Tango Masters:

Anibal Troilo

Michael Lavocah
3®

milonga press
Tango Masters:
Anibal Troilo
 Published in Great Britain by milonga press

Copyright © Michael Lavocah 2014, 2016

Michael Lavocah has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this condi­
tion being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All rights reserved

First edition 2014

Revised 2016
1234567890

milonga press
33 Britannia Road
Norwich NR1 4HP
England
www.milonga.co.uk

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9573276-5-8

Series editor: Mike Stocks

Cover design: Nigel Orme

Cover photograph: Fred S Schiffer FRPS

set in Garamond 11/14

The important thing is not to be a
p o e t-
it is to live life in a state o f poetry

- Anibal Troilo
 Preface

Anibal Troilo: 100 years of friendship

It’s 2014, one hundred years since the birth of one of tango’s great­
est and best loved musicians, Anibal Troilo, known as “el ban-
doneon mayor de Buenos Aires” - the greatest bandoneon player in
Buenos Aires. It’s a title that no-one disputes - no mean feat in this
city.
Entering the office of Centenario Anibal Troilo one immediately
feels a special atmosphere. Francisco Torne (Troilo’s nephew), and
Celeste Alvero are working flat out. Whilst Celeste continues to
explore the archive, Francisco is busy arranging and co-ordinating
the schedule; and there is an event almost every day. They have no
financial motive for their work. I’m struck by the atmosphere of
warmth, humility and affection that permeates this office.
Uniquely amongst the leaders of the great tango orchestras, Troilo is
loved by everybody. D’Arienzo, the progenitor of the dance revolu­
tion of 1935, continues to divide opinion now as he did then (be­
cause of the lack of sophistication of his music). Di Sarli, famously,
was a difficult and demanding personality; Pugliese, with great integ­
rity, positioned himself on one side of a political divide that mankind
seems fated never to heal. But Troilo, on the other hand, is loved by
everybody because he loved everybody. He extended the hand of
friendship to everyone, placing himself in the midst of humanity. He
is everyman; and his music speaks to, and for, everyman.
And so it is that this centenary is not that of the abandoned lover,
sitting alone with only a whisky for comfort. It’s the centenary of
warmth and friendship.
Michael Lavocah
Buenos Aires
April, 2014

vn
 Contents
Part 1: The Sound
1. Introduction
2. The first orchestra (1937)
3. Troilo - Goni - Diaz (1938)
4. Orlando Goni: m arcam n bordoneada
5. Fiorentino: el cantor de orquesta
6. Anibal Troilo, bandoneon

Part 2: The Repertoire

7. An introduction to the repertoire
8. The first recordings (1938)
9. Astor Piazzolla (December 1939)
10. On the radio (1940)
11. 1940: The lost recordings
12. Troilo-Fiorentino 1941
13. A change of pace (1942)
14. Gricel
15. Alberto Marino, the golden voice (1943)
16. The death of Orlando Goni
17. The Arrangers
18. Jose Basso (1943)
19. Adios, Fiore
20. Marino solo (1944)
21. Floreal Ruiz (1944)
22. Recuerdos de bohemio (1945)
23. Edmundo Rivero (1947)
24. Aldo Calderon (1949)
25. Chau, Rivero (1950)
26. The 1950s
27. Responso (1951)

vui
 28. The Troilo-G rela quartet (1953)
29. La ültim a curda (1956)
30. Roberto G oyeneche (1956)
31. Troilo for export (1963)
32. N octurno a mi barrio (1968)
33. Troilo in 10 tangos

Part 3: The Man & the M yth

34. A short biography

35. If only they could speak
36. Troilo on Troilo

Appendices

A. Troilo on CD
B. Troilo discography
C. O rchestra formations

Bibliography

Index o f Tides

Glossary

A cknowledgem ents
 Part 1

The Sound
 Introduction

1 or most dancers, their first contact with the music of \nibal 1 roilo
is with the glorious sides his orchestra recorded m ΓΜ1 when, after
four \ears of hard work, the hand was finaJh handed a recording
contract b\ K( \ Victor. 1 he sound of this orchestra is uim ersalh
described In a single word brilliant

In .Spanish, the word brilliant remains connected to its original

meaning of the music slum’s It is rich, resplendent However,
this is no( j light that dazzles, that blinds It is not simph bright. I he
orchestra is alreacb showing some of the shading that would become
its hallmark. 1 his shading is not u t full\ developed it pnncipalh
manifests m an alteration between »/.;«<<;/" and /t;',///» smooth and
choppx ’ passages 1 he light of this orchestra is not intended to daz­
zle, but t( >illuminate.

Listening more c losch, it is an orchestra wnh a strong personal

stamp, constituted b\ excellent musicians with a highh personal
touch. In Orlando Cm»hi, it has possjbh the best tango pianist of that
generation or an\ other \n mipn>\iscr, covering the whole kc\-
Ixurd with great tluencv and freedom, and entowng special abilities
in Ixuh hands, he was often imitated, but never equalled
Equally free in his interpretation was the singer Francisco Fiorentino.
Λ singer in a dance orchestra has to keep the beat, but working with
Troilo, Fiorentino somehow manages to do so whilst still having a
very free timing. Shaped by Troilo’s guiding hand, he became the
emblematic orchestra singer.

Then there is the first bandoneon player, Troilo himself. Although

an accomplished player, he was not really a virtuoso. Instead, his
reputation rested on the feeling and expression that all agreed he
could inject into just two notes.

Underpinning all this, the man in the background was the bass player,
Kicho Diaz. Flis rock steady beat was the foundation of the orches­
tra. Together with the regular marcato (the steady marking of the beat)
of the bandoneon section, he provided the platform for Goni,
Fiorentino and Troilo to play freely with the music. This combina­
tion of discipline and freedom is the key to the sound that the or­
chestra produced, and no analysis of the orchestra is complete with­
out understanding these four men.
The first orchestra
( 1937)

When I formed my orchestra,

my aim was very clear:
that the instruments form phrases as a unit
in the manner of Gardel
Troilo’s first orchestra was formed in 1937. This was not an orches­
tra of sidemen recruited to fill the spaces, but of people that Troilo
knew - preferably men that he had already worked with. Key
amongst these men was the pianist Orlando Goni. Troilo had
worked with him on and off for years, and they had just been work­
ing together: in 1936, Goni had been with Troilo in the Orquesta
Tipica Ciriaco Ortiz, an important time for Troilo, as it gave him
ample first-hand opportunity to study the bandoneon playing of
Ortiz, whose intimate phrasing would have such a big impact on his
style.

In 1937, Ortiz joined forces with the pianist Juan Carlos Cobian to
form a huge orchestra for carnival1. When we say huge, we mean
gigantic (Troilo called it ‘un orquestin) - 15 bandoneons, 15 violins, 5
double basses, and 2 pianos: Cobian himself, and Orlando Goni.
After carnival, Ortiz reformed his previous group to play on the
radio and at a club, but when the radio contract came to an end, he
dissolved the group and his musicians found themselves without
work. Troilo saw that his hour had come, and it felt natural to those
around him that he should take the lead and head up a new group.
Encouraged by Ortiz, Troilo formed his own orchestra.

The key man in this orchestra is the pianist, Orlando Goni. He

helped Troilo select the repertoire, but more importandy, his unique
style decisively shaped the sound that the group produced. Troilo’s
first orchestra is inconceivable without Goni.

.Also important, but less influential, was the bandoneon player Toto
Rodriguez. Naturally, Troilo was first bandoneon in the new group,
but Juan “Toto” Rodriguez was not just a sideman. In Ciriaco
Ortiz’s orchestra, he had played bandoneon alongside Troilo and the
two were firm friends.

1 Traditionally, carnival was a season of feasting before Lent, which in 1937

began on 10th February.
Francisco Fiorentino is the singer but at this time he had not yet
assumed the central role that we hear in the 1941 recordings. In
Troilo’s own words, at the beginning the singer was simply “one
more instrument”, whilst the orchestra, in a curious reversal of roles,
sang “like Gardel”.

The orchestra began its career with a great stroke of luck: at the
Marabu, one of the most important cabarets in the city, the orchestra
of Luis D’Abraccio2 was about to finish its stint and the venue was
looking for a new orchestra. It was just the start Troilo needed.

Fiorentino, who had trained as a tailor, was put in charge of organis­

ing the suits. Being older and more experienced than the other
members of the band, he knew how an orchestra needed to present
itself in order to succeed in this environment: impeccably dressed,
but also happy and smiling. Troilo would later say: “He taught us
how to go on stage”.

The opening performance at the Marabu took place on 1st July 1937.
There are different accounts of which song they performed first -
possibly because people are thinking about different shows: there
were two or three shows every evening. Troilo recalls that the first
tango was S o b r e e l p u c h o with Fiorentino, but according to tango
historian Luis Adolfo Sierra3, the first song was E l c a r r e r ito , again
with Fiorentino, and this was during the early show, called vermouth
(named after the cocktail one might drink at this hour), which was
from 5pm to 6pm. Another author states that the first tango was the
instrumental T in ts v e r d e , followed by E l c a r r e r it o 4. This seems the
most likely, as it was customary to start with an instrumental, but
we’ll probably never know for sure.

