KI DOJO
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Articles and Interviews
Compact Tango: Building a library (2)
This quarter we have the second in our three articles on building a library of tango music. In part one we looked at the process of re-issuing old tango music. This time, as promised, a complete review of all tango music ever recorded. In one 3,000 word column. Well, I’ve really set myself up here. Better get going then!
Before D’Arienzo: 1900 – 1935
Out on its own as far as very early material goes are Juan Maglio’s 1912-13 sides on the Columbia label, re-released on El Bandoneon. Not long after this is a release of Firpo on EMI/Pampa which includes a recording of La Cumparsita from 1917. Moving into the 1920s we see an explosion of recording activity, not just in Argentina but also of course in Europe, particularly Paris. Of those recordings we should mention Tano Genaro on the French Music Memoria label and Bianco/Bachicha on EPM and Harlequin, who have also put out three compilations of the tangos that were to be heard in Paris, Madrid and Berlin, whether from Argentinian or European groups.
Whilst many Argentine musicians settled in Europe, others toured there for just a short time before returning. The latter group includes Canaro and the celebrated Trio Argentino of Agustín Irusta, Fugazot and Lucio Demare who achieved notable success in Spain in the years 1926-1928. Two cds devoted exclusively to them are available on El Bandoneon.
Back in Buenos Aires we have guardia vieja recordings of Fresedo (1927-1928) on EMI/Pampa and Blue Moon, Lomuto (1927) on Disco Latina, Di Sarli (1928) on Blue Moon, and Juan Carlos Cobián, actually disguised as a Fioretino disc on El Bandoneón. Many other orchestras achieved less fame but produced material of equal quality. Two of these, those of Francisco Pracánico and Juan Bautista Guido, can be heard on their own discs on El Bandoneon.
Some other early material falls into the historical interest only category. Of these we should include the Orquesta Típica Select and the recordings of Eduardo Arolas, both on Harlequin.
Also beginning in the late 1920s we find the first recordings of the tango singers – mostly women at this point: Ada Falcón (with Canaro), Azucena Maizini, Rosita Quiroga, Libertad Lamarque, Mercedes Simone and Tita Merello, all of these available on El Bandoneon with these last four on Disco Latina as well. Harlequin have put out three good discs covering these women singers and there’s also an excellent disc on El Bandoneon with each of the twenty tracks sung by a different artist.
Nelly Omar will have to wait to record until 1946, when she cuts 10 perfect sides with Canaro’s orchestra (available on an El Bandoneon disc she shares with Fiorentino). Later she will sing and record to guitar accompaniment to great effect – this material is on the Argentinian budget label Magenta.
Of the works of Carlos Gardel we should first mention EMI/Hemisphere’s cracking disc of his greatest hits, and for those fancying more there is a two disc set on Nimbus or even the mammoth 21 disc set of his complete recorded work on El Bandoneon. Gardel has rather left his contemporaries in the shade, but there is also Agustín Magaldi, Ignacio Corsini and Hugo del Carril on El Bandoneon. And we mustn’t forget Charlo who sang so well with Canaro and Lomuto, nor Alberto Gomez, who sang with the Típica Victor and with Donato amongst many others.
As we head towards the 1930s the guardia vieja sound is coming under threat. De Caro’s recordings from 1926-1928 (two discs on El Bandoneon and a two disc set on Blue Moon) are at least ten years ahead of their time, an assertion that will be supported by the advent of Osvaldo Pugliese at the end of the 1930s. The outstanding Orquesta Tipíca Victor was able to incorporate some of the new ideas whilst remaining true to a dance based – perhaps because it was only ever a studio group and did not ever have to face its public. There are two discs on El Bandoneon, one on Disco Latina, and one on Harlequin – curiously, though, nothing on an Argentinian label. The Tipíca Victor’s innovative director Adolfo Carabelli went on to direct a very fine group under his own name which you can hear on El Bandoneon.
Other orchestras such as those of Donato and Canaro are also developing along perhaps more conventional lines. El Bandoneon have two good discs of Donato and there’s one on Disco Latina as well. Canaro’s path is a bit harder to plot because he recorded so prolifically and with many different line-ups. El Bandoneon have just one disc from this period, but it’s a good one. Also around this period (1937) we have the wonderful early recordings of Canaro’s studio group Quinteto Pirincho – two discs on El Bandoneon. (There was one on FM Tango but this hasn’t been available for a while). Firpo amazes me – his idiosyncratic sound just doesn’t change at all. There are two discs on El Bandoneon, two on Reliquias and a double CD on Blue Moon.
