.
In the audience poll Fiorentino took just over half the votes and Floreal Ruiz was a clear second at 29%; Goyeneche and Marino were tied for third, with Berón and Rufino close behind, Rivero next and Nelly Vásquez with none.
Late-30s and early-40s Troilo is a synthesis of all the high-level music then existing: very rhythmic and syncopated, very melodic, and an orchestra that delivers the lyric.
Troilo was non-political and never joined the Peronist party though one had to to work, and was so generous that he'd pay for 20 people's dinner; after collecting royalties from SADAIC he gave all the cash to people in need and had nothing left when his wife Zita asked for 200 pesos.
Rivero left Troilo in April 1950 after about three years; Troilo, who pushed singers out when he thought it best for their careers, gave a spoken farewell on the radio calling him a friend and brother, and called Rivero back in 1956 for two special recordings. Rivero is more a 'cantor nacional' singing all Argentine rhythms than an orchestra singer.
Records played · 40
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.
Good evening, everyone. This is Tango Bayer's special Troilo edition, and the occasion is Michael just published the second edition of his Troilo book with more than 25 new tracks analysed and more emphasis on the Troilo orchestra after the mid-40s. Congratulations, Michael.
Thank you very much indeed, and thank you all for joining us for an Troilo fest. Exactly. You look smashing in your blue suit. Thank you so much. You look smashing in your blue suit. Thank you.
And maybe you can tell the audience why we're wearing blue suits. Why are we wearing blue suits? It's the talk of the town. Well, Dag, it was Dag's suggestion, but it goes back to an anecdote that is in the first edition of the Troilo book and it's the night of Piazzolla's audition in the Troilo band in 1940.
Chapter · 1:58
The blue suit
Why Dag and Michael wore blue suits to talk about Troilo.
So Piazzolla was crazy to listen to the band, and he would sit there nursing a single cup of coffee. And on this particular evening, Toto Rodriguez was ill. Now, Toto Rodriguez was second band union in the orchestra, and they were a man short. And Piazzolla had already become friends with Hugo Borrales, who was third violin in the band, no, second violin. So he thought, this is it. This is my chance. Tell Troilo. So he ran home, got his band and yon, came back, and Troilo gave him a little bit of an audition.
He had to play a couple of numbers, and he astonished everybody by playing everything because he'd sat and watched Troilo's fingerings and he knew all of Troilo's fingerings on the bandignon. And for his audition, he played Amorado and he played it, first of all, as Troilo played it on the right hand, but then he played the variation on the left hand in the bass notes, which Troilo didn't even do himself. So that was it.
He was hired and Troilo told him he was hired by saying, you know we wear blue suits, don't you? Yeah. You had to go to the tailors and get a blue suit. So that's why, out of respect and a desperate attempt to associate ourselves with the Troilo orchestra, yeah, Dag and I are in blue suits. So that's the first part, and then the second part is why was Dag playing this crazy music. So when he was told that he was hired, Piazzolla was so happy that he burst into an acapella rendition on the bandignon of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and this didn't impress anybody apparently. Orlando Goñi just looked at him like this and said, save it for the Americans.
“[Goñi] just looked at him like this and said, save it for the Americans.”
Great story. Yeah, this is why I remember that story from the book. So play that as pre-Cortina. So as a little teaser, I launched this poll during the Gershwin song about who is or are your favorite singer and singers with Troilo. And I'm going to show you... Aren't the results interesting? I'm going to show you the results, but Michael, you haven't seen the results. What's your guess of the three top positions?
Well, actually, I have seen the results. Oh, you have seen them. I didn't know you saw them. But I'm going to pretend that I haven't. My guess would be Fiorentino, Marino, Ruiz. And I see that I'm wrong. So this is very interesting. Yeah. Floreal Ruiz is in second place, which pleases me a lot because he's also one of my favorites. And I didn't vote, by the way, because we're hosts and co-hosts. We cannot vote. Yes, we didn't vote.
Yes, so Fiorentino took just more than half the votes and Ruiz at very clear second place, 29%. If we'd have run this poll 10 years ago the numbers wouldn't be like this, and then Goyeneche and Marino are kind of tied in third spot, Berón and Rufino close behind them, and Rivero trailing behind, and nobody even voted for Nelly Vásquez. Probably you don't know who she is. Hmm, wow, interesting, interesting.
Yeah, before we go on to the music, like you always do, maybe you could, Michael, give a little introduction to Troilo, not so long of course because we'll get into the details later, just a couple of minutes. Oh gosh, you mean like not like musically or as a human being, or both of that all in one two minute slot? Yeah, all that in two minutes. So actually there's one thing we can say that's kind of true about both. Troilo was at the center. So he was at the center musically. He's kind of like a synthesis. If you listen to the late 30s, early 40s Troilo, it's a synthesis of all the music that exists at a high level. So it's extremely rhythmic, the early Troilo Orchestra. It's got great rhythm and syncopation, but it's also a very melodic orchestra and it's also an orchestra that delivers the lyric. So in that sense Troilo's in the center, and he's the same as a human being. Troilo was not political and like his religion was humanity, let's put it that way. A completely non-political person, never joined the Peronist party during the Peronist era where you had to, to work, but was still able to work.
After a gig, you know, the band would, you know, he'd go out and sit down for dinner somewhere and there'd be 20 people at the table and he'd just pay for everybody, always like that, extremely generous. I just read a lovely story about Troilo's generosity. He'd been to Sadik to collect his royalties and his royalties were very good, you know, he sold a lot of records and a lot of sheet music. So he came out with this huge wodge of cash and then on the way home he kept bumping into people who were in need, so you know he would, you know, give money to people. And then he got home and Zita, his wife, said to me, oh, Gordo, could you let me have 200 pesos for the shopping? And he said, oh, I'm sorry, I haven't got a cent. He'd given it all away. That's the kind of person he was, a generous person.
And that reflects in his music also, or the way he treated his band members maybe? Well, it was the band that every singer wanted to be in, and the other thing here in the music is he's a sentimental man, really deeply sentimental. Loved his friends, and as he became older and some of those friends passed away he was terribly, terribly affected by it, especially the death of Homero Manzi. He never really recovered from that. I want to say there's a lot of feeling and sentimentality in his music, which we'll hear tonight. About your book, it's packed with interesting knowledge and stories and this analysis of the songs. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, just a few days ago, right?
Yesterday, as in the Tango by Year series, you've given me free hands to pick whatever tracks I want for this program. I am, but this year tonight it's different though, isn't it? Because this time I know the orchestra but I don't know the year. I've got no idea what you're going to play or in what order exactly. And the order is going to be different because your book is chronological, but I want to do it a different way so that we approach it, get more variation across the periods of Troilo. And Dag hasn't told me what his plans are for the evening, how he wants to structure it, what approach he's going to take. So I've got no idea.
Exactly. And there are just under 500 Troilo recordings. It's been a wonderful job to select a maximum, I think, of 30 tracks for this Tango Treasure program. And I'm not going to repeat any of those songs we heard earlier in the Tango by Year series. That's about 20 top tracks already out, but there was still a lot of hard choices to select. There's so much good repertoire. So let's start where we left last week in 1950. And as you said, then 1950 was a year of transition for Troilo. He changed his record company and also Piazzolla comes in as his main arranger. And there was one Troilo track from that year I avoided playing on purpose because I wanted to keep it for tonight. It's not a studio recording but it's a radio transfer of Edmundo Rivero singing Silencio, Silence. It's his farewell appearance with Troilo since he left this year, right, to go solo. 4th of April 1950. I've got that date in here, I don't know why.
It's very interesting, the relationship that Troilo had with his soloists, because if he thought the best thing for their career was to leave the band, he'd make them leave the band. Now with Rivero that was a bit easier because Rivero, all of us here tonight folks, we think of Rivero, probably, most of us, think of Rivero as a cantor de la orquesta, an orchestra singer. But when you look at what he did afterwards, then you realise that he's not. Rivero is more of a cantor nacional, as Gardel was, and a singer of national music, all the rhythms of Argentina, not just tango, waltz and milonga. So his repertoire is broader. So it was in a way natural, a more natural step for him to leave the orchestra, because then he could go back to doing kinds of things that there was quite a limited opportunity to do in the orchestra, like milonga in negro. I don't know if we'll talk about that tonight. Very strange, very strange track.
And the same thing happened later with Goyeneche. Troilo decided that it was time for Goyeneche to go solo, and he was absolutely right, and he pushed him out of the band, but maybe we'll talk about Goyeneche later, so I won't tell the story now. And we've heard Rivero singing, of course, also with Budges Backed by Guitars as a soloist in the previous Tango by Year programs. What's special about this recording is that there is an introduction by Troilo himself, or rather it's more like a farewell speech where he praises Rivero's singing and their friendship. And I'd like to play that also because it gives you a kind of impression of Troilo, because even if you don't understand Spanish or just a little like me, you can still kind of hear what kind of person is, this warmth and friendliness in his voice.
And let's say a little bit about what he says, because he says after these three years of hard work together, it's time for you to leave the nest. But you don't do with any rupture in our relationship. You do it as a friend and a brother. And so we say to you, good luck, gaucho. Yeah, that's a nice one. And it's a radio recording, so the sound quality is not great. And after the introduction, Rivero sings Silencio, which is also a classic. Do you want to say something about this? It's a song inspired by World War I, isn't it? It is.
But in this case, there's a double meaning. Because when the band and Rivero fall silent at the end of the song, that's it. Silencio means silence. And when they fall silent, that's the end of the vocal partnership of Troilo and Rivero. Although he does call him back in 1956 for a couple of special recordings. He can't bear to be without him. We'll get back to that in a minute. But first, Silencio from 1950.
A radio transfer of Rivero's farewell appearance with Troilo, introduced by Troilo's own spoken farewell speech; the song's closing silence doubles as the end of their partnership.
Applause is the right thing, isn't it? Wow, imagine being there, Michael. Yeah, great recordings, great period we had, they had together. And yeah, as with all the singers of Troilo, we wonder about the unrecorded repertoire, and Rivero's work suffers particularly badly just through an accident of timing, because it's April 1950 when he leaves and at that point, Troilo left his previous record company already six months previously, so that six months of repertoire not recorded. People are asking about Silencio. Yeah, not really recorded by dance orchestras, although doesn't Canaro do it? Yeah, early one I think, early recording. Not sure. And Pugliese records it in late 50s with Martial. Yes, very interesting recording.
But let's go to a different, like a studio recording with Rivero to hear his voice for real. And let's go to his first recording with Troilo, Gira, gira from 1947. And Paul Potomar, which I often use as translator, he translates the title as Ho Ho. No. I guess it's just an alternative, like life's a bitch, maybe. How would you translate it, Michael? It's too much even that. Yeah, Gira, gira means it turns, it turns. There is a reason why he's done that, because it turns can mean so many different things. It could mean your luck's turned. It's a lyric of Discépolo, tango's prophet of despair. So, of course, it's about luck changing from good to bad.