2 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p46

3 Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, p45
4 http://hojasdeafeitarargentinas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/nueva-hoja-el-
marabu.html [accessed: 20-06-20141
The opening was a success, but not a triumph. The band that we
know today was not yet fully formed. But Troilo knew what he
wanted to do:

When I formed my orchestra, my aim was veiy clear, that the instruments
form phrases as a unit in the manner o f Garde1.5

This is, or ought to be, quite a shocking statement. Gardel was the
greatest voice in tango, but he never sang for dancers. Having been
pivotal in the emergence and acceptance of the tango cannon, the sung
tango intended for listening, his death in 1935 had tilted the balance
back towards what had been previously been called tango milonga, the
largely instrumental tango intended for dancing. Although this is not
yet a statement about the role of the singer, Troilo is declaring his
intention to unite the two streams. He wants his instruments to have
as much expression as a human voice.
 3
Troilo - Gofii - Diaz
(1938)

Kicho Diaz was not the bass plaver in the 1937 orchestra: that was
)uan bassio. However tor some reason unknown to us, but possibly
because he found Goni too difficult to follow, bassio left in 1938,
suggesting the voung Hnriquc “Kicho” Dia/ to Troilo as his re­
placement. \X’e should be grateful to bassio, because the combina­
tion of Goni on piano with Diaz on bass was very important for the
orchestra, so important that it has become legendär) within tango.

In a tango orchestra, the double bass combines with the low notes
ot the piano to produce the bass drive ot the orchestra. In this, the
double bass player follows the piano. Goni was an improviser and in
addition he liked to plav with a ven free timing, which made him
even more difficult to follow. Kicho Diaz complemented Gom per-
feedy, being able to follow his improvisations whilst providing a
rock-steady tempo. The combination of Kicho Diaz with Orlando
Gom was exceptionally potent musically, underpinning the orchestra.
Despite the fact that Juan bassio (Diaz’s predecessor) went on to
play bass with Miguel Calo, his name is not well-known today out­
side a small group of specialists, whilst Kicho Diaz is remembered as
an outstanding musician, one of the defining bass players of the era.
He stayed with Troilo until 1959, leaving to join Astor Piazzolla’s
quintet. Piazzolla said: “Λfan) people hate asked me what it was about
Kicho. I don 7 know. I think he is the father o f all bass players. He was a sort of
elephant carrying the whole quintet on his back'**.

With the arrival of Kicho Diaz, the axis of the orchestra is complete.
Because he holds the beats, he gives both Troilo and Goni the possi­
bility to play with a much freer timing, and they took full advantage.
Troilo and Goni are giants with a special feeling for music, but they
could not have done what they did without their bass player. It’s
impossible to overstate Kicho Diaz’s importance in the orchestra.

It was also in 1938 that Kicho brought in his violinist brother David
to play when Jose Stilman departed. David Diaz had been working
with the orchestra of Jose Tinelli, but the opportunity’ to play first
violin with Troilo’s dynamic young orchestra tempted him to switch.

The violins never get long solos in the Troilo orchestra, but when­
ever they are featured, either in a short solo, or in a contra canto, a
countermelody played behind the main line (perhaps even behind
the singer), the sweet tone you are hearing is likely to be that of
David Diaz. He never left the orchestra, staying until Troilo’s death
in 1975. Like his brother Kicho, his name is indelibly associated with
that of Troilo and he is remembered as a great musician.

The other violinist to join in 1938 was Hugo Baralis, replacing

Reynaldo Nichele (who would return in 1940). Baralis had known
Troilo a long time. A photograph of Elvino Vardaro’s group taken
in late 1933 (when it had added a third bandoneon to become a
septet) show s a bandoneon section of Troilo, Jorge ‘Argentino’ Fer­
nandez and Eduardo Marino, with Vardaro and Baralis on violins.
This group was famous for its avant-garde music making, and both
Marino and Baralis were in Troilo’s orchestra by the end of 1938.
Baralis was a close friend of Orlando Goni, which led to him depart­
ing with Goni when the latter was sacked in September 1943 (see
chapter 16). Another of Baralis’s friends was a young Astor Piazzolla,
whom Baralis persuaded Troilo to audition on a famous night in
December 1939 when Toto Rodriguez was sick (see chapter 9).

Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez, Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, p81

 4
Orlando Gobi
marcacwn bordoneada

Tvervone says that Goni was a unique talent as a pianist; Horacio

berrer remarked that we might even say that he was the greatest
pianist in tango, except that to do so would be unfair to the other
great pianists. Gobi was a great improviser, who paid scant regard to
the written score. His plaving was vigorous, giving the orchestra
drive, and also exceptionally fluid and elastic; but what was his
unique style exactly?

The term marcadon bordoneada has been coined to describe Gobi’s

playing, or even the school of playing that emerged as others tried to
copy his style. This term is often used, but never explained. What is
marcadon bordoneada exactly?

Marcadon refers to giving la marca - marking the beat. This is

achieved with the low notes in the left hand of the piano. Bordoneo, or
bordoncar, refers to the strumming of a guitar:

Rompio el silendo el bordonear de una guitarra!

} por m s cuerdas el dolorpaso llorando. ..

The silence was broken by the strumming of a guitar

And pain passed weeping along its strings

-Vo te bendigo, lyric by Juan Bruno, 1925

More specifically, the reference is to strumming las bordonas, the
three bass strings of the guitar.

When one strums a guitar, the notes do not sound all at the same
time: although they sound close together, they are spread out, from
the lowest note to the highest. There is even a tango which describes
this, La b o rd o n a (1959), in which the opening notes, on the piano,
replicate this rolling of a guitar’s bass notes.

So, marcamn bordomada is a way of describing something rather un­

usual that Goni does in the left hand of the piano: Instead of hitting
a chord in the normal manner, Goni often plays the piano as though
it were a guitar, rolling up through the notes of a chord in the bass
notes.

Before we talk about the effect this has, let’s clarify the explanation
with the help of some examples.

Here are a couple of low notes on the piano,

a common enough device on the piano, per­
haps as a link between a verse and a chorus:

Goni however is more likely to turn the first

note into two, like this:

You can hear exacdy this in the link from the

first verse to the first chorus of the 1941 instrumental C achim lo.
The rest of the band falls silent, just for a moment, and Gohi’s notes
ring out.

If two notes create movement, three

notes will make more:

One place you can hear this would be

the opening of the instrumental tango
La m a lev a (1942).

These rolling bass chords create movement in the bass line. In con­
sequence, the music becomes more fluid. This fluidity, combined
with the vigour of Goni’s playing, creates a tremendous elasticity in
the sound he produces. Tty’ to imagine what the sound would be like
if Gofii had played in the normal manner: the movement would be
missing, and the music would not excite us so much. Another tango
pianist, Osvaldo Tarantino, describes Goni’s left hand as a revolu­
tion.

Goni’s right hand is also very special, but completely different to his
left. Here he sometimes plays in unison with the violins and the
bandoneons7, which requires very careful listening to hear; at other
times, however, he copies Troilo’s free phrasing on the piano. The
supreme example of this is his interplay with Troilo in the opening
of La ta b la d a (1942), but it’s something he does everywhere.

Seated at the piano, Goni had a strong and unorthodox presence.

Eye witness accounts say that he sat with his legs akimbo, barely
using the pedals8 - something that some professional tango pianists
tell me is impossible.

Perhaps now we can see and hear why Goni’s piano playing is such a
miracle. His special abilities have been summed up by saying that
with his left hand he played the piano like a guitar, and with his right,
like a bandoneon. The only tango pianist who bears comparison
with this kind of creativity is Carlos Di Sarli, but Goni plays with
much more freedom. As a tango pianist, he is unmatched.

7 La Historia del Tango vol.15, p2848. This was the opinion of Toto Rodriguez,
who played alongside Goni in the Troilo orchestra.
8 La Historia del Tango vol.15, p2849
 5
Fiorentino
el cantor de orquesta

Francisco Fiorentino started out as a bandoneon player - his teacher

was Minotto Di Cicco, Francisco Canaro’s first bandoneon, famed
as the one o f the best players o f the day with an excellent technique.
In 1924, after Radio Grand Splendid hired the trio in which he
played with his brother \ricente, he decided to dedicate him self to
music, abandoning his studies as a tailor. In this trio he also sang
cstribillos, vocal refrains - the single chorus o f the music to which
singers in dance formations were limited in those days.

The same year he sang as an estnbillista (a singer o f estribillos) with

Canaro. In those days no orchestra had a dedicated singer; the
estnbillista would be chosen from the ranks o f the musicians, and was
often not even credited on the record label. Fiorentino continued
successfully in this dual role until he found him self in the orchestra
of Pedro Maffia in 1930. Listening to M affia’s bandoneon playing
close up, he realised he wTould never reach that level as a player, and
decided to try and pursue a career as a singer. As a stage name he
used his surname bv itself: Fiorentino.

With Troilo, Fiorentino became the emblematic orchestra singer of

tango, and the combination o f Troilo and Fiorentino is perhaps the
greatest combination of orchestra and singer that tango has ever
known. This might make us assume that Fiorendno was already very
successful when he joined Troilo, or at least very highly regarded,
but he was not. He was not even Troilo’s first choice: Troilo wanted
Antonio Rodriguez Lesende, but Rodriguez Lesende demurred be­
cause he didn’t want to work nights. Only then did Troilo engage
Fiorendno, who was out of the work at the rime.

Listening to Fiorentino’s recordings from his whole career, his per­

formances from the rime before Troilo hold no great magic; and the
same is true of the years after he left Troilo. Clearly, Troilo had a
wonderful ability not just to choose a singer but to get the most out
of him. He moulded Fiorentino’s voice to suit the orchestra.