Rather out on his own in this period is Ciriaco Ortiz, the greatest bandoneonista of the decade, who made some outstanding recordings with a trio composed of himself and two guitars. These are available on El Bandoneon.
Osvaldo Fresedo’s 1930s recordings have gone from being virtually unobtainable (only the out-of-print Disco Latina disc) to being in abundance with the 1999 issues of Tango Argentino’s disc of the recordings with Roberto Ray and Blue Moon’s double CD. Hopefully these will lead to an increase in his popularity in Europe.
Juan Maglio’s 1930s recordings similarly remain very firmly in the guardia vieja mould but sound dated by comparison. The guardia vieja sound is running out of steam, and something has got to give. The genie manages to stay in the bottle until 1935.
D’Arienzo
This is the man who made it all happen. With his pulsating compás, Juan D’Arienzo converted a generation of tango listeners back into tango dancers and precipitated a revolution in the social and cultural life of his country.
FM Tango had a four disc set at one time of which volume 1 is still definitely available - a super instrumental disc spanning D’Arienzo’s first twenty years. Of the other three I would recommend Volume 4 (very broad selection of vocalists). Volume 3 (a 1950s instrumental disc), is okay but Volume 2 (mostly late vocalists) can be safely left on the shelf. Those wanting only the early material have a reasonable choice now: two discs on Tango Argentino, two on El Bandoneon, three from La Union De Tangueros and now the 1999 Blue Moon double CD.
D’Arienzo is generally considered to have ignored his singers, but it’s difficult to say this whilst listening to his work with Hector Mauré in the early 1940s. FM Tango’s marvellous D’Arienzo/ Mauré disc is no longer available, but amazingly it was lifted track-for-track by El Bandoneon on one of their very last releases (EBCD 99). Jolly decent of them, I must say. The EMI Tango Argentino series also covers D’Arienzo with Mauré: he gets a whole disc to himself, and a second disc that is half Mauré, the other half being the execrable Mario Bustos. A big “hi” to Mario if you’re watching. Not an obvious combination really.
D’Arienzo’s most famous and long lasting combination was with Alberto Echagüe. I’m surprised to tell you that there still isn’t a really good disc of their early successes, although some of these are on the first El Bandoneon disc.
D’Arienzo kept recording well after the end of the golden age. In the instrumental numbers we can hear him evolving the show tango sound and as such your fondness for modern show tango determines how much of this material you will like in a very predictable manner. Personally though I’m quite fond of his transition period in the 1950s where he manages to sustain both interests at once. It’s fashionable to look down on those recordings and to prefer his 1960s material, in which the show sound is more fully evolved. Can’t stand it myself, but there you are. Nevertheless I should tell you that there are two volumes of this stuff on Tango Argentino as well as discs with singer Armando Laborde and late period Echagüe.
D’Agostino/Vargas
95 tracks, all perfect. El Bandoneon’s disc is mysteriously unsatisfying, must be something in the processing. FM Tango’s two discs were great, very hard to obtain now. However, crisis over, EMI have released four discs on Tango Argentino, which is very close to their complete work and a great joy to me to have in my collection. Can we have disc five please??
Angel Vargas recorded extensively after their partnership dissolved and this material is available both on Tango Argentino (three discs) and El Bandoneon (one disc).
Troilo
Troilo, perhaps the greatest bandoneonista, was beloved of the Argentinian public as much for his bohemian lifestyle as for his great music. His enduring popularity means that every label has a fair selection of Troilo discs. His importance however lies more in his integration of the singer with the orchestra, which he achieved with Francisco Fiorentino. This set the stage for the great flowering of tango in the second half of the golden age.
That breakthrough is captured on El Bandoneon’s very first disc, Yo Soy El Tango (EBCD 1). The sound quality is fine and by confining themselves to this very narrow frame (all the sides are from 1941) we get to appreciate the brilliant and distinctive ‘Troilo sound’. Within a couple of years though Troilo had completely changes his sound, evincing a preference for slower and slower tempi in which the singer is ever more prominent. A full appreciation of these recordings demands transfers of the very highest quality, something only sporadically available on El Bandoneón.