But you know that Wooners-Adis is a city laid out on a grid. And when a hooker, a street walker, is walking the street, she walks around the corner and she turns the corner. So that's the double entendre that we might get from the title, and that's where Paul's got that from, but it's really a very bleak song about, from the late 20s, about life's hardship, about suffering and really about ultimate loneliness. It's a depression era song and it's about how when you've run out of money, it's a bit like the tango equivalent of the blues song Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out. So he describes absolute poverty in this lyric. He describes taking yesterday's mate, the tea leaves, and drying them in the sun so you can make tea again today, how you ring on the doorbell of your friend and they don't answer, you just lean on the button until the battery runs down and the bell doesn't ring anymore and they don't answer. So it's a really, really tough song.
And if I'm not mistaken, the record that it's on, both sides are Discépolo recordings. Gira, gira on one side with Rivero, and on the other side, Confesión with Floreal Ruiz, which is one of my own personal favorites. Yeah, and we listened to that one in 47, I remember. Thank God, now, 47.
Second song I'm going to play by Rivero. It's his last recording with Troilo. And you mentioned he came back to Troilo and recorded two numbers. Two numbers just in 56. Yeah. Special guest star. Exactly. And I'm going to play La última curda, The Last Binge, because there's a special story behind that. And you write about that in your book. You want to tell it? Yeah, come on.
La última curda. I mean, God, what a lyric. It's about drinking the bitter cup right down to the bottom, right down to the dregs, we say in English. And it's where Bajo Fondo comes from. Bajo Fondo Tango Club, who were so popular 20 years ago, as the revival looked for a modern expression. Bajo Fondo, bajo means down, fondo, to the bottom. And Cátulo Castillo, the lyricist in La última curda, the final binge, talks about going right down bajo fondo to the bottom where the mud is bubbling.
What is a binge for a non-English speaker? A binge is when you go out and drink in order to get drunk. That's a binge. Yes. So here is binging on feelings. On binge, binge drinking, here it's binge, well, feeling and drinking, the two together. All right, let's listen to these magnificent songs with Rivero.
Rivero's first recording with Troilo, a bleak Discépolo lyric about luck turning and ultimate loneliness; Lavocah notes the street-corner double meaning of the title.
♪ Music · 3:05 ·
One of two special-guest recordings Rivero made with Troilo in 1956; Cátulo Castillo's lyric about drinking the last bitter cup, and the subject of a full chapter in Lavocah's book.
Danced to it · 5 of 60
Michael, there are just two songs in your... That gets a whole chapter in your trailer book. Yes. And this is one of them. Why did you write a chapter about this song?
Mmm. Partly because of the song and partly because of the story of its creation, but it's so intense, isn't it? It is. It's not just a sentimental love song. Troilo liked love songs. And when censorship came in in 1943, I mean, of course it did affect him, but it didn't affect him that much because censorship affected tangos, which had a lot of lunfardo in them, the local slang, which is the kind of stuff that D'Arienzo was recording. Not just D'Arienzo, Pugliesi, he was also affected. But Troilo was making these sophisticated love songs with poetry for lyrics, so didn't touch him at all.
But this is not one of these sentimental, sophisticated love songs. It's sophisticated, but it's hard. It's gazing into the abyss and I'm blinking, look into the abyss, so it stands out for me in his repertoire for that reason, you know. It's more real, it's not just saying the same old stuff, it's saying something new, so I love that. And also, yeah, and for those of the audience who wants to hear the story, they can buy your book, can't they? We'll keep it a secret. All right, but it's also a reason why I want to play it, because it's such a fantastic story about how this song came about. Oh, we've got to tell them. Come on, won't we? Okay, go on then. Just briefly. Yeah.
So the lyric was complete. The music was complete. Now, when that's complete, it doesn't mean for Troilo that the performance is complete. Troilo's music is very phrased, exactly when the singer sings, how strictly that connects to the written notes on the page. It's quite free in Troilo's orchestra. Not super free, not as free as in Calo maybe, but more free than it is with Di Sali. And if things didn't fit, Troilo might decide to change a word. Maybe it suited the singer's voice better. This is why it took a month to organise the premiere of Naranjo in Flor because Troilo and Floreal Ruiz were just meeting every day and they're changing the phrasing and maybe even the text.
Chapter · 31:00
The tango born in an evening
A song normally takes a month to perfect. This one took one hot night.
So Troilo decided, oh, what about my old mate Edmundo Rivero, Edmundo, I haven't seen him for a while, he loved this song. So it was a hot summer night and he rang him up and said, I've got this great new song, why don't you come over with your wife and we'll, you know, have a couple of whiskeys. So that's what happens. Troilo and his wife are at home, Edmundo Rivero turns up with his wife, they start drinking whiskey and then Troilo starts rehearsing this song on the band and yon and it's a hot night, they have another whiskey, they carry on because it's so hot, the balcony doors are open. And after, I don't know, four or five hours of this, they've finished it, not a month in this case, a few hours. So then they perform the whole thing and when they finish, there's all this applause from the street below because it's four o'clock in the morning and it's chucking out time at the cabaret across the street.
So all the people have come out of the cabaret because they've been thrown out, go home, and they've heard this impromptu performance debut, in fact, of a brand new tango of Troilo that no one has ever heard before. So there we go. Yeah. From these rather bleak but beautiful portrayals of life as very difficult and as an absurd wound, let's go back in time to the beginning of Troilo's Orchestra of 1937. Great, I need a lift. Yes, yes, we need a lift.
You're right that Troilo's aim when he formed this 1937 orchestra was to have the instruments form phrases in the way Gardel sings. Well, I'm just quoting Troilo on that. He said, when I formed my orchestra, my aim was very clear. Que todos frasearon conjunto como Gardel, that the whole band would form its phrases as a unit in the manner of Gardel, which is, I mean, it's kind of shocking. It ought to be shocking because what's happened as we reach the golden decade of the 40s is that tango has forked, hasn't it? There's tango for singing and tango for dancing, and they've become almost completely different. The soloists, Gardel, Corsini, and all the women, Libertad La Marca, Azuzanna Maizani, they've got nothing to do with tango dancing. And Troilo is saying, no, no, I'm going to make a band that sounds like Gardel, because he really respects Gardel.
Just as Julio De Caro created the technical apparatus that all the advanced bands then used to make more sophisticated music, Gardel created the language of the tango singer, a certain way of phrasing. Phrasing with a rastre, but what's the rastre? When it goes zoom and it gets louder, Gardel does that, he's the first person to do that, so he kind of creates the vocabulary that all the tango singers then depend upon after him. And Troilo's got amazing respect for him. There's a bit of video surfaced just a couple of weeks ago on YouTube and there's a really old Troilo, so it's from towards the end of his life, being interviewed in Rosario by a TV journalist and they get to this very, very point. And so the interviewer says, so you play as though you were accompanying Gardel, and Troilo says yes, and then the interview just goes on. There's this one little moment you have to pay attention.
So for Troilo, he's accompanying Gardel, he makes a band that sounds like Gardel and is designed to accompany Gardel. But it's a bit strange because Gardel didn't really, as you say, play for dancers, and Troilo is so danceable. So it's interesting. It's a miracle. Let's listen to the instrumental Comil Faux, which is one of his first two recordings from 1938. So Comil Faux is an old tango and we can compare it with the version of D'Arienzo, which is very nice. It's from 1936, so tango's not so uptempo then. But when you listen to what Troilo does to it, they're on fire.
One of Troilo's first two recordings, played to compare with D'Arienzo's 1936 version; the band adds a 3-3-2 syncopation and stop-time that the composition does not imply.
It starts off with this 3-3-2 syncopation, which is implied by the melody, but it's not in the composition. They add that and there's stop time. The band stops suddenly and Troilo stretches out a long note and the band and then it rushes on again. The only thing that's different from the 41 band is the ending. The ending is very soft. But, yeah. And, well, I'll play another one. Because when we talked about Troilo in earlier programs, he wasn't given the chance to record after this for three years. So we had this Odeon contract that didn't allow him to record. But there is a radio recording of the Milonga El jarón with the Fiorentino vocals.
And the sound quality is really bad on this one. So you never hear it at Milongas, but I wanted to play it because it says something about the energy of the band and the arrangement of this Milonga. Okay, now the El jarón of Fiorentino is amazing. And to consider, when you hear it, to consider that this was like an also ran for the, as far as the Troilo orchestra is concerned, it's not a top 20 number. It's unbelievable because it's an outstanding thing, and Fiorentino never phrases more freely than he does in El jarón.
When we get to El jarón, listen to the timing of Fiorentino's voice, how he comes in and he hangs on to the first note for way, way too long, and then he has to really rush to catch up, but it kind of fits. It's the most extreme phraseo, phrasing, of Fiorentino with the orchestra. Let's listen to those two, coming for an instrumental 38 and El jarón with Fiorentino from 41.
A poor-quality radio recording of a milonga played for the band's energy and for Fiorentino's most extreme phrasing, hanging on the first note then rushing to catch up.
Wow. Bam. Amazing. But imagine this in Tango Tunes quality, like a studio recording in Tango Tunes quality. Oh gosh. Anyway, we don't have it, we don't torture. Yeah, well, there was a Troilo at this time, think about that, people.
From this beginning of the dance era we are going to make a long jump towards the end of Troilo's recording career and to what you call in your book, Michael, the concert era, which is the last period of Troilo, from 58 I think. After, yeah, let's just kind of outline that. So musically speaking you can quite conveniently divide Troilo's career into three. So there's everything up to the end of the 40s, that's traditional dance music. Okay, it gets more sophisticated by the end of the 40s but we can cope with that, we're fine. And then in the first part of the 50s we see the music enters a transition as Troilo embraces everything that Piazzolla is doing.
Still danceable, you can dance to those Troilo-Piazzolla numbers like, which is when he even co-writes with Troilo. And then pretty much it coincides with his change of record company. So he gets frustrated by the poor quality on Teca and he leaves them in 56 and goes back to Odeon, actually, from 57 to 59. And now it's moving into the concert era that he doesn't really care if you can dance to it or not anymore. And that's largely to do with the fact that most people aren't dancing anymore, not by the end of the 50s.
So that's to break it out into three. Yeah, that's how you can consider the phases of his career. So we're now in a going to go into the concert era. Yeah, yeah, and what's better to illustrate that concert and to go to the way to the end of it towards 1971 and the tangos with the singer Roberto Goyeneche. These are some of the last Troilo's last recordings, aren't they? Yeah, he records very seldom by the end. So we're going to listen to one of Goyeneche's recordings in 1971. I'm going to play Trenzas. And it's composed by Armando Pontiere back in the 40s. But this is the only recording with Troilo.
And that was a bit surprising for me because it's recorded by Laurence, Callot, Biagi and Canaro in 44, 45. Do you know why Troilo didn't record it then? Well, you can be sure it was in the band's repertoire. Must have been. So a hit has a certain repercussion, and that repercussion determines how many different recordings are made. If it's a huge hit, there'll be eight recordings. If it's a medium hit, there'll be four, and if it's a very small hit, there'll be only one. So you position the dial, and Trenzas is not down at the huge, huge hit, there's going to be eight recordings.