Of Fiorendno, Troilo later said:

Posiblemente no era *Ία vo^\ o la gran vo% pero habla una gran sim-
patia de mi parte. Era un cantor hecho, maduro, con personalidad.

Perhaps he wasn’t “the voice”, or the great voice, but I

really liked him. He was an accomplished singer, mature,
with personality.

For the rest, we are reduced to saying what so many have said before:
that this combination held some indefinable magic.
 6
Anibal Troilo
Bandoneon

How is it that the Argentine public embraced Anibal Troilo as el

bandoneon mayor de Buenos Aires, the greatest bandoneon player o f
Buenos Aires, when he was not the greatest technically?

He certainly had a good technique - Jose Votti (violinist in the

Troilo orchestra in the 50s) remarked that he never heard him miss a
n ote0 - but he was not really a virtuoso. Instead, his reputation
rested on feeling. In the words o f Nestor Marconi, in an interview
given in 2014:

He was not a Artnoso; but bis technique was perfect for his style. He was
pure suing and feeling. One hears two notes and knows it ’r him. He had a
unique ability to move you. 910

As Marconi implies, Troilo did not need a lot of notes to create this
feeling in his audience: two or three, or perhaps even one, was
enough. Domingo Mattio, who joined the orchestra in 1947, had this
to say:

9
Jose Votti interviewed by Julio Nudler in Pagina 12
Interview with Nestor Marconi in Tiempo, 11-04-2014.
http://tiempo.infonews.com/mobile/tiempo/notas/122343.php
 His bandoneon was his heart. There were a lot o f good bandoneon players
here, but when he played three notes, he would slay them all. On the solos
of ■
C hique'Inspiration \ or T a cumparHta\ he gave us all goose bumps.

For Leopoldo Federico, “when someone says that two notes of

Troilo are worth a thousand, they are underestimating” 11. Piazzolla
held the same view: “He was incomparable just playing two notes”12.
Another bandoneon player, Pascual Mamone went further: “Troilo
played one note, and he pierced your heart” 13.

As a musician, his contemporaries thought of him as synthesising

the styles of three great bandoneon players who had come before
him: Pedro Maffia, Ciriaco Ortiz and Pedro Laurenz. Of Pedro Maf­
fia, Troilo said: “before Maffia, there was no-one”. Maffia was fa­
mous for his smooth phrasing (fraseo ligado) and quiet velvet tone
which created an intimate feeling to his performances. This influ­
enced not only Troilo’s bandoneon playing, but his whole approach
to performance: in a noisy cabaret, his strategy7was not to overpower
the public chatter by playing loudly, but to have the whole band
begin quietly so that people stopped talking in order to listen. Only
then would the orchestra increase the volume.

Ciriaco Ortiz was also an intimate player, but with quite a different
style. Of the three bandoneonistas we have mentioned, his influence is
the most obvious. The word that is universally used to describe his
playing is conversando: it is conversational. Ortiz played the ban­
doneon as though it were talking to you, ending his phrases with
little flourishes or firueletes. He played with what bandoneon players
call fraseo octavado —decorating the phrase with notes an octave above
the melody note - in the right hand. Some credit this to him. He was
certainly a master, but in an interview with Oscar Zucchi, the ban-

11 Interview with Andres Casak in El tangauta N* 183 (Jan 2010)

12 Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez, Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, p l42
13 "Hacia una nota que te perforaba el corazbn": Pascual Mamone interviewed
on the DVD Los Capos del Tango
doneon player Mauro Scavone ascribes the invention offraseo octavado
to the musician and bandleader Anselmo Aieta (1896-1964).14
Finally there is Pedro Laurenz, a virtuoso whom Troilo admired for
his creativity and harmonic brilliance. The pyrotechnics that Troilo
displays on the sole recording of the Vardaro-Pugliese sextet, T igre
v ie jo (1933), displays Laurenz’s influence, as does the bright, shining
sound of the Troilo orchestra in its first years.
On stage, Troilo performed with his eyes half closed. He seemed to
be in another world; or perhaps he was a shaman with a foot in both
worlds. Looking at the wonderful portrait by Fred Schiffer on the
cover of this book, his eyes appear to be looking in slighdy different
directions: the right eye looks straight at you, whilst the left gazes
slighdy to the side, as if lost in the music. As a player he achieved a
degree of connection with the public —communion even - that was
unparalleled.
This was surely because of the feeling —the human feeling - he
expressed in his playing. One quotation runs: “Anibal Troilo is Bue­
nos Aires. When he plays, one feels oneself accompanied”.15

14
Oscar Zucchi, El tango, el bandoneön y sus intörpretes, volumen IV, pl580.
Luis Adolfo Sierra, perhaps following a quotation of the bandoneonista Gabriel
Clausi, credits the invention of fraseo octavado to Eduardo Arolas, but this
seems unlikely because, although Arolas played with great feeling and energy
(like Troilo) his technique was relatively poor. On the other hand, Arolas is
considered the first to really make phrases on the bandoneön. De Caro said: "He
was the creator of the fraseo and the rezongo (grumbling)".
La Historia del Tango vol.16 p3085
 Part 2

The Repertoire
 7
An introduction to the
repertoire

Troilo formed his orchestra in 1937 and recorded from 1938 until
1971, leaving 485 recordings: 449 with his orchestra, 34 with small
groups (quartets) and 2 bandoneon duos with Astor Piazzolla.

Our focus in this book is the dance music. The pure dance era draws
to a close at the end of the 1940s. Almost without exception, the
music you hear at the milonga is from this period.

In 1950, when Piazzolla becomes the band’s principal arranger, we

enter a transidonal period. These recordings aren’t so appealing to
the tanguero of today, but there are still some outstanding numbers.
For instance, the recording of Q u eja s d e b a n d o n e o n from 1952,
the second of the orchestra’s three recordings, is considered by many
to be the best of the band’s three versions - indeed, the best ever.

In 1957, the incorporation of Osvaldo Berlingieri on piano marks a

decisive shift in style for the orchestra. Prior to this, all the pianists
had attempted to follow the style of Goni. This new sty le was less
danceable, in keeping with the times - the mass of people were no
longer dancing tango. Perhaps that’s why those later recordings
sound less engaging, despite the improvement in recording technol­
ogy'. They are never played in the milongas, and we’re not going to
talk about them much in this book.
 1. Dance era: 1937-1949
2. Transition era: 1950-1956
3. Concert era: 1957-1975

The table opposite is provided to help you get an orientation to all

of this. As well as the singers, I’ve included the name of the pianist,
because he also had a big impact on the style.

Our main focus will be on the years 1938-1949. In fact, most of

what one hears in the milonga is from a single year: 1941.
 Pianist Singer Singer Label
1937
1938 Odeon
1939
Orlando
1940 Francisco Amadeo
Goni
1941 Fiorentino* Mandarino
1942
1943
1944
Jose Marino RCA-
1945
Basso Victor
1946
Floreal Ruiz
1947
Carlos Rivero
1948
Figari
1949 Calderon
1950
1951
Carlos
1952 Jorge Casal
Figari Raul Beron
1953
1954 TK

1955 Osvaldo Olmedo

Lozano
Manzi
1956 Goyeneche Cardenas
1957-
Cardenas Odeon
1959
1961 Goyeneche
1962 Elba Beron
Osvaldo
1963 Rufino
Berlingieri
1964- Nelly
1966 Vazquez RCA-
1967 Tito Reyes Victor
1968
1969
Jose
1970-
Colangelo
1975
* In early 1940, Fiorentino was absent from the orchestra for some months
and his post was filled by Hector Palacios.
Repertoire and recorded repertoire

Today we might imagine that the repertoire of the band is what we

listen to on the records, but this isn’t the case. We’ve already men­
tioned a couple of tracks that Troilo never recorded. A working
orchestra would have had at least 40 tracks ready to go at any one
time, perhaps more16, but in the golden age a band would usually
record one disc a month. With two sides to a disc, that’s only 24
numbers a year.

At the same time, there was a huge amount of new material being
written. New compositions were constandy being incorporated into
a band’s repertoire, which meant that some of the existing repertoire
would have to be discarded.

The upshot of all this is that a successful band could not record all
their repertoire. A new song would be tried out at the dances, and, if
it was successful, the band would try to record it. This means that
what we are left with is largely the creme de la crime. Despite this, many
important songs were left unrecorded. The singer might leave to go
solo before he had the chance to record some of his big hits, for
example. Most significandy of all, an innovative orchestra might be
working for many years before winning a recording contract, which
meant that nearly all the repertoire of those earlier years could be
lost to posterity. This is exactly what happened to Troilo (and to
Laurenz). Oscar del Priore has a list in an appendix to his biography
of Troilo, and it’s heartbreaking: forty unrecorded tracks with
Fiorentino alone, including C om o d o s extra/ios, N osta lgia s,
Q u iero v e r te una v ez m a s, A1 verla p a s a r and V erdem a r17.

16 Horacio Ferrer maintains that the Troilo orchestra had 120 pieces prepared at
any given time.
Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, ppl39-142 "De lo que no se grabd"
Words and music

When we quote the composers of a song, who goes first: the author
of the words, or the composer of the music?

Most non-Argentine tangueros don’t speak Spanish, and besides,

there are many instrumental tangos. Outside Argentina, then, it
seems more natural to give the name of the composer of the music
first.