The transfers on the Argentinain Troilo releases are uniformly excellent. FM Tango had an excellent selection of Troilo at one time: two discs with Fiorentino, two with Marino, and two with Floreal Ruiz. Some of these are sporadically available, but are largely superseded by the discs on the Tango Argentino label: three with Fiorentino, two with Marino, just the one with Ruíz, one with Casals, and two instrumental discs, one early, one late. BMG/RCA have separately compiled the complete work of Troilo over a mammoth 15 discs. This epic will not come cheap – but, ah, it’s wonderful.
There’s a great deal more that could be said about the music and the recordings of Anibál Troilo and I hope to do this for you with a separate article in the future.
Troilo’s great line-up also served to spin off many other groups. Both Fiorentino (in 1944) and Marino (in 1947) left Troilo to go solo. The same thing happened with his pianists: the great Orlando Goñi left in 1944 to form his own line-up but does not appear to have enjoyed much success or left any recordings. His replacement, Jose Basso, similarly left in 1948 to form his own orchestra which fared rather better. There was a disc on FM Tango; today your only choice would be Reliquias. But then, why buy Basso when you could buy Troilo?
Tanturi
Second only to D’Arienzo in importance as a dance orchestra, the Tanturi releases on El Bandoneon varied between the mediocre and the dreadful. Happily, Tango Argentino have now come to the rescue with two discs each of Tanturi/Castillo and Tanturi/Campos as well as a fifth disc of his earlier sides with Ribo and Videla. The excellence of these releases enables you to join in the popular Argentine pastime of discussing which combination you prefer. Here, I’ll start you off: I prefer Castillo. Oh, but Campos is much better for dancing, Castillo needs to be listened to more than you can whilst dancing. What? How can you say that? Castillo’s sides with Tanturi are masterpieces…
Alberto Castillo left Tanturi to go solo in 1943. Whilst famous now for the milongas and candombes he recorded with his own orchestra there are also many tangos too. Both these aspects get a disc or two on EMI’s Reliquias label, and there’s quite a good compilation of his solo successes on EMI Disco de Oro.
Di Sarli
I think that Di Sarli has been the most difficult of the great orchestras to obtain. Once FM Tango put out its splendid disc of late instrumentals no-one seemed to bother with Di Sarli. El Bandoneon pulled its usual trick of a single mediocre disc and we all got bored to death by Verdemar for the next five years. Happily, Tango Argentino have once more come to the rescue with five discs of middle period Di Sarli. I just can’t get enough of the recordings with Roberto Rufino, but listen also to the sides with Alberto Podestá and Jorge Durán. There’s also now a disc of early Di Sarli (1928) on Blue Moon.
Biagi
Particularly hated by Piazzola, who found his music insipid, Biagi makes music that is playful just for the sake of it and is tremendous fun, particularly in the waltzes. El Bandoneon’s disc gives a good selection. Since then Reliquias have put out four discs – two with Jorge Ortíz, one with Alberto Amor and one (the pick of this bunch) with both Andrés Falgás and Teófilo Ibañez. Blue Moon have a new disc too. If you want Racing Club then it’s on the second Ortíz disc.
The Romantic Sound
Those leaning towards the romantic sound will like Miguel Caló, Lucio Demare and Alfredo de Angelis. As far as Caló goes, there’s no question that his best period was that of the Orquesta de las estrellas, which broke up in 1944. This was the orchestra which counted Enrique Francini, Armando Pontier and Osmar Maderna among its members. El Bandoneon cover this period well on their first Caló release. There’s plenty more on Reliquias. The one-singer-per-disc thing makes this material a bit repetitive but the Caló/Berón disc is a stormer. I can live without the discs with Raúl Iriarte and Roberto Arrieta though – it’s just too much of the same.
When Caló’s orchestra disintegrated in 1945 it gave birth to two children: the Francini/Pontier orchestra and Osmar Maderna’s orchestra, both of whom have a disc on El Bandoneon. Both of these took tango in new directions, and away from the dance floor. Nevertheless there is some fine playing to be enjoyed, particularly from the violin of Enrique Francini. There is now a Francini/Pontier double CD on Blue Moon as well.