It's in the middle, and Troilo must have thought, well, okay, I like it, but not enough to insist to my record company that I get given one of the slots, because the record companies had a big role in deciding who got to record what. So we don't know what their interpretation sounded like. Of course, it would have been nice, but Troilo felt it wasn't one of his very best ones. So he let it go. Roberto Goyeneche, Trenzas, from 1971.
Played as an example of Troilo's last, concert-era recordings; the only Troilo recording of a piece Laurenz, Caló, Biagi and Canaro had recorded in 1944-45.
Danced to it · 5 of 60
♪ Music · 1:44 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Now everyone will understand what you mean by the concert era. Yes, although somebody asked, well, why is this not for dancing then? Actually, you could dance to that one.
What happens at this time, we make a very blunt comparison to the 40s, is first of all the pace is a lot slower and secondly, but not in this track, often the speed will change suddenly, which as a dancer can be very difficult to follow. You know, if the band tells you it's going to change speed, that's one thing, but if the speed just changes, that's difficult. So you can dance to this but it's not designed for it, let's put it that way. So we've gone from Troilo's first recordings in 38 to his last in 71. And now let's fill the space in between.
I want to go to some recordings with Francisco Fiorentino, who sang with Troilo from the very beginning, of course, and left in 44. And his tracks are among the most played and danced at milongas. And you call Troilo and Fiore perhaps the greatest combination of orchestra and singer that tango has ever known. Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, it's a bit ironic since, as you write also in your book, he wasn't Troilo's first choice. It was just... No, he was not. Yeah, it's amazing. Troilo wanted Antonio Rodriguez's Le Zende. And in fact, there's some news research about that in the second edition, about why that didn't work out. So I'm not going to tell that. That's good. And we'll listen to... Yeah. Yeah.
So, yeah, Fiorentino was the second choice. They came out and they went, well, now what are we going to do? And somebody said, well, we could ask Fiorentino. We've listened to him in many of our Tango Tunes programs. And one of the most emotional moments where in 1951 we heard his last solo recordings and then he was out of tango for a few years and just as he was about to return to Troilo, he died in a car accident in 1955.
But I want to start towards the end of his time with Troilo with two of his late recordings. The first is Garúa, Drizzle, from 1943. And that one shows, as you write in your book, it shows some of the pianist Orlando Goñi's special technique, what you call double articulation. Do you want to tell us what it is?
Double articulation. There are two special things about Goñi's style as a pianist. Double articulation and marcación bordoneada. Musicians are most excited about the first one, doble articulación. What does doble articulación mean? It means that you articulate differently with your two hands. With the left hand, when you play the bass note, you let the note ring out long. But if you do that with the right hand, when you're playing a melody, it will be muddy. So you can't go, you need it to go in the right hand. So you articulate differently with the two hands, legato with your left hand but staccato with the right hand, which means you can't use the pedals, because if you use the sustain pedal on your piano everything will be sustained.
So Goñi was famous for not using the pedals. They said he would just sit down at the piano and he wouldn't even have his feet near the pedals, his feet would be just spread out, legs akimbo. And when I was writing the book, the first edition, I read this and I spoke to some pianists about it and they said, no, no, it's impossible. It's just not possible. You can't play piano like that and be good. But now I realize it's the key to the style, not using the pedals. So if you want the long note, you have to hold the key down with your left hand. So that's what the double articulation is.
Now, mostly it's quite hard to hear it with Goñi because he's decorating with that left hand. So that when you play Garúa, you'll hear that the bass just walks down. It goes... And it's very easy to hear. But mostly he doesn't do that because mostly he's going... And that's the bordoneada, the decorated marking, which is, as a dancer, maybe the fancier, more exciting aspect of his style. But this first aspect, the double articulation, it's copied by many other orchestras after. It's hugely influential. Like Domingo Federico, really obvious example. Think of the Domingo Federico Saludos or anything by Domingo Federico, those bass notes in the piano ringing out long. And also by the pianist who comes after Goñi when he leaves the band in 43. Well, you've got to copy that style, haven't you? Because that's the style of the band.
The second song we'll hear now is Tabaco. It's from Fiorentino's last recording session with Troilo. It's in March 44. It's also about lost love, like Garúa. Yeah, it's one of the songs with Contursi as the lyricist. Yeah, exactly. So it's effectively one of the Grisel songs. The image is a bit strange to us today because we don't smoke anymore. But in the old days, you know, you look at an old black and white film noir and everybody's smoking. So the central image of tobacco is in the tobacco smoke. Suddenly he thinks he sees her figure. And he smells her in the tobacco smoke also, which is even more strange for us today. Yes. So let's listen to this one with Fiorentino, Garúa, and then Tabaco.
Chosen to show Orlando Goñi's piano technique (double articulation) and the shimmering violins.
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♪ Music · 3:55 · The lyrics, on the song's page
From Fiorentino's last recording session with Troilo; a Contursi lyric about seeing and smelling a lost love in tobacco smoke, where Troilo shifts the marcato between four beats and two beats to the bar.
Danced to it · 5 of 6
Yeah, violins are usual, aren't they, like this, the shimmering of the violins? Yeah, like the smoke. Yes, the shimmering of smoke. Yeah, it's beautiful and you will notice how, a tango musician would say the modes of marcato. Um, if I try and say that in layman speak, the way the band is accompanying, I don't mean all the colors but what's in the rhythm layer at the bottom, what's in the foundation. Yeah, in the D'Arienzo it's going bang bang bang bang. Now Troilo keeps changing it. He'll go, we say, marcato in cuatro, four beats to the bar. But then he'll change. He'll change to marcato in dos, just two beats to the bar.
And there were many, many different kinds of marcato in this bottom layer of the cake during the song and that's one of the things that makes it so interesting to dance to, so pleasant, but also requiring our attention. Yeah, so it's done so naturally we almost don't notice it. Yeah, I didn't think about it but so he changes this, uh, the number of beats and you have this writing about it's more the arrastre that may or and pulliers of course and then so it's like this powerful beat. So they all have their way to make us, they all have their way and Troilo's way is about color. Yeah, which you get more color by changing, so that's what he does.
Let's listen to some more of Fiorentino because his last track was from 44 when the new pianist Basso was playing. Yes, Orlando Goñi had already gone in August 43 along with two others. So yeah, Basso is the new pianist. Let's go back to 1942 when Goñi is still playing with the band. Yes, and first let's play Grisel, which you mentioned earlier. It's about this, uh, love story with a blonde village girl of German descent. You want to talk, they keep cropping up, these girls. They do, yeah, but Merced, it is the same thing, you gotta watch out for them. They're much stronger willed and less pliable than the and some of you've heard the story and the rest of you can read about it in Michael's book.
And the second song I want to play is Pa' que bailen los muchachos. So the Lads Will Dance. Yes, great song. This is a more fun song, isn't it? It's not a love story. No, it's not. It's the tango for Troilo. In a way it's written for him. Why do we play, I play so the lads will dance. It's his own composition, right? So let's hear this too. Grisel and Pa' que bailen los muchachos, they're both from 1942.
A love story about a blonde village girl of German descent, one of the Contursi Griselle songs.
Troilo's own composition, in a way written for himself: 'I play so the lads will dance'.
Danced to it · 5 of 18
Yeah, Fiorentino was the most popular of the singers when we asked the poll just before we started. So he's a pop idol, isn't he? I mean he created the template of the orchestra singer, he wasn't the first, but the synthesis with the orchestra is absolutely perfect. You never have the feeling that either he's dominating the orchestra or the other way, you don't have to make a choice between melody and beat and rhythm at this period of Troilo. It's so balanced, gives you freedom as a dancer. Yeah, it does give you a lot of freedom but, um, in a natural way. All right, well we might get back to Fiorentino a bit later but, uh, from these really well-known dance numbers, I want to go to a different period, to the transition era in 1953.
And this is a year where Troilo recorded some numbers with a quartet, Troilo-Grela, Grela on the guitar. And can you say something about this project? Well, it kind of happened by accident. Troilo had finally participated in a stage show. So Canaro was doing loads of stage shows right through the 30s and 40s. And I guess Troilo had steered away from that because it can be quite lowbrow, let's say not sophisticated music, at best middlebrow. Um, in 51 there's this song El patio de la morocha, Troilo finally ends up in stage show and he does one duet in the show. Um, I think he's pretending to be Eduardo or Rolas, I can't quite remember offhand, and Grela accompanies him on the guitar. And this is such a huge hit that the audience demands an encore, play that song again. So then the record companies say, look, the public love it. Why don't you make some records? So they do. They make 12 records in this early part of the 50s, 53 to 55. And then much later, they make another 10 records.
These are all instrumental numbers, no singing, although they did appear with singers live, but not on the records. Now what's really nice about this is you can hear a bit more Troilo. There is no a cappella solo recording of Troilo. Think about that, folks. Think about that. El bandoneón mayor de Buenos Aires, the best bandoneon of Buenos Aires, never made a solo a cappella recording. Why not? He didn't like it. He didn't want to put himself out at the front there. There's a couple of duos with Piazzolla from I think 1970. That's the only time he did anything like that but here in the quartet you can really hear what he does.
Because the quartet, yeah, it's Grela on guitar and a double bass, guitarrón, which is a slightly bigger guitar that's good for bass work, and then Troilo himself. I don't know what track you're going to play, Dag, but one of the things that you can hear him do generally is he plays tremolo on the bandoneon. Now to make this a tremolo sound on the bandoneon you have to shake the whole instrument and Troilo does that very beautifully because it's one way to put a lot of expression into a single note, which is what he's so good at doing. I didn't think about tremolo when I picked the songs but let's hope it's in one of these two.
The first one is, uh, doesn't matter. Tango called Pedro Maffia. So it's a tribute. It's Troilo's, it's composed by Troilo and it's a tribute to Pedro Maffia, who was one of his inspirations. A huge influence on Troilo's style, especially as a bandoneon player, but also as an orchestra. And that only increases as he goes on. And why is it an influence? Because of the smooth, velvety quality of Pedro Maffia's bandoneon. I'm making this smooth horizontal motion with my hand. Pedro Maffia played ligado, so he played in phrases where the notes ran into each other, and that's a big influence on Troilo, because as we all know Troilo's phrasing, both as a bandoneon player and for the orchestra, is exquisite.
And after that we're going to listen to an old waltz recorded by Troilo before, also with Marino and Ruiz singing. It's called Palomita blanca. Oh, now that is a totally exquisite piece. We're going to hear lots of beautiful details of the Troilo bandoneon playing in these two numbers. And these two are never played at the milongas, so I hope people will enjoy them.
Troilo's tribute to bandoneonist Pedro Maffia, whose smooth legato phrasing was a huge influence; the quartet lets us hear Troilo's bandoneón tremolo and rubato.
♪ Music · 2:35 ·
The quartet version of an old waltz Troilo had recorded with Marino and Ruiz; Dag calls it an exquisite piece rarely played at milongas.
♪ Music · 2:43 ·
Oh, that's so much Troilo we can hear there on these songs. One thing I want to say is Grela is a concert level guitarist. Yeah, he's not just like an accompanist, not just some backstreet hoover. He matches Troilo. Yeah, he plays counter melodies, he can express as much as he wants to. In fact, he made also classical recordings as well as tango ones, although he focused on tango.