Troilo placed his emphasis on delivering the lyric, and even wanted
his orchestra to “sound like Gardel”. This made me wonder whether,
in this book, I should write the name of the lyricist first. When I
remembered how, when we talk about a song in English, we say,
“words and music”, not “music and words”, my question was an­
swered.

Troilo’s favourite authors and composers

An analysis in Corregidor’s “La historia del tango” 18 lists Troilo’s

favourite lyricists and composers, counting up the number of re­
cordings that the Troilo orchestra made with each one.

For the lyricists, three stand out: Homero Manzi (21), Jose Maria
Contursi (16), and Catulo Castillo (25).

Homero Manzi was one of Troilo’s closest friends, and co-author

with him of Sur, Troilo’s favourite vocal tango. We should not be
surprised to find him on this list. He died in 1951; had he lived
longer, they would surely have written many more pieces together,
although as a supporter of the government of Juan Peron (like
Discepolo) he might have found things difficult after the Peron
regime fell in 1955.

Jose Maria Contursi started working with Troilo in 1938. A frus­

trated love affair (with the ‘Gricel’ of his famous lyric —see chapter

18 Hector Lopez, Anibal Troilo -A p un tes para una biografia, in Historia de Tango
vol.16, pp2922-2924
14) became the fount of an incredible spring of creativity which
expressed the pain of separation with no hint of blame. He collabo­
rated with Troilo on a few occasions but more often with Mariano
Mores.

Cätulo Castillo is the author of famous tangos such as T in ts roja.

Although he leads this list, much of his work here comes from col­
laborations with Troilo in the 1950s. If we look at the 1940s, he is
more on a level with the other two.

Turning now to the composers, Troilo’s favourite composer, beating

the second place man by almost two to one, is Troilo himself. In
second place: Armando Pontier, a brilliant musician, but perhaps a
surprise here because he played bandoneon not with Troilo but with
the orchestra of Miguel Calo throughout the early 1940s. Perhaps his
compositions, such as M ilo n g u e a n d o e n e l 40 and A lo s a m ig o s ,
were too innovative for Calo’s refined sound.

Selecting the repertoire

Troilo took a great deal of care about the selection of his repertoire,
more so than anyone else. Many tango historians hold that there is
not a single poor work in his entire repertoire, with every work justi­
fying its inclusion on the grounds of merit alone. I think it’s difficult
to make such an unequivocal statement, but certainly the quality' of
the repertoire is very high. It’s clear that nothing has been recorded
simply because it was popular at the time.
 8
The first recordings:
1938

191H was a vear <>t rapid m usical developm ent tor the T roilo o rches­
tra. Hie m agazine ‘Sintom V gave its opinion ot the o rchestra’s radio
pertorm ances ion 1.R4 Radio Splendid) on at least tour occasions.
The first review , dated 2(>th Jan u an , gives just two stars to the
h and’s interpretation o f La c u m p a r s ita s finding it “arbitrary ”, with a
“series ot \anations that are com pleteh out ot p lace” . No singer is
m entioned.

The second, dated 24th M arch, com m ents on the tangos La m a ri-
p o s a and E l ir r e s is tib le . the\ have “good rln th m ”, but the inter­
pretation is “ven even, w ithout m uch shading” - a fascinating ob ­
servation gi\en the later developm ent o f the orchestra, w hich would
make the shading v ariatio n o f colour) o f the music its hallm ark.
I bis tim e, biorentino is m entioned: his singing is m ereh “correct
enough”. 11ns is just two w eeks after 1 roilo made his first recording
on O deon - som ething not covered in the report.

In a third review , dated 14th Septem ber, the reporter finds that the
band now m ent four stars. I in alh , a fourth com m entary, dated 24rh
O ctober, com m ends the developm ent o f the orchestra. It finds the
m terpretanons o f the m ilonga Λ/ό s e n i c o m o n i c u a n d o and the
tanvg o E n tre s u e n o s “outstanding”, not just for their rhvthm and
harmony, but also for the “musicality of the simple but pretty or­
chestrations”. The band’s style remains “non standard” but thanks
to Troilo’s persistent hard work, they now deserve nothing less than
the maximum five stars. The report concludes by stating that Fioren-
tino must be “praised extensively”, and Troilo even gets his photo­
graph printed.19

On 7th March 1938, Troilo made two recordings on the Odeon

label - C o m m e i l fa u t and T inta v e r d e —which were released on
the two faces of a single 78 RPM disc. Odeon were not that inter­
ested in promoting Troilo - this was a test to see how well the re­
cord would sell. As it turned out, the record made little impact. The
music was too avant garde for the mass of the public, and sales were
poor. This being the case, Odeon made no more recordings. As far
as we know, the terms of the contract were an exclusive three year
deal, and so Troilo was stuck in a kind of recording limbo. Odeon
did the same thing to Tanturi - both of them switching to RCA-
Victor when the three years were up. Odeon were able to behave like
this because they were more willing than RCA-Victor to sign new
acts. RCA-Victor only wanted confirmed stars.

Something noteworthy about this first disc with Odeon is that

Fiorentino does not participate. Troilo would later defend his singer
to the management of Radio El Mundo but here, at a rime when
Troilo’s reputation was not yet made, the band perform two instru­
mentals. Perhaps Odeon insisted on it —in those days, the record
companies called the shots - or perhaps Troilo was too cautious to
ask. We’ll never know.

What we do know is that the use of vocalists was not as integral to

tangos orchestra when this record was made, in May 1938, as it
would be even later the same year. This is something you can see for
instance in the 1938 recordings of D’Arienzo. In the first half of the
year, they are mostly instrumental; in the second half, they are mostly
vocal.

19 Horacio Ferrer, El libro del tango, pl043

This record tells us that, in 1938, the use of the vocalist was not yet
the essential part of the Troilo orchestra that it would soon become.
By the early 1940s, Troilo’s orchestra was the one every singer
wanted to join, because it was the one that gave the vocalist the
greatest opportunity to deliver the lyric. He succeeded in completely
melding the singer with the orchestra; however, just because he does
this better than anyone else, we should not think that he did it first.
The evidence is that he did not.

These first recordings also give us the opportunity to listen to

Troilo’s way of ending a piece as it was in 1938. You will notice that
it’s different to what he did later: in fact, it’s not dissimilar to Calo,
with a delayed ending taken just by the piano. Ferrer holds that there
was a rivalry between these two orchestras20, and this idea is sup­
ported by their recordings: the same piece was recorded by both or­
chestras within weeks of each other on many occasions.

How to listen to the music

In the rest of this book, Troilo’s story is interspersed with listening
notes for some of the recordings from each period. For these, each
piece is listed with its index number in the discography (see Appen­
dix B) and its recording date.
1. On the first listening to any piece, just pay attention to Goni’s
piano, being careful to listen for the lower as well as the upper
notes.
2. On the second listening, pay attention to Kicho Diaz’s bass,
noticing how it grounds the piece and gives Goni the freedom
he needs.
3. Now listen more generally, paying special attention to Troilo’s
bandoneon; his interventions are sometimes quite modest.

When talking about individual songs in depth, we also try to help

you find a key phrase in the lyric that will help you to identify the
song, even if you don’t speak Spanish.

20 Horacio Ferrer, El gran Troilo, chapter 54, ppl98-200

1 C o m m e i l fa u t 07.03.1938
music: Eduardo Arolas

For his first recording, Troilo chose two instrumental numbers by

giant figures of the old guard, Eduardo Arolas & Agustin Bardi.

Troilo begins this tango with a strong 3-3-2 syncopation (dividing

eight beats as 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2) which is completely absent from
the written score. One is reminded of Laurenz’s Arrabal,\ and yet
the music already has its own flavour: neither the simplicity of
D’Arienzo, nor the density of musical ideas that characterises
Laurenz. Already, Troilo shows his musical conception: advanced,
but somehow occupying a middle ground.

The staccato-legato contrast of the 1941 recordings is not yet

there, but the piece still has great shading, especially when Troilo
takes the final solo. Piazzolla remembered being driven crazy lis­
tening to this tango live at the Cafe Germinal.

2 Tinta v e r d e 07.03.1938
(G reen ink )
music: Agustin Bardi
Was this the first tango that the Troilo orchestra ever performed?
We don’t know, but it’s nice to think so. Its composer, Agustin
Bardi, appears not to have thought much of it, because he hadn’t
even given it a name when a friend asked him, “What’s the name
of that new tango, the one you’ve written down in green ink?”

This tango is also strong, if not quite as vigorous as C o m m e i l

faut. It’s a good place to listen out for and to study Goiii’s left
hand, because the music is not as sophisticated as it would become
in 1941 (when Troilo next records) and there is not quite as much
going on. The piece culminates, unexpectedly, in a long violin
solo, something the band would soon jettison, as would Di Sarli.
 Astor Piazzolla
(Dec 1939)

In July 1939, Astor Piazzolla, who was playing with the orchestra of
Francisco Lauro, took to coming to the Germinal whenever he was
not working to listen to the Troilo orchestra play. For him, and for
many other young musicians such as Armando Ponder, this was the
most innovative orchestra of the day.

After a few months with Lauro, Piazzolla was fired because of his
constant practical jokes. The last straw came when Piazzolla booby-
trapped Lauro’s bandoneon. He undid all the screws and then told
Lauro that a customer had requested the tango L o ca , which would
require him to completely open the bellows. When the moment
arrived, the instrument came apart in Lauro’s hands.