Alfredo de Angelis’s sound is an unashamedly romantic one. Late period de Angelis can sound lightweight (de Angelis was dismissed by his critics as “fairground music”) but the best of the 1940s material is just joyful. The material to get is the duos with Dante/Martel on El Bandoneon. Other good discs: the EMI Disco de Oro, for a broad sweep of his career, and the EMI From Argentina to the World disc also covering a long period but with a special emphasis on the early 1940s tracks, with the Blue Moon double CD taking a similar approach. Reliquias have six discs – a late instrumental disc that is really not to my liking, a disc each of Dante and Martel, of which the Martel disc (late 1940s) is rather good, a disc of the Dante/Martel duos, and two discs with Oscar Larroca (1950s).
Lucio Demare has the richest sound of any orchestra, lush, round and extremely romantic. There’s very little to buy: one fine disc on El Bandoneon, containing his quintessential recording of Malena; one on EMI/Pampa split between vocalists Raúl Berón and Horacio Quintana, and a third on Reliquias’s confined exclusively to Raúl Berón. Get the first two, and the third if you got a bonus last month.
Laurenz
The fabulous Pedro Laurenz has a very small discography and once you’ve bought the El Bandoneon disc there’s just nowhere else to go. Amazing.
Pugliese
Okay, so you want to buy some Pugliese. Of course you do. Everybody does. Should be easy, huh? Wrong.
The problems start all the way back in the 1930s, when ignorance and politics conspired to ensure that Pugliese made very few recordings. Finding good masters of the early material has proved difficult. El Bandoneon’s Pugliese catalogue is, well, odd. One of their very first discs is a short disc of just ten sides featuring Pugliese’s 1949 recordings with Jorge Vidal, with excellent sound quality. This disc puzzles me - it’s good, very good in fact, but not really an obvious period to release. My guess is that these were the sides they happened to have. It was a long wait before El Bandoneon released a disc of early Pugliese sides: a nice mix of instrumentals with the work of Roberto Chanel and Alberto Mor[ML1] án. I seem to remember I panned this when it first came out because the masters weren’t beautifully clear. Well, no-one’s are: El Bandoneon (for once) just didn’t apply any filtering, which Reliquias have done on their equivalent discs. I’ve come to really appreciate this disc now. El Bandoneon’s second early disc does however suffer quite badly from distortion in places, although again there is no filtering at all. The Blue Moon double CD is a mix of early material with uneven sound quality at a very good price.
Also worth a mention is the EMI/Pampa disc De Caro por Pugliese, this latter an excellent disc but one that has overstayed its welcome on our playlists.
The Reliquias Pugliese catalogue stands at four CDs: one with Chanel, one with Mor[ML2] án, and four instrumental discs. This is good stuff, although the sadly deleted FM Tango Pugliese/Chanel disc was a better (if shorter) one and as I’ve said there is a bit of filtering on Instrumentales Inolvidables Vol. 1. This sort of thing only emerges when you do comparative listening tests – you’d never notice if you had only the one disc.
EMI have published four well known compilations. Colección, a mostly instrumental compilation from 1991, was everyone’s favourite for many years. Competing with this for the title of best instrumental only CD is the EMI From Argentina to the World disc. However, following the maestro’s death in 1995 EMI published the moving commemorative album Ausencia (Absence). This has a good selection of songs and instrumentals spanning his entire career. In a similar mould, but not with such a good selection of tracks, is the EMI/Disco de Oro Pugliese disc.
Polygram’s six disc Antología covers Pugliese’s low period, the 1960s. Of course there are some gems in here too, such as Verano Porteño, and many listeners will disagree with my assessment of Pugliese’s 60s output. For you, take a look at the Pugliese disc on the EMI Nostalgico label, a compilation of the Polygram catalogue.
Enrique Rodriguez
Recordings of Enrique Rodriguez are not too hard to find unless you want only the tangos. There is now a disc on El Bandoneon as well as the disc of La Union des Tangueros, which was the only one available for quite some time. Do listen though to the 1940s foxtrots – they are delightful. Remi’s discs are the best for these.