That's the blending. There's so much space for us to enjoy Troilo's bandagnon playing. Because it's something worth noting, isn't it? The Troilo orchestra is not there to promote Troilo's bandagnon. Troilo's bandagnon has a big role, but that's not the point of the orchestra. But here, oh, how it shines. And you really could hear the way he shakes the bandagnon to put more expression into the note.
Extreme rubato, great changes of pace, intimate music. Somebody sent me a message to remind me of hearing this tango long ago in a milonga in London called Zero Hour. And zero hour is such a lovely expression, isn't it, for midnight or for the hour, the time. So let's say that music like that is milonga for zero hour, for the midnight hour, for that special intimate hour.
Someone asked in the chat window about the two other musicians in the quartet, and one of them is Troilo's bass player, isn't it? Yes. Well, it is now. It is. This is Kicho Díaz, of course, who's one of the best bass players working in the city at that time. But, of course, he leaves. He leaves to go with Piazzolla later in the 50s. So in the 60s recordings, it's not him anymore. And I can't remember the name of the guitarron player. I think it's Zalvidar, actually. A guy called Zalvidar with Z. But he only played guitarron, so we don't know very much about him.
Let's move on to a couple of instrumentals. And the first one is from the year after. And it's a tribute to double-blast players, especially Kicho Díaz. Ah, you're going to play Contrabajeando. Contrabajeando, yes. It's another interesting song because there's a lot of double bass in that one, and it's Troilo's and Piazzolla's composition.
Yeah, one thing to say about tango double bass is if you look at a swing band, either today, you know, there's still swing bands playing, or go on YouTube and have a look at Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, all those bands, the bass player only plucks his instrument. You know, a classical player would call that pizzicato. To me, as a non-classically trained musician, the phrase pizzicato always sounds a bit strange applied to a double bass, but technically it's pizzicato. They're just plucking their bass, whereas in a symphony orchestra the bass players are bowing. They have a bow, which of course produces a rather different sound world.
Now, I'm going to do one of, I notice I do something a lot on this program, on these shows, Dag. I say, we can't say something, but, and then I say it. Go ahead. So we can't say that one style of bass playing is superior to the other, but we can. Because if you play with the bow, you can put the bow down. Normally there's like a leather holster on the side of the instrument and you can put the bow down and you can switch to pluck for when you need it. So the guy who plays with the bow basically is a more versatile player. And of course, Kicho Díaz plays with the bow. We heard him in the 1958 program, whether we realized it or not at the time, supporting the cello in the introduction to La Bordona. So a hugely important bass player.
When he joined Piazzolla, forgive me if I've told this story before, Piazzolla said, Kicho Díaz was like an elephant carrying the quintet on its back. Wow, strong formulation. It's the foundation, isn't it? You know, this is what was the problem with the De Caro project in its early years. It lacked the underpinning and we need bass notes to make movements. It's not to flourish, not to wave our arms in the air. You don't need a bass note for that, but to walk, you need a bass note.
So, and you write about that also in your book, that Kicho Díaz's best playing gave the rhythm that gave the freedom also to Orlando Goñi and Fiorentino to go around it. Yeah, you can hear that in C.T.V., which, I don't know whether you're going to play or not tonight. It's actually the second instrument I'm going to play right now. Really? Yeah, it is. You're kidding me. No, no, it is. Orlando Goñi shines on the piano, so I thought it would be nice to play these two, because these are two really important musicians. Okay.
So it's going to be best if you've got headphones on, people. There's a point in the set of air quite near the end. Yeah, so Goñi's on fire in that, but there's this really interesting point near the end where the band just stops, and if you've got headphones on you can hear the bass player going boom, boom, boom, boom, giving the heartbeat for the band to come back in together. I mean, musically speaking it's not very important. It's not an example of Kicho Díaz's incredible skill on the bass, but it's an example of how he underpins and organizes the band.
What's with the title? The letters, do they stand for something, or is it a joke? Okay, so if I just type in the chat window, what's written is C.T.V., if you say it in English. But if I say it with a Spanish accent, it's C. T.V. Now if I type it again, those are three words. C. T.V. It's a sentence which means we can see you, I can see you. So it's a word play. So it's a bit like this TBC, which is a bit the same thing. Exactly, yes. TBC, I kissed you. All right, let's listen to these two instrumentals, Contrabajeando from 1954 and C.T.V. from 1942.
A Troilo and Piazzolla composition in tribute to double bass players, especially Kicho Díaz.
Danced to it
A pun title ('Ce-Te-Ve', spoken in Spanish: 'te veo', I see you), chosen for Goñi's piano and the bass keeping time near the end.
That's one where you need your headphones to really appreciate what the bass is doing, but even without, wow, he's on fire. God, he's just on fire. God, the band is so exciting. Imagine dancing to that in 42. Jesus. Let's go to a less danceable period, back to the mid 60s and the dance era, not the dance era, but the concert era and the vocals. I want to listen to two songs by Roberto Rufino and Nelly Vásquez. The first one we heard about, but the second one maybe not. But I'm going to play Mensaje from 65 and Quedémonos aquí also from 65.
Michael, you write about Mensaje in your Troilo book twice, actually, because it was recorded also earlier. It's an awesome song. It's one of the best, one of the reasons I'm pleased there's a second edition and we can talk about this stuff. Yeah, and should I say something about Mensaje? Yeah, please do. So Mensaje means message in Spanish, and it's a Discépolo song. And what's the year of the recording now? The 65. But the first recording is with Berón, 53 or something. 53.
But the interesting thing is that it's kind of written from beyond the grave, because Discépolo's dead, he died in December 51. So how come there's this new Discépolo song that comes out in 1953? So after Discépolo died there were some unfinished manuscripts, some unfinished compositions, and Tanya, I was going to say his widow, but I'm not sure if they actually married. Anyway, so Tanya, let's say his widow, she gave the few compositions, these unfinished bits, out to various people. Cátulo Castillo went to her flat and she gave him this manuscript, and it's just the melody. Yeah, in this, Discépolo sometimes wrote just the music, sometimes just the words and sometimes both. So in this case it was just a melody.
And what you should all know, listeners, is that they had a very tortured relationship. For both, they were the love of their lives, but they had very, very difficult times together for all kinds of reasons which we can't go into now. So he came home with this, Cátulo Castillo, and tried to write a lyric and it just wouldn't come. And he struggled and struggled with it and it wouldn't come. And then one night he had a dream and Discépolo appeared to him in the dream and dictated the lyric to him. And it's a message to his wife about the nature of love. Think about that, people. So he wrote it down and we can listen to it.
Now, the arrangement that we're going to hear now with Rufino in the 60s, it's the same arrangement that Troilo recorded with Berón in 1953. But of course, recording technology is way better, because all the songs on Teika are in very poor fidelity. They just couldn't match the fidelity. So it's a 60s song but it's a 50s arrangement, and generally that means better for dancing. And you can hear him sing there, some memorable lines. I'll just give you one.
A pending is a thread. So in the lyric Discépolo offers us, well, it's not Discépolo, it's Cátulo Castillo who wrote the lyric, but you know, it's Discépolo offers us the image of life hanging by a thread, and then, dramatic, the thread is cut. El piolín, the thread, se corta. I think that's enough to be getting on with. We'll talk about the other one after. Yeah, let's do that. Let's hear those two. So it's Mensaje with Rufino singing and Quedémonos aquí with Nelly Vásquez singing, both from 1965.
A Discépolo melody completed after his death by Cátulo Castillo, who said Discépolo dictated the lyric in a dream; same arrangement as Troilo's 1953 Berón version but in better sound.
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♪ Music · 3:45 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A lyric by Homero Expósito that Lavocah ranks among the five best tango lyrics after 1950, about the grey area between love and hate and a second chance.
Wow. So what year was that recording? 1965. 1965, both of them. Quedémonos aquí is a tango that's very close to my heart. I learned the lyric more than 20 years ago at a time when I couldn't really speak any Spanish, and I'd like to say that it's one of the greatest lyrics written after 1950. You know, top five. Absolutely. It's from, as people have mentioned in the chat window, Homero Expósito.
And why do I say it's such a great lyric? Why do I say that? It's because it doesn't divide love into black and white anymore. So in the early days of tango lyrics, it's black or white, isn't it? Everything's marvelous until it isn't, and then it's awful. And you hate the other person. And there's no middle grey ground. But this is a tango about that gray area that's in the middle between black and white, and what's so wonderful about it is that Homero Expósito says that this gray area is actually where the colors are. I mean, that's not a line from the tango, but it's a tango that explores this middle ground and it talks about the color that exists there. Goodness, it's about wanting a second chance.
Exquisite lyric, and something that I really wrestled with as I wrote the second edition of the book is why don't we have this from 1956? So this is a tango from the, from 56 I think, and there's a number of other lyrics from the same time by Expósito that Troilo doesn't record. Now, there are two reasons why we don't have them. The first reason is that in 1956, Troilo lived hard. He lived hard. And in 56, his lifestyle finally caught up with him. And he had to go and spend a couple of months in a clinic. Or I don't know how long. He had to spend a bit of time in a clinic for drinking.
Yes, so, well, that would explain, well, even if it was two months, that wouldn't really explain missing out important repertoire, would it? Well, it might, it might, let's say then, it might. But apparently, now I did a lot of research on this and I couldn't get to the bottom of it. So this is not in the book. Those of you who are listening to it tonight, you're the only people who are going to hear this, because it's not in the book. Apparently there was some discord between Troilo and Expósito. Now, no one's been able to really put that in concrete terms. You know, in 1944, Troilo records Naranjo en flor, which is a really groundbreaking lyric, and that's an Expósito composition. But apparently in the 50s there were some problems, and eventually they were smoothed over, and apparently Ángel Cárdenas played a part in that. Cárdenas is one of Troilo's singers in the early 50s.
But I'd like to tell a story that is on the positive side rather than the negative side. You know, that's what I like to do. So here's a story which I guess is from the 60s, we don't have a date, it's from the 60s. So Troilo says to Zita, his wife, I'm just going out for a bit, won't be long, be back in a minute. And they're going out that evening. Yeah, so he's got a date with his wife in the evening. It's late afternoon. And he just pops out to the cafe to meet a friend. And Homero Expósito is there. So they sit down at a table. They order a drink. And Troilo says to them, you know, I've only got an hour because I've got to go and meet Zita. We're going out tonight. Yeah, yeah. They start drinking.
Chapter · 1:48:10
27 hours for one drink
Troilo said he'd be back in an hour.
Who would like to guess how long it was before he got up from the table? Can I have some numbers in the chat window, please? Julie's gone for 10, 6, 7, 8, 5, 10, 12. 24. Today's a week. Okay. The answer is it's 27 hours later. So 27 hours later. Now this is the funny part. This is the funny part. Troilo says, he turns to Expósito and he says, look, I'm really sorry, I've got to go because Zita's waiting for me and we're going out. That's the kind of guy he was. Loved friends, lived for the moment. I forgot about the time, obviously. He forgot, yeah, until 27 hours later.
“The answer is it's 27 hours later.”