Piazzolla was not bothered because he could now listen to the Troilo
band all day. They played from 3pm to 9pm21. He would buy a single
cup of coffee and eke it out for the whole afternoon. He studied
Troilo’s bandoneon playing, memorising his fingerings and then
going back to his room to practice them. In addition he was mes­
merised by the powerful piano playing of Orlando Goni.

La Historia del Tango vol.16, p2929

Sitting there day after day, people began to recognise him and he
became friendly with Hugo Baralis, a connection which would soon
come in handy.

One night in December 1939, Troilo’s second bandoneon Toto

Rodriguez was ill with flu and the band - which was only an octet at
that time, with three bandoneons and three violins —was a ban­
doneon short. Piazzolla seized his moment. Telling Baralis to ask
Troilo for an audition, he ran back to his room to fetch his ban­
doneon.

So, said Troilo, you're the guy who knows all my stuff? Okay, come up here
and play.

And as we know, he did, even playing the variation in A b a n d on o

with his left hand instead of the usual right2223.The band looked on in
astonishment. Troilo decided to hire him, telling Piazzolla he had got
the job with the words: You know we wear blue suits, right?

Piazzolla was so happy that he played Gershwin’s R h a p so d y in

B lu e as an encore. The band was not impressed. You won't convince
anyone with that, said Goni, drily. Save itfor the Americans.11

When Toto Rodriguez came back to work the band now had four
bandoneons, and very soon after Troilo hired his brother Marcos as
a fifth.

22 Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, p51. Lamentably, this tango was among many
that Troilo was never able to record
23 Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez, Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, pp 59-60
 10
On the radio
1940

Either we come with Fiorentino,

or we don’t play.

In the days before the internet, broadcast m edia was even more
im portant than it is today, and the m edia o f those da\s was radio. In
Buenos Aires, it was often necessary to have a radio contract before
you would be offered w ork in a cabaret. Troilo had been lucky - the
new band was already perform ing in a cabaret, but real success
needed the exposure that only radio could offer.

So he did not mind w hen, on 1st January 1940, he found h im self 14

pesos out o f pocket once he had paid everyone after the o rchestra’s
first broadcast on Radio El Mundo24. The publicity this provided
was worth much more.

The arrangement was not without its difficulties: the station’s musi­
cal director, Pablo Osvaldo Valle, was interested in the orchestra, but
did not like its singer Francisco Fiorentino. Valle’s criticisms make
interesting reading, because they are not wholly without merit. He
criticises Fiorentino’s diction2526, and if you listen to the opening of
T in ts roja one can hear what he means: Fiorentino sings “Teinta
roja”, for example. Troilo, however, was firm: either we come with
Fiorentino, or we don’tplay2b. Del Valle gave in.

This was not Troilo’s first appearance on the radio: he had broadcast
on Radio Splendid in 193827, but Radio El Mundo was the premier
station for tango, featuring Juan D’Arienzo, amongst others. Troilo
stayed there 10 years.

The broadcasts on Radio El Mundo had an additional benefit:

uniquely amongst the radio stations, Radio El Mundo recorded all
their output on transcription discs28. A few of these have survived,
and so, through this medium, we are able to listen to some of
Troilo’s unrecorded repertoire from this early period. Whilst the
fidelity' is very poor, the music is outstanding, and the transcriptions
we have are invaluable documents of the orchestra’s music at this
time.

24 These were medium wave AM stations that were relayed around the country
(and beyond on short wave). Radio El Mundo's AM relay was called LR1 because
it was the first station on the dial. Radio Splendid was LR4.
25 Carlos Marin: La vida de Anibal Troilo Pichuco ' p37
26 Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, p50
27 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, pp48-49
28 These were acetate (vinyl) as opposed to the shellac that was being used for
commercial records. The quality was quite poor, but the advantage for the radio
stations was that the disc was made instantaneously, without the need for
cutting and plating a wax master and then pressing a disc. Transcription discs
were physically larger than normal shellac records, and could hold 15 minutes of
material or more, opening up the possibility of repeats.
 11
The lost recordings
1940

in August 1940, the conductor Leopold Stokowski set sail on a tour

of South America on the SS Uruguay with a large youth orchestra
(the All American Youth Orchestra) calling at Rio De Janeiro, Sao
Paulo, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires, where he played four con­
certs at the prestigious Cinema Gran Rex which still stands at Corri-
entes 587. The trip was sponsored by his new record label Columbia
Records, who had withdrawn from Argentina in 193229*31, during the
Great Depression.

As part of the deal, Stokowski was asked to make recordings of local

music, using recording equipment that he brought with him. He was
especially keen to record in Brazil, where he had established cordial
relations with the composer Hector Villa-Lobos. In Argentina, he
contracted two tango o rc h e stra sth o se of Nicolas Messandro and
Anibal Troilo. The recordings were made at the Gran Rex.

According to one source'1, the recordings were: T ierrita , E l m o tiv o ,

E l c a r r e r it o , S u e n o d e j u v e n t u d , M ilo n g a d e m i s a m o r e s .

29
Jorge Finkielman, The Film Industry in Argentina, McFarland 2003, pl55
Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, p49
31 Los Grandes del tango N°47, September 1991 (issue dedicated to Francisco
Fiorentino), p31, quoting an article in the magazine Cantando by Juan Zucchelli
C orrien tes y E sm era ld a , L o h a n v isto c o n otra, La cu m p a rslta ,
Kuo p u e d e s e t ; B a jo u n c ie l o d e estrella s and Vieja am iga.

When Stokowski returned to the United States, production was held

up because of difficulties associated with the Second World War.
Shellac, the resin used in the manufacture of 78rpm records, was
imported from India and Thailand (then called Siam), but shipping
routes in the Indian Ocean were threatened by the German navy,
who sank a number of merchant ships. Shellac was also in demand
by the military. These factors would eventually lead to the rationing
of shellac in the US in April 1942 and to the destruction of old re­
cords for recycling.

Columbia released some of the Brazilian recordings, but not until

1942. The recordings made in Argentina were never published. Of
the eleven numbers, only La cu m p a rslta would be recorded again.
The rest must remain a memory , now forgotten with the exception
of the vals B a jo u n c i e l o d e es tre lla s which survives on a radio
transcription.32

No-one knows what happened to the masters. Columbia is known

to have recycled some of its earlier metal masters, both for scrap and
to clear out warehouse space needed for the war effort. The idea that
they are languishing, forgotten, in a vault somewhere is seductive;
but sadly it’s more likely that they are lost.

32 Osvaldo Sanguiao gives a different list. Of the list above, it includes only four
themes: Tlerrita, El motivo, El carrerito and Corrientes y Esmeralda. In addition,
it contains Melodla de arrabal, Inspiraclön (presumably not instrumental, but
the version with Fiorentino), the vals Un placer and Racing Club.
 12
T roilo-Fiorentino
1941

What was the musical scene like in Buenos Aires back in 1941?
Tango was at its peak. The D’Arienzo revolution of 1935 was com­
plete: tango had been re-established as the pre-eminent music of the
city, and it was a dance music: the public were thronging to the
dancing halls of the city in their thousands. The style of that dance
music was the one created by D’Arienzo: strong, clear, and up­
tempo. Unknown to everyone, all that was about to change, but for
now, any dance band had to play in an up-tempo, rhythmic style.

1941 was the year that Troilo finally found success as a recording
artist. His music had all the rhythm of the D’Arienzo orchestra, but
was more sophisticated, emphasising melody and lyrics as well as
beat and rhythm. In this, the orchestra had a potent weapon: the
voice of Francisco Fiorentino. The integration of orchestra and
voice was total, and this was at a time when most tangos for dancing
were now vocal, so a good singer was essential.

The band had been a big success in the carnival dances of 1941,
w here they premiered T od a m i v id a .33 Perhaps it wras this that led
RCA-Victor to hand Troilo a recording contract in 1941. Whatever
the reasons for the new contract, the results w^ere - are —sensational.
The band released 12 discs, i.e. 24 tracks that year —19 vocal, and 5

33 Carnival was just before Lent, which in 1941 began on 26th February.
instrumental. To this day, in the worldwide dancing community they
remain Troilo’s most popular tracks, and amongst the most popular
vocal tangos ever. As well as the performances, one thing that stands
out is the repertoire. Many of the tracks are household names
amongst tango fans, even fans who have trouble identifying the
orchestras and say they don’t know the names of any of the songs:
T oda m i vida, M ilo n g u e a n d o e n e l 40\ Yo s o y e l ta n g o - the list
rolls on.

The music seems fully formed, somehow round and complete: rich,
and balanced - balanced between rhythm and melody, between the
different elements of the orchestra, and especially between the or­
chestra and the singer. For the modern listener, whose main knowl­
edge of tango music and of the orchestras comes from their re­
cordings, this musical perfection seems to have appeared from no­
where. It has not, of course: it is the fruit of many years hard work,
of this orchestra itself, as a unit, of the musicians within it, and of
their leader. Some of the instrumentals are still being played a la
panlla34*, but the majority of these tracks are arranged, and they are all
the work of one man, Hector Maria Artola. So much is made of the
later contribution to the Troilo orchestra of the arranger Argentino
Galvan (which begins in earnest after the departure of Piazzolla in
July 1944), but I love the work of Artola, who is in the form of his
life - working sixteen hours and writing a couple of arrangements
every daylb. In his own words, the arrangements are simple, but they
are music. His hand is somehow invisible, making him the perfect
arranger for Troilo.