The end of the tenor
Beginning in the late 1940s with Edmundo Rivero we get a new crop of singers – no longer tenors, but bass-baritones. Rivero and Goyeneche both achieved great fame with Troilo’s orchestra (q.v.) and Goyeneche went on to a stellar career both as a solo artist and with Astor Piazzola’s orchestra (q.v.).
The 1950s
By the end of he 1940s tango music had reached its full development as a sophisticated dance music. In the 1950s, as new musical ideas continued to be incorporated and the music became deprived of its dancing public, tango moved into new areas.
Gobbi
Gobbi is often recommended as someone a bit like Pugliese, only different. Hmm. There are, or rather were, two discs on FM Tango, and El Bandoneon have produced one too. It’s certainly an interesting and individual sound. I find that I think I ought to like Gobbi but, deep down, I don’t. Maybe I just need to listen to it more.
Salgán
Recently I have come to really enjoy the music of Horacio Salgan. Bursting with energy, wit and invention, many of the numbers are highly danceable and we also hear some of the earliest work of singer Roberto Goyeneche. There’s very little to choose between the discs on El Bandoneon and EMI/Tango Argentino; both are excellent.
Francini - Pontier
These two great musicians, veterans of Miguel Caló’s Orquesta de Las Estrellas, formed their own group which, whilst not really a dance orchestra, produced work of some musical richness. El Bandoneon have a single CD and Blue Moon a double.
Maderna
Another veteran of Caló’s pre-1945 line-up, Osmar Maderna didn’t even pretend to be making dance music any more. With his tango (?) Concierto En La Luna he definitively breaks with the conventions of the dance orchestra, whilst his arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee just has to be heard to be believed. Two discs on El Bandoneon.
Mariano Mores
As a performer perhaps best known for his delightful milonga Taquito Militar, Mores was an outstanding composer– Uno, Gricél, En Esta Tarde Gris, Adiós Pampa Mía are just a few of the tangos penned by his hand – long before he formed his own orchestra in the mid fifties. From the beginning he demonstrated a strong preference for a dramatic, theatrical approach, as evinced by the title of his group – Mariano Mores y su Gran Orquesta. No Orquesta Típica for him! Whilst this is most definitely not a traditional approach, Mores’s music is inventive and energetic.
The early material in particular (now available on Reliquias) has a lot of charm and, served in small doses, can do wonders to lift the mood at a milonga. The later material on the other hand is just too over-the-top for me to take it seriously; a have a disc on ANS of a live concert in 1995 in which Merceds Sosa makes a guest appearance.
The audience loved it, I hate it. Maybe you just had to be there.
Piazzola
Piazzola’s 1940s material is well worth a listen, try the first of the two El Bandoneon discs or (if you’re particularly keen) the Blue Moon double CD. Nothing at all on an Argentinian label from this period – surprise surprise. The later stuff is not really for dancing and I don’t review it here, but do listen to these two classic concerts at the Teatro Regina available on EMI Tango Argentino: the 1970 concert of his famous Quintet (Kicho Diaz on double-bass, Cacho Tirao on guitar, Antonio Agri on violin) on the occasion of their 10th anniversary, and the May 1982 concert with Roberto Goyeneche, including his mesmeric and definitive version of Balada Para Un Loco. Is it tango? I don’t think so, but it is Buenos Aires music and I love it, so the question becomes redundant really.
Later singers
In the 1970s a new generation of singers grew up who had never experienced tango as a mass dance phenomenon and so possess a very different take on tango music. The pick is undoubtedly Susana Rinaldi. With a voice that goes right down into your boots she gives a very individual and expressive interpretation of classic songs. The best recording of hers that I have heard was a live concert in homage to the great porteño writer Julio Cortázar which unfortunately seems to be unobtainable. There are other recordings available, for instance on Blue Moon, but nothing that has touched me so much.
Solo Guitarists
The most famous is without doubt Cacho Tirao. The only album of his currently on CD is on the Argentinian label Timeless Tango, which is actually imported into the UK (don’t ask me who by, I’ve forgotten). My favourite however is the contemporary guitarist David Tannenbaum. His 1994 recording of Piazzola’s work on the US New Albion label remains in my view a classic.
Well, I realise that this review has been a bit dry, but there was just so much to cover that there wasn’t space to get into the flavours of all the wonderful music that we surveyed. Next time: the Essential Compact Tango. We make recommendations for your library. See you then!
Mike