I mean, you need 24 hours nightlife for that, don't you? It couldn't happen now. Yeah, long suffering, long suffering, but they loved each other and they were completely faithful to each other, so lots of other people didn't manage that in that environment. So that's something to celebrate. And you know, she knew who she was marrying, I think. Yeah. So Quedémonos aquí, really beautiful tango, and I'm really sorry we don't have a 50s version. I like Nelly Vásquez's voice very much. It's beautiful.
Yeah, and these 60s tangos are beautiful. Someone asked, is Nelly Vásquez the only woman singer who recorded with Troilo? Yes, I believe she was, but there are a few other songs and maybe we'll talk about them later. Okay. That's a lot of concert tango. So let's time travel back 24 years to Troilo 1941 and listen to at least two more Fiorentino recordings.
First, I want to play Te aconsejo que me olvides. I advise you to forget me. That's Troilo's own composition. And then after that, the first milonga Troilo ever recorded in studio, Mano brava. That's from the same year, 1941. Yeah. Let's listen to those. Hit it.
Troilo's own composition, played right after the 1950 show mentioned Mancione's recording of it and the plane story.
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♪ Music · 3:50 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Described as the first milonga Troilo ever recorded in the studio, from 1941; Lavocah praises Goñi's drive in it.
Wow. Cheers, Michael. That deserves a chase. Yes! Yeah. Happy Throttle Night. It's Goñi.
This first band, the first orchestra of Troilo, is inconceivable without Orlando Goñi on piano. He's driving the whole thing. He's on fire. Every time I listen, I hear more things that he's doing that I hadn't heard before. And just to repeat, you know, I go around the place and I give lectures and I teach. And the most important message I have to Tanker Gansers is listen to the bass notes.
Really, because they're not that well recorded on the 40s numbers, you know, compared to something recorded today by Deutsche Gramophone, you know. We've got fantastic recording technology today. They had good technology, but you've got to listen to the bass notes if you're a dancer because they tell you when to step, and your ear is not tuned to it, and it takes years, you know. I can tell you that I go somewhere, just the other day I got an email from someone saying, you know, you told me that you came to my city. You said that eight years ago and I finally got it. So if you listen to the bass notes, you won't just be hearing more of the music, but you'll get more information that relates to your dancing about when to place your feet on the floor.
Chapter · 1:58:00
A song written from beyond the grave
A Discépolo tango that appeared after he died.
And Goñi, what he does with his left hand, it's the best left hand. Well, it's him and De Salle, isn't it? The two great left hands in Tango News. Well, at this time, to Goñi and his left hand. To Orlando Goñi, ladies and gentlemen. Please be upstanding, Orlando Goñi.
A tragic figure, of course. Deeply unhappy person. Drank himself to death at the age of 31. Sad, yeah. Having contributed more to tango than 99% of the rest of the musicians on the scene. And he's not a person whose reputation rests on the fact that he died when young. Not at all. He would have done more.
He didn't get a studio contract when he split from Troilo, but there's a few radio recordings, like the radio recording you played earlier, Dag. There's four of them. And so that's from 4445. So 4445, Tanguy music has really slowed down and become more lyrical. But when Goñi's given his own orchestra, he doesn't play in the style of 1945. He kind of goes back to 41, the force and power that you just heard there, underpinning a 45 lyrism. It would have been a unique voice and we lost it.
And there are these four acetate recordings, but the sound qualities. The sound quality is terrible. Although hopefully they'll be given to somebody because what you get off those acetates requires a lot of skill. So acetate is a kind of plastic, and the radio stations would record their shows on acetate for various reasons. Possibly if you wanted to not be live, if you had a show going out at three in the morning, you could record it earlier and then play it. So all kinds of reasons why they did that. But we know, for example, from listening to different transfers of El jarón that there's even more skill involved in getting a good sound off the acetate. Then, you know, well, not let's say more, but there's a lot of skill and different skills involved in getting good sound. So maybe somebody can get hold of those and do a better job, I don't know.
I would love to play some more Fiorentino, but Michael, it's already 10 o'clock. We have to move on, I guess. Time flies. So let's go to the 50s again and to Raúl Berón, who also sang with Troilo for some years. And you write, those are like four or five of the new songs you analyze in your book. It's really important. Berón's contribution in the 50s is really important to the Troilo Orchestra. Definitely.
And I'm going to play Malena. It's from 1952, magnificent version. It's Lucio De Mara who composed it. And Troilo recorded this in 42 and with Fiorentino, and that's the version you all heard and danced to many times. And the second Berón track I want to play is his last with Troilo, Un tango para Estercita. Oh, Un tango para Estercita is an absolute killer. It's plangent. The right word in English is plangent. It's weeping. So the melody goes up and then it falls and falls and falls. It rips your heart out.
It's beautiful. When you hear Estesita, that's kind of like a semiotic language in tango. So when you hear Estesita, which is a girl's name, little Esther, Estesita, then you should hear Milongita. So Estesita is the archetypal name of the girl who's both the bright light and the victim of the cabaret lifestyle. Let's listen to these two magnificent songs with Berón singing.
A magnificent version of Demare's tango; Troilo's earlier version with Fiorentino (1942) is the one dancers know.
Berón's last with Troilo; Lavocah calls it plangent, and explains that 'Estercita' signals the girl who is both the bright light and victim of cabaret life, like Milonguita.
It's good enough to enjoy, and I just want to pick up on something and linking as well to the Rufino tracks, the Rufino track you played earlier. So when we listened to Rufino, one or two people typed in the chat window, oh, the mature Rufino. And now we listen to Berón, and even Theresa, world famous for hating the sound of Raúl Berón's voice, said, oh wow, he's really good with Troilo, isn't he? And he is. Oh, what's going on? Troilo knows how to get the most out of a singer.
And in Rufino's case, you know, it's training him to the next level. Rufino admits that. And Rufino joins Troilo in 1963, and he joins Di Sali in 1939. So what's that, 49, 59, that's 24 years later. He finally meets the maestro that can take his singing to the next level, because Troilo improved all his singers, all of them without exception. He taught them how to sing.
Speaking of that, because we're going to now, we're going to go back to the 40s and the dancer, and it's Alberto Marino time. And you've written in your book about when Troilo hired Marino, that he actually went to this, I don't know if he went to audition, but anyway, he wanted Rufino, he went to a gig. If you were a second tier orchestra, it was a very difficult life. And there's one orchestra, the orchestra that was led by Emilio Orlando and Balcarce, violinist, arranger, later played with Pugliese. He also was running the orchestra at various times for Orlando. But this was a really good orchestra that never recorded. But the problem that it had was it spotted good talent and made advanced music, and every time they got something really good, the people would be poached. So that's what happened time and again. So Troilo goes down there with the idea that he's going to hire singer A, Roberto Rufino, but he comes away with Marino.
Yeah, it's funny because the same thing happened when he was going to hire, not going to hire Fiorentino, but he ended up with him. Actually, yeah, that's true. He gets his second choice, but I mean, they're still so great singers. And he's called La Voz del Oro del Tango, the golden voice of Tango. Yes, and he takes on the more emotional stuff for Troilo, doesn't he? He takes on the darker stuff, Marino.
It seems to me that Marino is the first true bel canto voice that Tango has. So there are great voices before Marino, but Marino's is the first voice that could equally have sung opera. What's the bel canto voice? It's to have a complete operatic training. Did he? Or just. Yes, he did. He did. And what that enabled him to do was he could sing super loud and then suddenly sing really quiet. And that's something that he does in many, many different tangos. You hear him do it in Cotorrito de la Suerte, for example, and a number of other songs. Sigue el Corso, he does the same thing. And it creates more contrast, more colour. And Troilo's all about colour. So Marino is a voice that enables Troilo to express himself in a way. In a way, in fact, that he couldn't really express himself with Fiorentino, because Fiorentino couldn't do that.
And it's the same with Ruiz, who I noticed, Dag, that you're saving for the end of the program, because we haven't really heard any of Ruiz yet. Who's Ruiz? Ricardo Ruiz. He sang with Friseido, didn't he? I don't even know why I'm mentioning him. It was at least half an hour because there's so much nice stuff to play. So that's something that Troilo does. He gets singers on board who are able to modulate their volume in an extreme fashion, and he uses that in the interpretations.
Let's listen to two Marino tracks first, La vi llegar from 1944, and it means I saw her arrive, and that's the opening line. And later he sings, la vi partir sin la palabra de adiós, I saw her leave without the word of farewell. Yes, it's great lyrics, isn't it? They are great lyrics. I mean, personally, I would always choose Troilo over color every time, but that's one of the tangos where the color's interpretation really comes to my ear with beautiful violin introduction. And Troilo also uses his violin to introduce it, but in a more subtle, integrated way.
Second song, Mi tango triste, my sad tango. It's also about lost love, surprise, and the lyrics. So this is also another chapter in this Grisel cycle. Yeah, but this is not some quiet, melodic, intimate thing. This is high power, fast in your seatbelts kind of tango, isn't it? Mi tango triste. One of Marino's greatest performances, definitely. I'll post the lyrics while we listen to this too. La vi llegar and Mi tango triste. Marino singing.
A song Dag likes for Marino's treatment; also recorded by Caló, whose interpretation Dag prefers on the violin introduction.
Danced to it · 5 of 10
Another lost-love song of the Griselle cycle; Lavocah uses it with Confesión to show how Troilo's syncopation intensifies in the late 40s 'like a wave'.
Danced to it · 5 of 167
Killer tango, someone wrote in the chat field. So Fiorentino fans, is Fiorentino still your favorite tango singer? I mean, it's really hard to choose, isn't it? You know, but wow.
One person asked in the chat window, so the syncopation's a bit different now. Good spot, 46, 47, the syncopation in the Troilo orchestra intensifies now. Troilo had already always used syncopation, but you can really hear it gets stronger, like the opening of Confesión.
There's one LP, sometimes I don't write down where I've read something and then one hour later I want to know where it was and I've forgotten it. It's really annoying, so more and more I write stuff down. But one day I was, um, looking on a second hand site at Troilo LPs in Argentina, so no way I can buy them easily. And reading the texts on the back of the LPs, the back of LPs is a really good place to get hold of tango information. Not always. In fact, a lot of the time, it's just total rubbish. It's just four columns of Troilo was great, Troilo was great, Troilo was great. Wasn't he amazing? Oh, he was so good. No information in there at all.
But in one of these essays, the essayist had written, the syncopation of this orchestra hits you like a wave. And I thought, yes, that's what I hear. Wow. In Mi tango triste and in Confesión, that's what I hear. But I didn't write it down. And I can't find it anymore. I can't tell you who wrote that and on which LP he wrote it, but that's what it is. There's this increase in intensity at the end of the forties that Troilo has, which makes his music so enjoyable.
And is this possibly going to be a bridge now to Floreal Ruiz? Yes, we are going to Ruiz, but before that we'll go to what I call naked Troilo. Naked Troilo. Yeah. As you pointed out, I mean, in your book, Michael, that Troilo was not the virtuoso, but he had this unique ability to create feeling among those who heard his bandana playing.