Now we’ll take a more detailed look at these recordings, which are
the ones you are most likely to hear at a milonga. The vocal numbers
require the most attention. Troilo’s use of shading is not as devel­
oped as it would become in later years, but there is still often a
34
A la parrilla - literally, on the grill -m eans that there is no formal written
arrangement, but in rehearsal the musicians have agreed amongst themselves
what they are going to do. These leaves some space for spontaneity in the
playing.
Oscar Zucchi: El Tango, el Bandoneön y sus Intärpretes volumen IV, pl645
change in mood within a single number. We’ll also take a look at
some of the lyrics, seeing how they relate to the music, and also
getting a feel for the kind of lyrics that Troilo chose to interpret.

Remember that the vocal numbers at this time all have the same
format. They are made of up two pieces of music, a verse (‘A*) and a
chorus (‘B’) - they are songs. The number begins with an instrumen­
tal verse and an instrumental chorus, to display the orchestra. This
takes about a minute. Then the singer enters, singing a verse and a
chorus. After this, the singer steps away from the microphone and
we get a solo from one of the instruments, which means that the
second verse is never sung. The piece then finds one of two routes
to the finish: the band either builds to a climax by itself, or the singer
re-enters, singing all or part of the chorus for a second time.36 This
pattern would begin to change in the mid 1940s, when the singer
might enter a bit earlier, perhaps even singing part of the second
verse, but for now, all the music - not just from Troilo, but from all
the orchestras - is structured in this way.

The instrumentals, although they are highly syncopated and some­

times use three pieces of music (A, B, C), feel less complicated,
establishing an upbeat happy mood. Without the singer, it is easier to
appreciate the work both of the violins and the pianist Orlando
Gofii, who is just everywhere in these sides.

36 This is explained in more detail in chapter 2 of my first book, Tango Stories,

Musical Secrets, ppl8-19.
3 Yo s o y e l ta n g o
( I am th e ta n g o )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Homero Exposito
music: Domingo Federico
Troilo’s first recording for RCA-Victor is a joyful outpouring of
words and music, far removed from any sentimentality. Fiorentino
becomes the mouthpiece for the spirit of tango itself:
Lscuchen mi compds!
Yo soy el riejo tango que nam en el arrabal!
Listen to my beat!
I am the real old tango that was bom in the arrabal!
Gofii’s vigorous left hand is in evidence right from the introduc­
tion. There arc no big solos, but there is a delightful moment in
the verse, just after Fiorentino sings “Me gusta compadrear” (“I
like to show o ff’), in which violin pizzicato is reinforced by bell-
like notes in Goni’s right hand (an example of Goni’s unison play­
ing mentioned by Toto Rodriguez).
Composer Domingo Federico was a member of Calo’s orchestra
at this time, but Troilo managed to record the tango a week before
Calo. Troilo’s version has much more punch and verve.

4 M an o brava (m ilo n g a ) 04.03.1941

(S tro n g h a n d )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Enrique Cadicamo
music: Manuel Buzon
Composer Manuel Buzon would record this milonga himself in
1942, on his very first record, but he didn’t have a recording con­
tract at this time. Troilo’s version is again joyful and ebullient. The
opening starts gendy enough with just the violins and bandoneons,
which makes it much easier to hear the effect of the double bass
when Kicho Diaz enters with Orlando Goiii. Just before Fioren-
tino enters, Goiii takes a solo that uses only two notes, something
we think of more as belonging to Troilo (who does something
similar in the milonga D e l t ie m p o g u a p o ) . For this to work a
musician needs great timing. Goiii has it, and the milonga swings
along joyfully.
The “Mano brava” of the lyric is a card sharp who, leaving his
barrio, has found success in France and in New York. His old
friends feel forgotten and wish he would return.

5 T o d a m iv id a 04.03.1941
(M y w h o le li fe )
vocals: Francisco Fiorendno
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Anibal Troilo
Arranged by Artola, this tango has a simple repeated riff behind
the main melody and the tension between the two gready increases
the musical interest of the piece. Goni shines in the introduction
with a simple variation on the melody that moves from a lower to
a higher register. Then Fiorentino enters, the lyric sharply at odds
with the brightness of the arrangement; this is the tango that made
me learn Spanish.
After Fiorentino sings the verse Troilo takes a solo which creates a
more introspective mood, and the piece then builds to a climax
with some smart chickarra work on the violins (chicarra refers to
playing on the string wrappers to make a percussive, scratching
sound). One of Troilo’s most enduringly popular tangos.
 C on to d o la voz q u e t e n g o (m ilo n ga )
With a ll th e v o ic e I ’v e g o t
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Enrique Dizeo
music: Anibal Troilo
It was Dizeo’s idea to make a milonga, but Troilo rejected his first
lyric. Dizeo’s second attempt resulted in this classic, a medium
paced milonga with an irresistible swing.
The tide appears nowhere in the lyric, which is a toast to the hon­
est life of a working class barrio: singing, family, and dancing.

8 T e a c o n s e jo q u e m e o lv id e s 16.04.1941
( I a d v is e y o u to f o r g e t m e )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Jorge Curi
music: Pedro Maffia
This tango illustrates perfecdy how Troilo’s music could switch
between two moods. In this the whole band is involved, but it’s
Fiorentino who is most effective in achieving the effect Troilo is
looking for. The first is one of pride as he lays out the situation the
protagonist finds himself in with these bald words:
Recibi tu ultima carta / recem dyour last letter,
en la cual tu me decias: in whichyou write:
*Te aconsejo que me oltides... ” ‘7 adviseyou to forget m e... ”
When the chorus comes however, the narrator is suddenly seized
by fond memories of the happy times they spent together. Fioren-
tino’s voice melts with tenderness as he sings:
Pero no vas a negar hut you won’t deny
que cuando tvsfuiste mia, that whenyou were mine
dijiste que me querias, you said thatyou loved me,
que no me ihas a olvidar; thatyou wouldn ’t forget me;
y que ciega de carmo and that, blind with affection,
me besabas en la boca, yo u kissed me on the mouth
como si estuvierus loca... as i f you were crasy...
Sedienta, nena, de amar. Thirsty, batty, fo r low
Fiorentino is completely convincing as he portrays the complex
emotional landscape of the protagonist. Listen to the instrumental
introduction, which is also a verse and a chorus, and one can hear
the same shift.

9 T a b em ero 28.05.1941
(B a rm a n )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Raül Costa Oliveri
music: Fausto Frontera/Miguel Cafre
This is an “average” number for Troilo/Fiorendno in 1941 - that
it still manages to be a memorable song is a sign of just how
strong the team is, and how skilful at telling a story. Fiorentino
kept it in his repertoire after he left Troilo.
Musically, the tango once again has several moods, reflecting the
shifting emotional state of the drunken protagonist. He begins by
shouting at the barman for another drink:
Tabemero. .. barman
jsigue llenando mi copa Cany on filling up my glass
con tu maldito veneno! withy o u r damned poison!
but is soon begging him not to throw him out in the street. After a
short instrumental break, Troilo abrupdy changes the mood with a
masterful bandoneon solo in which we can hear the drunkard
weeping into his cups. This serves to introduce the drunkard’s
philosophical reflections, which are not sung, but spoken:
Todos los que son borrachos People aren't drunkards
no es p o r el gusto de serlo, because they enjoy it!
solo Dios conoce el alma only God knows the soul
que palpita en cada ebno. quivenng inside each one.
Then he stirs himself, and with a final flourish, declares his desire
for oblivion (the rising violins between the lines depicting the
drunkard’s manic laughter):
isigue llenando mi copa! Cany on filling up my glass!
que yo no tengo remedio Then's no cure fo r me
Author Raul Costa Oliveri wrote this tango from beyond the
grave. He was dead when Cafre took his poem ‘La cancion del
borracho’ (The song of the drunkard) and converted it into a
tango in 1927.

10 P ajaro c i e g o 28.05.1941
(B lin d b ird )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Lito Bayardo
music: Antonio Bonavena
Troilo’s P ajaro c i e g o is a masterpiece: a great composition, a
great performance, but especially a great arrangement (try listening
to Biagi’s version side-by-side with this one). The blind songbird
sings to us through the violins, which are given more space than
usual, and David Diaz’s violin is especially expressive. It’s an
added bonus that this is the group’s only recorded vocal duet
before the arrival of Alberto Marino in 1943. The gentle second
voice echoing Fiorentino in the chorus is Amadeo Mandarino. He
was with Troilo for nearly two years in 1940-1941, but made no
solo recordings: RCA-Victor preferred to record Fiorentino, be­
cause he sold records. Perhaps this is why Mandarino left Troilo,
then at the peak of his success, to rejoin Manuel Buzon.
In the lyric, the words to listen out for are “pajanto cantoC, little
song bird; the phrase “pdjaro ciego” does not appear.
 Como aquelpajarito cantor Like that little song bird
que tenia ios ojos sin lu% who had eyes with no light
y en su jaula dorada canto and, in his golden cage, sang
su cancion de dolor his sad song

Yo tambien a tu lado una ινζ I too drew near to yo u r side

A escucbar tu cancion me acerque To listen to yo u r song
Y fu e tan seductor tu cantar A nd so seductii>e wasy o u r singing
Q ue a tu lado deje That there I remained

Pa/arito cantor, se te vas de aqut Little song bird, i f yo u leave

Yo no se si olvidar, que te conoct I don Vknow whether to forget
that I knew you
No quisiera llorar sobre mi dolor I don Vwant to cry over my pain
Ni tampoco pensar en mi pobre N or to think o f my poor love
amor
(Troilo bandoneon solo...)
Y quien, quien te cuidard A nd who, who will look after you, i f
si te vas asi you go like this,
sin dedrme adios without saying goodbye
The second verse, omitted from the sung performance, contains a
surprising turnaround: one sunny day, the narrator arrives at the
song bird’s golden cage, kisses her eyes, and she flies away.

