How tango records were made and sold

For about fifty years records were made of shellac and turned at 78 revolutions a minute, a few minutes of music to a side. Vinyl came in 1948 and was standard by 1958.^[1] Columbia introduced the long-playing record in 1948; RCA Victor answered with the smaller 45.^[2] So almost every golden-age tango, from Gardel's first discs to the dance orchestras of the 1940s, first reached the public as a two-sided 78.

From the horn to the microphone

Early records were made acoustically: the musicians played into a horn. In Barcelona, on his 1925–1926 tour, Gardel recorded for Odeon with an electric microphone for the first time, the biggest change in recording until the LP of the late 1940s; in Argentina he recorded this way from November 1926.^[3]

Stereo came last. Osvaldo Fresedo began recording for Columbia in 1959, among the first artists to record in stereo.^[7] In Montevideo, Sondor made South America's first 45 rpm record in 1954.^[9]

Contracts

The trade ran on exclusive contracts. By 1914 Max Glücksmann, Odeon's man in Buenos Aires, held nearly the whole Argentine record business by signing the best musicians and composers to long exclusive contracts; he is credited with bringing royalties to Argentina, for sheet music and for records.^[4]

An orchestra's label could last a career. Juan D'Arienzo was an exclusive RCA Victor artist from 1935 to 1975,^[5] and Alfredo De Angelis recorded for Odeon from 1943 to 1977.^[6] Others moved: Osvaldo Fresedo recorded nearly 600 sides for Odeon in 1925–1928, then for RCA Victor in the 1930s and 1940s, Odeon again in the 1950s, and Columbia from 1959.^[7] A contract could also bind across borders: when Gardel recorded in the United States for RCA Victor while still under contract to Disco Nacional-Odeon, the companies settled by sharing those masters in Argentina.^[4]

Selling a tango

Records were sold alongside the songs themselves. Glücksmann also controlled the sheet-music business and ran the Concurso del Disco Nacional, seven tango contests in Buenos Aires between 1924 and 1930 and two in Montevideo.^[4]

Radio made the records' audience. When RCA Victor signed Ángel D'Agostino and his singer Ángel Vargas in 1940, they also appeared on Radio El Mundo, the country's most important station.^[8]

Reading a record

Two numbers identify a 78. The matrix number was given to each side as it was recorded and is stamped into the run-out area between the last groove and the label^[10]; the catalogue number is the one the record was sold under. So a matrix dates a recording session, a catalogue number dates an issue, and one matrix can come back years later under a new catalogue number. Tangopedia lists both for every record we hold, with the year it was issued^[11].

The labels

Odeon and its Disco Nacional, Victor and RCA Victor, Columbia, Brunswick, Pampa, TK, Music Hall, Philips and Uruguay's Sondor each have a page: its story, the orchestras that recorded for it and their years, its most danced recordings to play, and its records by year issued.^[11]