Yes, that's what makes him El Bandagnon Major, the best bandagnon. Not the one who played the most notes, not at all. There were many who played more notes. And when I earlier in this program introduced La última curda with Rivero, I said it was one of two songs giving a separate chapter in your book. And the other one is Nocturno a mi barrio from 1968. And I've heard you, Michael, finished several of your Troilo lectures with this one and half the audience are crying after that. Tell us about this track.
Oh, I have to give a bit of background. So Troilo was a lover, not in the stupid English sense of a man who flirts with women, but in the sense of a human being who loved other people deeply with all his heart. And although he didn't live to be so old, you know, life in Argentina was hard, the tango scene was hard, and lots of people died young, and he lost people. So Homero Manzi died of cancer in 1951, and 20 years later in a TV interview to celebrate Homero Manzi, 20 years without Manzi, the interviewer says, oh, good evening Troilo, how are you today? And Troilo says, well, today I feel like shit because it's 20 years since I lost half my heart. Bang, straight out the box. And he's not exaggerating, that's how he feels, you know, he's lost, he's lost Manzi, he's lost his shepherd, people are dying around him and he feels this terrible and impending sense of loss because Troilo loved people. Where did I start? I've lost my thread now just trying to describe how much he loved everybody.
Chapter · 2:23:30
The singer Troilo pushed out
Troilo threw Goyeneche out of the orchestra, and he was right.
“Well today I feel like shit because it's 20 years since I lost half my heart.”
Yeah, and we're talking about Nocturno a mi barrio, this song, the poem he wrote. In 1968 Troilo was at a wake, if you don't know what that means, a wake is una velada where you gather around a coffin and you celebrate the dead person. And he's there with a guitarist friend of his, and he turns to him and he says, take out your guitar and give me something in D minor. And that's where we get...
So Nocturno a mi barrio encapsulates Troilo's ever increasing sense of loss. He recalls figures from his childhood. Troilo played football as a young man. He was quite good. He was a center forward and he recalls Jacquemin, who was the coal man in his barrio, and he said, oh, Jacquemin, he always played left half, maybe because as you know the heart is bigger on the left side of the body, maybe he did that to be closer to my heart. And then he says, sometimes people say to me that I will leave my barrio. But when? But when? How could I leave my barrio? And if I should, then the stars shining above my mother's house would reach down with their friendly hands and say, Gordo, fat guy, one of Troilo's nicknames, Gordo, quédate aquí, stay here, stay here. Stay here.
A poem Troilo spoke after a wake; Lavocah says half of his lecture audiences cry at it and it ends with the stars calling 'Gordo, quédate aquí'.
Chapter · 2:27:20
Gordo, quédate aquí
Troilo's poem to his neighbourhood, improvised at a wake.
Michael, do you want to tell us now? You've killed us, Dag. You've killed us. Yeah. And now that I've killed you, do you want to tell us why you wanted to come with the second edition of the Troilo book? Because your last one came out in 2014. Yes. So why a second edition when you have so many unwritten books about all the other orchestras?
Yeah, that's a good question. So as a simple, the sort of superficial answer is that was my first orchestra book and I've learned a lot about how to write an orchestra book since then. So I wanted to upgrade the Troilo book, if you like, to the level of the others. I can give a slightly deeper answer, which is to say that I'm a representative of the dance community. So yes, I have my own knowledge and research, but I don't stand alone. I'm supported by the dance community.
That first book, which was written against quite a tight deadline because it was written for Troilo Centenary. Troilo was born on the 11th of July, 1914. So 11th of July, 2014, is his centenary. And I had to get the book out by then. So there was a fixed deadline. Couldn't take as long as I liked.
But back in 2014, we didn't know the repertoire of Troilo as well as we do now. I'll never forget in the late 90s, being at one of the tango camps in Sweden. It was a really big event that ran for many years, organized, I don't remember their names, um, it was a couple, uh, Swedish Greek couple, and they organized these big camps and they brought big teachers from Argentina. And I remember one night at about 1am Esteban Moreno was DJ and he put on a Troilo Ruiz tanda, and all the Europeans sat down and the Argentines went yes, and they all rose to their feet and hit the floor. And we didn't understand Troilo Ruiz in the 1990s. It was like super advanced music. We understood Fiorentino, and Marino was a bit difficult, but Ruiz and the rest, forget it. So the community, it's not me, it's the community. We've come on a long, long way since then. And we're now ready to look at that entire earth and appreciate it. So that's another big reason to make a second edition.
And the third big reason was on the 12th of March, when tango shut down in my city, I was writing a book about Francisco Canaro. Now, Francisco Canaro is an extremely important tango musician. And I've resumed work on that book and I'll finish it and I hope it will be out in December. But from, let's say, from 1939 onwards, it's a superficial music, even though it has its great moments. And with the world going to hell in a handcart and us as a civilization having to ask really deep questions about our society and our politics and our planet and all of that, I couldn't write about Canaro. I can't write about this now. It's not right. I need to write about something that really bites into the meat. It was not the right time to be writing about the orchestra like Canaro and the space opened up. So I thought, yeah, that's it, you know, this has been on my mind for a while, let's do it. And yeah, we're living in Troilo times because Troilo is someone who's not afraid to go right to the heart of our feelings, and I guess that's why we respond to him as dancers, apart from all the other reasons. I want to say to everyone, I'm going to try and stare at the little dot on my screen, which is the camera, rather than staring at a picture.
What Troilo wants to do is to deliver a lyric. And what's the point of tango lyrics? It's such a simple answer, but I grappled with it for a long time. The point of lyrics in a song, not in tango, actually in any song, the point of lyrics is to connect you to your experiences and your emotions. That's what lyrics are for, and that's why Troilo just carries on getting better for you year after year after year after year, because there isn't a single tango in his canon where he hasn't thought about that and he wants to deliver a message to you. So especially for the non-Spanish speakers, as you start to dabble with Spanish, maybe read a few translations on YouTube, his richness progressively reveals itself to you as it continues to me. I discovered some real treasures researching this second edition, especially with Nelly Vásquez and Rufino in the 60s. I was really astounded, not by Goyeneche. I knew what Goyeneche did, and I mean, for me was...
“The point of lyrics is to connect you to your experiences and your emotions.”
It's also a discovery, Michael. Yeah.
But I think kind of like we have to listen to the 60s stuff before we can go back and listen to Baron, because the sound quality is quite poor, and that presents an obstacle to us to really appreciating his music.
About Goyeneche, I want to say something. So Troilo kicks Goyeneche out of the orchestra. It wasn't a gentle separation like it was with Rufino. He kicks him out. So I forget the year exactly, but a certain moment where Goyeneche has been working with the band, Troilo's got another stage show coming up and he recruits Rivero to do it and not Goyeneche. Rivero, who's already left the band working as a soloist, and Goyeneche just can't understand it. But we can, listeners, because if you listen to Goyeneche's solo recordings and then to his Troilo recordings, you'll hear that the phrasing is completely different. The diseur, the speaker of the lyric that Goyeneche becomes. Troilo hears it in Goyeneche before Goyeneche does. He knows this guy is going this way and he's going to be one of the greats. He's going to establish a completely new way of interpreting tango lyrics. And he can't do it within my orchestra. I've taught him to do it.
“He said to his singers, you have to speak the lyric and not sing it.”
You know, Troilo said to his lyricists, singers, excuse me, he said to his singers, you have to speak the lyric and not sing it. He'd said that for decades already. But Goyeneche took that to another level and he could only fulfill that outside the orchestra. And Goyeneche was kicked out by Troilo. Troilo, in short, was a genius. He was a genius. He had an incredible vision of the relationship, especially with the music and the lyrics.
Thanks for this. I understand your book and I've read the, of course, the first book and now the second edition and I will warmly recommend it because it brings a lot new to the tango community. I think we're all as a community going to be discovering new things in this music for decades to come. And it's a good bridge to Floreal Ruiz, who many have asked for tonight. For me, he's one of my favourite singers with all orchestras, but also with Troilo. I'm going to play Il Aperdi, Lost Stars from 1947.
Oh, it's an exquisite tango. It's also lyrics by Contursi. It's always another chapter of this Grisel's saga. Such wonderful emotional tango. So let's listen to that one.
A Contursi-lyric tango, translated by Dag as 'Lost Stars', about a love that never returns.
Strong lyrics. Never was I happy in my short life. Jesus, man. But that's tango. If you don't want to hear this stuff, get another hobby. The tango's not for you.
Okay, so if we kind of follow the genealogy of Troilo singers through the 40s, there's an evolution. Now, Marino was criticized, not by everyone, by a small number of people, when he joined Troilo, because they said he's not trying. And what they meant was, well, they didn't even know that's what they meant, but because he'd had a proper operatic bel canto training, it was easy for him to use his voice in this incredibly flexible way. And with Ruiz, for me that's even more true. Ruiz's voice sounds so natural, but he does everything that Marino does in terms of modulating from very powerful passages to very quiet passages. That's beautiful, and it's a characteristic voice, you can hear it, you can hear through singing.
Yes, great personality, and of course after that he became hot property and he sang with a number of orchestras who wanted him because they would make their orchestra more famous, but Ruiz was never better than he was with Troilo. You know, this is a new thought, I've never thought this before, but Ruiz would have done better to stay with Troilo than to go when he did in '47, was it that he goes something, he'd have left a bigger legacy had he stayed?
Yeah, as would Fiorentino probably also, so most people should, most singers should have stayed with Fiorentino. It's more complex because as we go from 1938 to 1949 there's a huge change in the music, which is the arrangements take over, and what arrangements do is they do two things. They reduce the space for improvisation and they make the music more sophisticated. Now this is why, actually, it's not such a tragedy that Orlando Goñi leaves. It is that he does in 1943. You know, if he just stayed two more years that would have been better, but Goñi is an improvising pianist, and to make the super sophisticated music that we just enjoyed, Goñi couldn't have done that. That music has to be controlled by an arrangement. And it's a bit the same with Fiorentino. What Marino and Ruiz could do with their voices that we've heard and enjoyed tonight, Fiorentino couldn't do that. So I wish he'd stayed a year or two longer. Certainly I do. But yeah, nothing's perfect.
Well, as ending of this program, or before La cumparsita, of course, we'll hear two magnificent waltzes, both dark and sad and beautiful. And the first is with Ruiz and also Rivero singing Lagrimitas de mi corazón. And it was recorded on July 8th, so today's date in 1948. So it's to the day, 72 years ago. And the second is also duets with the two of the other top singers, Marino and Fiorentino, Soñar y nada más, To Dream and Nothing More, from 43. So for the next six minutes, you'll hear four of Troilo's most exquisite singers in these two voices. And Soñar y nada más is, by the way, composed by Canara, and who would have thought, Michael, that would end the Troilo special with a Canara composition.
It's extraordinary, isn't it? And I mean, Troilo's not the only person we can fit into this category, but there are people who are not ashamed to take compositions from someone whose musical conception is completely different to their own. And there's a second example, isn't there? Of course, La tablada, one of the great Troilo instrumentals with Goñi from 1942, a Canaro composition from two people. In English, we say chalk and cheese.
Chalk and cheese. So, Lagrimitas de mi corazón, and then Soñar y nada más.
A duet waltz recorded on 8 July 1948, exactly 72 years before the show.