11 E l b u lin d e la C a lle A y a c u ch o 17.06.1941

( T h e b u lin o n C a lle A y a c u ch o )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Celedonio Esteban Flores
music: Jose and Luis Servidio
A bulin was an apartment that a group of young friends would rent
in order to get away from their parents. This tango is about a real
bulin on Ayacucho 1443 that was rented by the lyricist Celedonio
Flores. His group of friends met there every Friday but broke up
at the end of 1921 when Flores got a girlfriend; the tango was
 written more than a year later.
The lyric describes the simple but happy times in the bulmy with a
primus stove (for making mate, the Argentine answer to tea) and a
guitar always at hand for music making.
It’s said that this was the last tango Fiorentino ever performed (see
chapter 19).

12 M ilo n g u e a n d o e n e l 40 17.06.1941
music: Armando Ponder
In 1940, Armando Ponder was playing bandoneon in Miguel
Calo’s orchestra. However when he composed his first tango he
took it to Anibal Troilo, who was something of an idol for many
young musicians because of the progressive nature of his music.
Troilo produced this masterpiece, and today it stands as a mani­
festo for the rich dance music of the day that was trying to incor­
porate the musical inheritance of De Caro, rather than rejecting it
as D’Arienzo had done.
The music offers the clearest possible example of the way Troilo
shifts between staccato and legato playing. A fantastic tumbling syn­
copation37, unique in tango, frames the piece and also forms the
central hinge, where the music begins to shift from the incision of
the opening chords to more intimate colours - first, to the sweet­
ness of the violins, and then to Troilo’s bandoneon.
Armando Ponder became one of Troilo’s most chosen composers,
second in frequency only to Troilo himself.

37 Michael Lavocah, Tango Stories, Musical Secrets, pp21-22

 14 Una carta
(A letter)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words & music: Miguel Bucino
A prisoner writes a letter home to his mother (“Vieja”) to ask if
what he’s heard is true: has his wife moved another man into their
home, and put their child into an orphanage?
Vieja:
Una duda cruel me aqueja
y es masfuerte que esta reja
que me sirve de prision
No es que me amargue
la triste^a de mi encierro
ni tirado como un perro
arrumbao en mi rincon
Quiero que me digas confranque^a
si es verdad que de mipievp
si bice dueno otro varvn
Diga, madre,
si es cierto que la infame
abusando que estoy preso
me ha enganao
Ύ si es cierto que alpebete
lo ban dejao
en la casa de lospibes sin hogar...
Si asifuera... jMalhaya con laperraL.
A Igtin dta he de saliry entonces, rieja,
se lojuro
p or la cru\i que bice en la reja
que esa deuda con mi daga he de cobrar
Mum:
A great doubt is troubling me
and it's stronger than these bars
which imprison me
No, Vm not embittered
by the sorrow o f being locked up
Nor by being thrown in a comer
like a dog
I wantyo u to tell me frankly:
Is it true that another man
is now master o f my old room ?
Tell me mum,
i f it's certain that this monstrous
woman has taken advantage o f my
being locked up to deceive me
A nd i f its certain
that they've left our boy
in the orphanage...
I f so... damn that bitch!
One day Tilget out and then, mum, I
swear
on the cross I've caned on these walls,
I ’l l hate to settle this debt with my
dagger
Fiorentino’s emotion bursts out in ever)' phrase, revealing the
anguish of the prisoner. This interpretation towers above all oth­
ers; only Raul Figueroa’s 1953 vocal with the orchestra of Juan
Polito - still sadly unprinted on CD by EMI - approaches the
intensity of this performance.
Vocabulary: reja means the prison bars, but also more generally the
prison.

15 En esta tarde gns 18.07.1941

(On this grey afternoon)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Mariano Mores
Troilo-Fiorentino again demonstrate their emotional range in this
masterpiece. The rain drumming on the windows takes the pro­
tagonist back to memories of an affair, which he has ended. The
words and pleas of his lover when he dumped her have come back
to haunt him, for now they reflect his own thoughts:
Come. .. I can't go on with this loneliness. .. Come... I lornyou so... I can't
go on like this, with this love nailed into me like a curse
The band set out their plan for this tango in the opening four
chords with the characteristic shading for which they are now
legendary. These four chords are not simply two chords repeated:
listen closely to Gohi’s left hand, and you’ll hear that the chord is
changing underneath the melody. More importantly, the colour is
changing too. Goni adds dark tones that immediately tell you that
this tango is going to have some strong emotions —something
completely absent from the recording of Canaro, who premiered
this tango. Goni is masterful throughout.
iQue ganas de Uorar
en esta tarde gris!
En su repiquetear
la lluvia habla de ή...
Remordimiento de saber
que p o r mi culpa
nunca, vida, nunca te wre.
Mis ojos al cerrar
te ven igual que oyer,
temblando, al implorar
de nueiO mi querer...
jY boy es tu iv% que vuelve a mt
en esta tarde gris!
Ven
—triste me decias—,
que en esta soledad
nopuede mas el alma mta...
Ven
y apiddate de mi dolor,
que estoy cansada de llorarte,
sufriry esperarte
y hablar riempre a solas
con mi corasfn.
Ven,
pues te quiero tanto,
que si no vienes hoy
i>oy a quedar ahogada en llanto...
No,
no puede ser que lira asi,
con este amor clavado en mi
como una maldicion.
This tango continues to inspire a wide range of modern artists,
including flamenco greats such as Diego Έ1 Cigala’, and Mardrio,
both of whom have given concerts in Argentina.
How I fe e l like crying
on this grey afternoon!
Pattering on tl)e windows,
the rain speaks o f you...
The remorse o f knowing
That through my own fault
I'll never, ever seey o u again
When my y e s close, th y seeyo u
the same as they did yesterday
Trembling as th y beg
fo r my low back...
A nd today it'sy o u r toice that
returns to me
on this grey afternoon!
Come,
— y o u said to me sadly —
My soul can 7go on
in this loneliness
Come,
take pity on my pain,
how tired I am o f weepingfor you
suffering and waiting fo r yo u
and talking^ always alone,
with my heart
Come,
f o r i low you so,
that i f y o u don 7 come today
ΙΊΙ be left drowned in tears
No!
It can't be that one liws like this
with this low nailed into me
like a curse.
vocals: Francisco Fiorendno
words: Rosendo Luna
music: Enrique Cadicamo
Rosendo Luna, a creole sounding name, was a pseudonym
adopted by Cadicamo to write lyrics in the old style. A spoken
introduction explains that the tango is set in a cafe in La Boca
back in 1902; a party was in full swing, when the band struck up -
and that’s when the orchestra begins.
The cuarteador is a man who provides an extra horse for pulling
your load over a difficult spot on the road - in this case, the
muddy hill that leads up from the barrio of Barracas to central
Buenos Aires. The tango, for which poet and lyricist Enrique
Cadicamo also wrote the music, starts simply enough; the cuarteador
introduces himself as Prudencio Navarro, and as he explains what
he does, we hear him whisde to his horse. Listen for the same
moment in the instrumental sections, and a sharp whipping in the
violins imitates the sound of the cuarteador whipping his horse.
In the second part of the song, we learn that the cuarteador needs
some special help of his own: metaphorically speaking, he has
fallen into a ditch over a love affair. Who will pull him out?
So successful was this tango that Fiorentino grumbled that people
starting calling him Prudencio Navarro.
19 M a ra ga ta 09.10.1941
vocals: Francisco Fiorendno
words and music: Francisco Isidro Martino
This must be one of the most joyful tangos ever and is one of my
personal favourites. Naturally, it was not originally written as a
tango.
In the 18th Century, many immigrants from the district of Mara-
gato in the Spanish province of Leon setded in rural Argentina,
and in Uruguay in the city of San Jose, llie y gave their name to
the inhabitants of these districts.
Author Francisco Isidro Martino was a folk singer and dancer who
performed with Gardel and Razzano in the early days. He wrote
this as a tonada (a type of lyrical folk song), and Gardel recorded it
in 1921.
The lyric depicts a girl picking flowers; when the boy sees her,
naturally, he is smitten!