Danced to it · 5 of 42
♪ Music · 3:30 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A waltz by Canaro that Troilo transforms into a sophisticated confection, comparable to his Canaro-composed La tablada.
Danced to it · 4 of 5
It's amazing how sophisticated a confection Troilo makes from something that started life not so sophisticated. I'll just read one of the comments. I'm bored to death by this tune. Usually, but this is brilliant. Yeah, he transforms it. It's beautiful.
So, yeah, it's La cumparsita time towards the end. But before that, I want to thank you, Michael, for this new book and for all your books. I mean, there are treasures and they are so heavily appreciated among not just tango DJs and nerds like myself, but by all tango dancers. So just keep them coming.
Thank you, and I thank you, and I thank everyone who's joined us here tonight because I like listening to music with other people, you know, it's different. It is, and there's two of you, it's not the same as when there's one of you listening to music, it's another experience. So I really appreciate these evenings, and tonight we were, I think, around 230. Yes, so that's a lot of people listening together. And you can also listen again to this special and all other Tango By Year programs on SoundCloud, user Tango By Year, and this program, like all these programs, are open and free for everyone. However, for those of you who, like me, have a secure job and you, like me, save a lot of money from not tango traveling in these times, please consider supporting Michael's work, because we want him to keep working full-time writing books and enriching us all in this way.
Yeah, and La cumparsita. Troilo recorded it four times with his band. Which one are you going to play? I'm going for the first one because Goñi's playing on that one. 43. Okay. Yeah, and it's arranged by Piazzolla and it's one of the few he arranged, I think, while he was with the band before he left Troilo. There's just 10 arrangements in the 40s are by Piet Zogler. Actually, when I think about it, it's probably not Goñi playing because it's from late in 43, so it must be... I think 5th of August is the last one. All right, so it's with Basso playing, sorry about that. But the highlight of this, I think, it's Troilo's solo towards the end, and this exemplifies he's just playing one note and you really feel that something with the way he does it is just amazing.
So, yeah, actually, when I was reading your book, Michael, I had a good laugh because you write about the first music review that Troilo got based on the radio performance he did in early 1938. Yes. And it was before any recordings. And the reviewer, he gave the band's interpretation of this song, La cumparsita, only two stars out of five. And they described this arbitrary and with a series of variations that are completely out of place. And I'm just thinking, what was this reviewer thinking like five or 10 years later? I'm sure that goes really famous. Did he stick with this review or did he revise it? It's so fun. Let's listen to this. I don't know what's going to happen after. We've been going for a long time, but maybe you want to... Yeah, I think we need a, you know, like a Cortina break and then we can continue. Yeah.
So just one thing to say about this La cumparsita. A lot of interpretations of La cumparsita have a counter melody in the final section. What you'll hear, and it's not actually so different from the D'Arienzo 1937 version, is that when we come back to the first theme at the very end of the performance, Troilo comes and seizes the theme. That's what Troilo does. He lets the band, you know, play balls out for two minutes 30 seconds, and then this is right now it's me, and he comes and he seizes it, and he doesn't go like this, he doesn't do that with it, he does this, he takes it in just for 10, 15 seconds, and that's the seal that he stamps on the end of many, many of his greatest recordings. And that's what you're going to hear now in this 1943 La cumparsita. Great choice, Dag. Thank you.
“[Troilo] takes it in just for 10, 15 seconds, and that's the seal that he stamps on the end of many, many of his greatest recordings.”
The first of Troilo's four recordings of the song, arranged by Piazzolla (one of ten Piazzolla arrangements in the 40s); the highlight is Troilo's one-note bandoneón solo and his 10-15 second seizing of the first theme at the end.
Danced to it · 3 of 4
♪ Music · 2:20 · The lyrics, on the song's page
So, yeah, I'll stop sharing, and if you want, Michael, you can play Cortina and some other stuff after that. You're done? I'm done. Okay. I need a Cortina before I go on. So I'll take over the sound and play a Cortina. A Cortina which I first heard from Gabriel. Gabriel, I think you're here. You are sharing Confused Sound. You're wrong. You're in control, Michael. I have the power. You can play the rest of the 400 Troilo songs now. 485. I mean, how many did you play? This is a Cortina from Sydney Bechet. The blues my naughty sweetie gave to me.
Welcome back, everyone. Thank you, Dag, for this evening. It's, yeah, really interesting for me to, not so much to not be in control, but to have someone else slice the cake and explore the music from completely different angles. So, yeah, Troilo is about feelings. Let's use this after party to explore our feelings. I'd like to begin with the Troilo Goyeneche version of the tango El motivo, Pobre Paica. So this is a very old tango that was given a new lease of life. It's a tango from Juan Carlos Cobien, who's one of the mystery men of tango. So I'm just going to play the Goyeneche version. What is it from? Let me just tell you, it's from 1961.
As dancers, it kind of frustrates us because it starts off brilliantly and then suddenly, two minutes into the piece, the tempo suddenly changes in a way that you can't predict as a dancer and you're left stranded. So it's a little bit frustrating, although I'm sure there's one or two people who are going to disagree and say, no, it's fine. But for the typical dancer, it's a bit difficult to follow. But what I want you to listen to, what I invite you to listen to, is the bandoneon riff at the beginning of the piece. OK, tango music has riffs. Pop music has riffs. Yeah, that's a very important concept, the idea of a riff. Like Smoke on the Water. Yeah, music has riffs and not all tango music has riffs, but quite a lot of tango music has riffs. So if you take this concept of the riff, which we associate with Western guitar driven pop music and bring it to tango music, it will increase your enjoyment. So notice the riff, although this is slow, so the riff doesn't grab our attention so much. Notice the riff and then we'll find something interesting afterwards. So here we go, through with Goyeneche in 1961, two titles, El motivo, the other title, Pobre Paica, poor girl.
A Juan Carlos Cobián tango given a new lease of life; Lavocah asks listeners to notice the band's opening riff, but warns that a sudden tempo change two minutes in is hard to dance to.
Danced to it · 5 of 117
♪ Music · 3:05 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Now, can you remember the bandoneon riff? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-la-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Not just enjoying, we enjoy and we study. Always both at the same time. So now we have the Troilo Fiorentino version of this song from 1941. Now, the sound quality is rubbish. It's absolutely rubbish. But it's the same arrangement. It's quite unusual. So 1961, 1941, 20 years previously, basically the same arrangement. I will do my best to adjust the sound as we go. Have a listen and see if you can feel. You need to do like a translation process in your brain to go, OK, if this sounded good, how would it have sounded if I was there? A bit like this Goyeneche version, but with a fixed tempo and much faster.
Same arrangement as the 1961 version, in poor sound; the band is 'on fire'.
Yes, folks, that's a radio recording. Yeah, bands on fire. Three years of missing recordings. Let's not weep about it now. I want to listen to El jarón again. Dag, you played it earlier. I want to hear it again. It's such an extraordinary performance. Four or five years ago, the Clarín newspaper produced a special CD issue of probably one of the last CD issues ever made because the CD's kind of finished now. My impression is they made a new transfer from the acetate and they did a really good job. And Fiorentino is so exciting. I mean, the band is so exciting, but the phrasing that we get from Fiorentino is just extraordinary.
You know, the sophisticated bands, any band that had pretensions to be sophisticated, Di Sarli, Troilo, Pugliese, they didn't record many waltzes and milongas. They had them in their repertoire, but they didn't record them because they didn't need so much arranging as the tangos did. So therefore, they just improvised them at the dances and it wasn't necessary to record them. So that's another example of how we think, oh, I listen to the records, and therefore I have a representative sample of how it was back then. But that's not true. Let's listen one more time to Fiorentino phrasing imperiously, El jarón.
Replayed at Lavocah's request as an extraordinary performance; the acetate was reissued with a new transfer by the Clarín newspaper.
♪ Music · 2:24 ·
Can you imagine? We think, you know, we listen to the records and we think we know what the band sounded like. We've got no idea. You know, a working band, depending on how high they were working, a band like Troilo's that was working in cabarets and nightclubs and for dancing, more than 100 songs ready to go. We've got no idea what they sounded like. So what should we listen to? There's a few suggestions coming in on the chat window. Please keep them coming. That helps me, that inspires me. In fact, let's go with one of them. I commented earlier how there's no solo recordings of Troilo because he just didn't want to do it. But he did record a couple of bandoneon duos much, much later with Piazzolla in 1970. There were two, El motivo, curiously, which we've already heard, and the other is Volver, so let's listen to that now.
When I listen to this, what I hear is that Piazzolla himself is, what's the phrase, it's hard to hear when it's one man and when it's the other man, because Piazzolla is not playing the bandoneon Piazzolla style. He's showing respect to his maestro, to Troilo, and plays the bandoneon in a more Troiliano style. But that doesn't detract from the performance. It's still a great performance. Volver, one of the most famous Gardel numbers. But here, from 1970, Troilo and Piazzolla.
One of two bandoneón duos from 1970 (the other is El motivo), the only anything close to a solo by Troilo; Piazzolla plays in a more Troilian style out of respect.
Danced to it
♪ Music · 0:23 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Nice, huh? A few comments coming in on the chat window about how we might decide who's playing. Gerardo suggests if there's too many notes, it's Piazzolla, not Troilo. I think you're right there, Gerardo. Yeah, we can tell, we can tell, but at the same time you can hear that Piazzolla is subjugating himself to the Troilian feeling.
Now, I want to play another late Troilo number. Now, I've had no plan for this after party, none at all. I didn't even know if we would heaven after party, so this is really going by ear. And I want to play a number with Nelly Vásquez. I think Nelly Vásquez is the best female singer that sang with Troilo, because she's not overpowered by the orchestra in the way that El Barberon was, for example. And I want to play the Madreselva.
Now, I'm not going to play the rehearsal. It's from what year, let me just check, it's from 64 that she's with the orchestra. 63 to 65, maybe a few more years. It's really hard to tell because there's so few recordings, but 64 throw the records for you know commercial release, Madreselva, a classic Gardel number. You know, Troilo, Gardel, always keep those two names together.
And the rehearsal was recorded surreptitiously. So the guy who owned the studio where they were rehearsing snuck a microphone in and recorded the rehearsal. So you can find that on YouTube. If you want to know, let me know and I'll send you the link, or I'll post it on the group. There's a 25 minute rehearsal where Troilo rehearses this number with her, and it's really intriguing because it reveals to us something that we hear people speaking about, that you've heard me speaking about, how Troilo taught his singers to phrase.
Because at a certain moment, Nelly Vásquez sings a certain sentence and he stops, he just stops the rehearsal there, because, no, in this sentence you don't sing da da da da da, you sing da da da da da, or whatever it is, something like that. And then the rehearsal continues and she sings it that way, and you can all hear it's better. So Troilo educated his singers, and he doesn't do it in a critical way, he does it in a friendly way, because he understands phrasing better than anyone since Gardel. So let's listen to Madreselva. Madreselva means honeysuckle. Maybe you've got a honeysuckle flowering in your garden right now.
Lavocah considers Vásquez the best woman singer to sing with Troilo because the orchestra does not overpower her; a secretly recorded 25-minute rehearsal shows Troilo coaching her phrasing.
So now I'm going to recommend to you some Troilo transfers. And I'm going to recommend to you the Tango Tunes transfers. Now, I'm not the sort of person who says, oh, everything the Tango Tunes does must be the best. But in April this year, Tango Tunes. Tango Tunes is a digital music store organized by Christian Zell in Vienna, and they work really hard to try and give us the best possible music that they can from the old shellacs.
Now, this is a race against time, because if you, dear listener, suppose you've got a mint-conditioned shellac from 1941 of Troilo sitting on the shelf in your house in its paper sleeve. It doesn't sound as good today as it did in 1941 because it's deteriorating. It's slowly falling apart. That's the nature of this universe. We live in a material universe, the universe of things, and the old records are deteriorating. They're analog objects. They're falling apart.
That's one of the reasons why the first CDs of El Bandignon sound so good, because they were transfers from LPs, and the LPs were made from 78 transfers made in the 70s, and the LPs survive better. So when you listen to those early El Bandignon CDs, you're listening to a 1970s LP. So there's been less deterioration.
Having said all that, in April this year, Tango Tunes produced an album on their website of the Troilo songs from 38 to 42. And it's just, I've got to tell you, it's outstanding. And I don't say that easily. If it was rubbish, I'd tell you. It's outstanding. It's better than the Obra Completa produced by RCA Victor in the 90s. And they produced that from LPs made in the 70s. It's better than that. It's absolutely outstanding. You've got to listen to that.
And there are crude differences, and then there are just general technical differences. Let's listen to some of the crude differences. For example, Pájaro ciego, one of the most famous and exciting Troilo tangos from 1941, the only one with a duo with Francisco Fiorentino and Alberto Marino. Somebody typed in the chat window, what a pity there aren't more tangos with Alberto Marino. Well, no, not really, because he wasn't as good as Fiorentino, and therefore he was never going to record a solo number. He was only ever going to record a duet number, and throw those, not really duet, orchestra duets are for waltzes and for the sort of more slushy stuff. But let's just listen to how it sounds.
Chapter · 3:39:30
The chord that went missing
For 30 years Pájaro ciego was missing its first chord.
Excuse me if I'm a bit slow, but I have to check that I'm playing you exactly the right transfer. So, this is what we heard since the beginning of the revival, 1983, until the first Tango Tunes transfer. We heard this. Okay, did you hear that? Let's listen again. I can't see you because I'm looking at my music windows. Listen again.
Played first in the old CD transfer, with a fast echo and the first chord missing, then in the Tango Tunes transfer. The only Fiorentino-Marino duet.
Okay, so there's two things wrong with that. First of all, can you hear the echo in the music? It doesn't go ba, it goes ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. That's the first thing that's wrong with it. There's a very fast echo. But the second thing is the first chord is missing. There's a bit missing from the song, because this song does not go bump bump bump bump bump, it goes yum bump at the beginning. Did you know that? I didn't know that until I heard it from another source. It should sound like this. Did you hear that? It's different, isn't it? What we heard for 30 years and what it actually is.
Can you hear that? There's an extra chord at the beginning. Now, why is it missing? The wrong version comes from a CD, which comes from an LP in the 70s, and that LP comes from a transfer that the guy did, and probably the introduction of that LP was really noisy, so he thought, I'll just get rid of that. No one will know. Let's listen to the Tango Tunes version. Pájaro ciego. Pájaro ciego. Oh God. Pájaro ciego, blind bird. The phrase itself doesn't occur anywhere in the lyric, but you do hear pajorito cantor. Pajorito, little bird, cantor, singing, little singing bird.
The Tango Tunes transfer with the missing opening chord restored; the lyric compares a caged songbird to someone not free in love.
Danced to it · 5 of 34
♪ Music · 0:32 ·
The lyric draws a comparison between a bird in a song cage and somebody who isn't free in their love life. And the second verse, which isn't sung but which everyone would have known, presents a turnaround where the guy opens the cage, opens the door of the songbird's cage, and the bird just flows away. So it doesn't fall in love with him. The bird just flows off and finds its own freedom.
1941, you know, if you weren't being blown up to bits, you know, being bombed or whatever. Starving, great year.
It's Troilo night, so one of the things I'd like to bring out is the really deep and intimate relationship between Troilo and Goñi. And it's a bit of a lapsus in our understanding of the orchestra, because Troilo never spoke about it. You know, Troilo was a lover in the neutral sense of the word, somebody who just loved people. And in later interviews, he spoke about his love for Homero Manzi, for example, he spoke about that. When prompted, he spoke about Fiorentino, but he never spoke about Goñi. It's like a wound deep in the heart, like a dagger, because Troilo at the beginning would have been nothing.
“I say this seriously, he would have been nothing without [Goñi].”
Really, I say this seriously, he would have been nothing without Goñi. And not because Goñi chose the repertoire, which he did. Goñi helped choose the repertoire, but he developed the sound of the band that we hear from 37 to 43, the first six years. But what we can listen to is the relationship between the two men in their music, and there's no greater example of that than La tablada from 1942, an old Canaro number, can you believe it.
For those who are asking about it, all these are from the Tango Tunes transfers. The new edition came out in April this year, so there's a wonderful synchronicity between the second edition of the Troilo book and the new transfers from Tango Tunes. That album, I've posted the link in the chat window, 38 to 42, just buy it. It's much better than the best CDs from Argentina. Really, it's that good, and it will really increase your pleasure. Let's listen to La tablada.
A Canaro composition and an example of the call-and-response between Troilo's bandoneón and Goñi's piano at the opening.
In the opening, you hear this wonderfully delicate interplay between Troilo on bandoneón and Goñi on piano. Call and response. Call and response.
Oh, they were good. And now, for something completely different.
A Troilo vocal played 'for something completely different' after La tablada; lyric begins 'Quise cobrar este amargo rencor'.
♪ Music · 3:50 ·
A second vocal in the sequence after the Tango Tunes discussion; ends on 'nunca más'.
So since I recommended Tango Tunes 38 to 42 album, and I'd recommend all their albums for Troilo, there's been some comments in the chat window. And I just need to say some things about that. So one or two people have said, oh, Flack is better. No, it's not true. Because it's not about the codec. It's about the music.
And one could spend hours talking about this and it's boring and we don't have time and it's not interesting, but just to preface my remarks, I'm a chartered electronic engineer. I have two degrees in electronic engineering, so I know what I'm talking about. So just because there's more bits and more stuff doesn't mean it's better. So Tango Tunes have changed their philosophy. I'm not, I'm not even going to listen and respond to the comments in the chat window now. I don't have time.
So currently, so currently means since maybe two years ago, I don't know exactly. Tango Tunes have released their files in two formats. The first format is AIF. AIF means CD quality. There isn't anything better than CD quality. Not for what we're talking about.
Yeah, like maybe if tomorrow you went into the Royal Festival Hall and recorded a symphony orchestra, there could be something better. But for tango music, no, there isn't. So the bass quality. So for the particular album I recommended, that's CD quality. Now, the second option they offer, it's not about the fact that it's flack. It's, it's about some other stuff. It's about the sampling rate and the bit depth.
But as an electronic engineer, I can tell you there's no advantage. There might be an advantage if there's more information, but there isn't. And probably with what you're listening to at home, it will be worse. So for the album I recommended to you, don't spend extra money to get the more expensive version because it will not sound any better and it may sound worse. That's not true for their very first recordings.
Okay. A few more songs. What am I thinking about here? Dag, you played the exquisite Troilo-Grela version of Palomita blanca. I'd like to play the Troilo Orchestra version of Palomita blanca. The counter melody that we heard in the Troilo-Grela version is brought out even more beautifully in the orchestra version.
You know, we could play Troilo all night. There's 485 tracks and he didn't record a single bad number. But we're not going to do that. You know, some of us have to go to work tomorrow. Some of us have to sleep. So we're going to play Palomita blanca and then I'll pick a closing song.
The orchestra version of the waltz, where the violins' counter-melody is brought out even more than in the quartet version.
Listen to the counter melody. Counter melody means a second melody that harmonizes with the first melody and it's in the violins. That's what Troilo liked to do. There's very few violin solos in Troilo. If you listen to the 38 and 41 recordings, there are some short violin solos from David Diaz, but they quickly die out. Troilo's conception of what the violin is to do is to provide a counter melody for the singer. And that's what we're going to hear now.
Dag is outside. I'm outside. Yeah, can I highlight you? I'm trying to spotlight you, but here we go. Guys, where I am, it's 20 past 11 and it's dark, but where Dag is, it's not dark. Look at the light, look at the water, South Norway. Remember last year, Michael, we're in North Norway. It was much lighter than this.
Unforgettable. I'll never forget that trip. So I'm going to play two more songs. First of all, I'm going to play Confesión of Troilo with Ruiz, because we didn't hear so much Ruiz tonight, and for a long time it was a song that meant a great deal to me personally. And after that I'll play a Fiorentino song, and I don't even know which one it is. So let's listen to Confesión.
A Discépolo song on the other side of Gira, gira; a personal favourite of both hosts. Dag said they had not heard much Ruiz that night.
Okay, one more Fiorentino song and then a Troilo composition. I'm going to play for you Colorao, colorao. And I have a very particular reason to play that, because until April of this year, you couldn't hear this song. Colorao, colorao is one of the very small number of Troilo-Fiorentino songs from this short period from 41 to 43. Colorao, colored, means red. It's about a horse. The guy sings to his horse. It's a countryside tango.
Now, why am I saying this stupid thing that you couldn't hear this song? I'll explain why. So back in 1970-something, when Victor transferred from the Shellacks, from the Shellacks because they destroyed the masters, to the LP or the old songs, the particular shellac they had of Colorao, colorao was so noisy that it was really hard to hear the music properly. And Colorao, colorao, there's two really nice things about this tango. One is Troilo's bandoneón solo, which is not at the end, it's in the middle. And the second is Goñi's phrasing.
And the shellac that the audio engineer had back in 1970-something was so noisy and bad that you couldn't hear Troilo's bandoneón solo properly, and it's 30 seconds. He takes a whole section of music and it's just Troilo. So the engineer thought, I know what I'll do. I'll just cut it out. No one will notice. So there's 15 seconds missing from every version that we've had ever since until April 2020, April of this year. So every version you've got, people, it's wrong. It's just rubbish.
And even Tango Tunes, in their first Troilo-Fiorentino edition, couldn't find a good shellac and so they didn't print it. Only in this April edition, Todo Aníbal Troilo 38 to 42, they found a good shellac and they printed it and it's outstanding. And the reason that we didn't have it before and that we have it now is because of Troilo's bandoneón solo, which is of course very fine, but I want to suggest to you that even better than Troilo's bandoneón solo is the phrasing of Orlando Goñi on piano. So that's what we're going to hear now and then we'll hear a compasita which I guess is going to be from the early 50s.
A countryside tango sung to a horse; until the April 2020 Tango Tunes edition every version lacked 15 seconds of Troilo's bandoneón solo cut by an engineer in the 1970s.
♪ Music · 5:52 ·
Tango By Year is Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah's, published here with their permission. The audio plays from SoundCloud.