20 Tu d i a g n ö s t i c o (v a ls) 09.10.1941
(Y o u r d ia g n o s is )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words and music: Jose Betinotti
Troilo wrote a new introduction for this old creole vals by the
great payador Jose Betinotti who died in 1915 and it became incor­
porated into the sheet music. Troilo waived his share of the pub­
lishing rights, asking for them to go to Betinotti’s widow.
Unusually for a vals, the lyric is a sad one: the guy has lost the girl,
and can’t get over her. Her diagnosis is: his ailment is incurable.
21 C autivo
(C ap tive)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Luis Rubistein
music: Egidio Pitaluga
The protagonist is in love, but the affair brings him nothing but
pain. Nevertheless, he can’t tear himself away.
If this performance feels not as strong as the rest of Troilo’s 1941
output, it’s largely because his C autivo prefigures the change to a
slower, more lyrical tango that would take place the following year.
Match it with the 1942 tangos and it comes across much better.
All the same, the work remains unusual: after Fiorentino has sung
a verse and a chorus, there is an extended passage on the violins
(rare with Troilo). Fiorentino does not return, but nor is there a
final variation, and the ending can feel a bit sudden.
Rubistein’s lyrics, known for their strength rather than their sub-
dety, are not necessarily the best match for this orchestra. This
one is a good fit, and Fiorentino is convincing. Troilo would later
(1948) make a truly great recording with one of Rubistein’s final
lyrics: Tuptrro pekines.
The word cautivo appears nowhere in the lyric; listen out instead
for prisiontro, prisoner.

22 Tinta roja 23.1U. 1941

(R ed in k )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Catulo Castillo
music: Sebastian Piana
Piana wrote this in a hurry’ to raise money for a birthday present
for his wife. According to Alberto Podesta it was not a big hit at
the time (which would be why other orchestras didn't record it),
and the tango only achieved widespread diffusion in the 1960s38.
Today it’s a classic; Horacio Ferrer chose this recording to illus­
trate Fiorentino’s ability to make a decisive entrance and seize hold
of a lyric, in a way that perfecdy matches the orchestra.
The lyric is pure nostalgia for the barrio, in two parts. In the verse,
images of the barrio flood into the poet’s mind, beginning with an
alleyway with a red brick wall (‘Tinta roja means red ink). This the
poet contrasts with the grey of melancholy.
The chorus brings an abrupt change of mood from innocence to
introspection and loss, reflected in the sudden softening of Fioren­
tino’s voice:
iDonde estard mi arrabal? When will my arrabal be?
iQuien se robo mi nine%? Who has stolen my childhood?
jE n que rincon, luna mia On what comer, moon,
volcds como entonces Will you pour y o u r clear happiness
tu clara alegria? A s yo u did then?
This shift is then mirrored by the orchestra as they take the theme
back: when they reach the chorus, this time it’s Goni who changes
the mood from extroverted to introverted with a spacious and
delicate solo.

24 E lt a m a n g o 23.10.1941
( T h e sa n d a l)
music: Carlos Posadas
Unusually for an instrumental, this piece is not made up of three
pieces of music, but just two: it has the very simple structure A-B-
A-B-A. How does Troilo keep it interesting? The answer, and the
joy of this performance comes just before the two minute mark as
the orchestra return to the main theme (A) for the last time: in­
stead of heading straight for the big finish, quite unexpectedly, the
theme is given to the violins who melt with tenderness. Then we

38 Oscar del Priore & Irene Amuchästegui: den Tangos fundamentales, 2nd ed,
PP206-207
get the big finish, propelled as ever by Goni’s vigorous left hand,
imperious throughout this tango.
lik e C ord on d e o r o the music belongs to Carlos Posadas, the
composer of the even more famous R ed ra o and E l ja g iie l, both
of which were recorded by Di Sarli.

25 S en cillo y c o m p a d r e 21.11.1941
(S tra igh t a n d tru e)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Carlos Bahr
music: Juan Jose Guichandut
A tribute to the original tango of the arrabaly not cultivated, but
straightforward {sencillo) and true {compadre). The word compadre is
difficult to translate but refers to a proud working class. In Lon­
don the compadre would be a cockney - honest, proud of his roots,
and a good friend.
In the music, do we hear a quote from the very early tango La
m oroch a ?

26 D el d e m p o g u a p o (m ilo n g a ) 21.11.1941
(F rom th e g o l d e n d a y s)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Vicente Fiorentino
music: Marcelo de La Ferrer
The other side of the disc contains another tribute to the old days
of tango. Despite Fiorentino’s fine vocals, this milonga comes
across as a demonstration piece for Orlando Goni, who is much
more in evidence in the upper registers of the piano than normal.
At the very end Troilo produces a masterful solo, creating music
from a single note just by varying the timing, before throwing out
some joyful flourishes to bring the piece to a close.
Overview of the 1941 recordings

Troilo’s 1941 recordings are a tour-de-force. The combination of

richness and directness makes these performances firm favourites
with social dancers, and of all Troilo’s tangos these are the ones
most often played in the milongas, even if we now also hear some of
the later repertoire as well. Orlando Goni provides tremendous drive,
all the instruments shine, and Fiorentino is melded with the orches­
tra in a way that no-one had heard before.
The pieces in the repertoire have a number of different flavours.
Let’s imagine how a set by the band might have sounded back in
1941: a strong instrumental to announce the band; then some vocal
numbers, mostly romantic, albeit still with strong melodies, but also
one or two with lyrics from the street; then, to break these up, per­
haps a cheeky milonga; more vocals; and then to finish, a number
chosen to draw the applause of the crowd, with plenty of virtuoso
playing from the musicians. It must have been fantastic.
Given that Troilo formed his orchestra in 1937, it’s something of a
frustration that we have only two tangos (the 1938 recordings on
Odeon) before these magnificent recordings. Even in 1941, the band
would have had a songbook of at least 40 numbers. More than half
the repertoire up to this point has gone unrecorded, and we know
from Radio El Mundo’s radio transcriptions (live recordings made
on acetate discs) that the missing tracks were of a very high standard.
For instance, we have powerful versions of R e c u e r d o , Gardel’s hit
M e lo d ia d e arrabal, and the best ever version of the milonga E l
U orön, Just to put this into context, imagine if the first three years of
D’Arienzo - the whole period with Biagi —had gone unrecorded. It
would be a scandal.
The inclusion of Gardel’s M e lo d ia d e a r ra b a lis especially interest­
ing, considering that there are some who maintain that Gardel’s
repertoire was either unsuitable or unapproachable for the tango
orchestras of the golden decade. Troilo here shows that it isn’t, for
his musical conception at least. Troilo’s music goes on to feature a
significant number of Gardel’s hits.
 13
A change of pace:
1942

D’Arienzo’s dance revolution of 1935 affected the whole music

scene in Argentina. All the orchestra leaders, even Julio De Caro, felt
compelled to follow Inis accelerated style; after-all, it’s what the danc­
ers wanted. D’Arienzo’s own beat intensified throughout the latter
half of the 1930s - how would music develop in the 1940s?

The reasons for what happened can only be conjecture, but the facts
are clear: in 1942, the music slows down. It’s something we can hear
in all the orchestras who were recording at this time, although curi­
ously, D’Agostino effects this change in 1941, a year before everyone
else.

In the case of Troilo, the change of pace from the final session of
1941 to the first session of 1942 is both clear-cut and dramatic. At
times, it almost sounds like a different orchestra.

What’s the reason for this sudden change? It’s a question I have
asked many times, without getting a certain answer. One theory is
that the Second World War was finally impacting Argentine con­
sciousness. The attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 had
brought the War to the Pacific Ocean, and it was no longer a distant
European war.
On the 25th April 1942, Troilo inaugurated a new nightclub on
Corrientes alongside the band of Alberto Mancione: the Tibidabo39.
D’Arienzo and D’Agostino had both been offered the contract, but
had turned it down. Nightclubs used to rotate tango orchestras, but
Troilo was so successful by this time that he played there on and off
for ten years. In this first sdnt he played there every night except
Saturdays, when he played at dancehalls.

At the end of 1942 Troilo incorporated a cellist into the orchestra:

Alfredo Citro, who would remain with him until his death. In one
sense this was nothing new. Pedro Maffia had made prominent use
of the cello in his recordings on Brunswick in 1929-31, and the cello
can be heard even earlier, in Roberto Firpo’s recordings from the
late 1920s. Eduardo Arolas is known to have used a cello even ear­
lier still, in 1917, and though the Victor online discography is unsure
whether or not the cellist participated, he can be clearly heard on the
recordings40.

Despite these antecedents, the way Troilo used the cello in the early
1940s was something new. In the former times, the cello had been
used to play the obbligato part41 that might also have been played by a
violin. Now it was being used as a harmonised element in the string
section. At first Citro is not very prominent, but he becomes more
so over time. The way Piazzolla uses the cello in his arrangement of
I n s p ir a c iö n , recorded on 3rd May 1943, caused quite a stir; we’ll
return to this in chapter 17.

The broadening of the string section brought about by the cello

makes the strings sound smoother. This process would be com­
pleted with the addition of the viola of Simon Zlotnik.

39 One sometimes reads 5th April, but I believe this is a confusion with the 5th
April 1943, when Alberto Marino was presented at the Tibidabo as Troilo's
second singer.
40
For these recordings, Arolas's group recorded as a quintet rather than a
quartet. The cellist is unnamed but can be clearly heard, for example on Marron
g la d .
41 An obbligato part is a simple melodic line that threads its way around the
main melody.
 vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Homero Manzi
music: Lucio Demare
The opening of this tango marks a huge shift in style not just for
the orchestra, but for tango music in general. The music appears
as if from a distance. Goni introduces the melody, beautifully
phrased as ever, in a high register in the piano, supported only by
the most gende accompaniment of the band. The tango grows
louder, the melody drops down to a more familiar register, and
Goni starts up with his growling bass. Fiorentino’s voice enters in
a similarly distant way, with the violins floating behind him in an
ethereal fashion, especially in the chorus (Γ47” onwards).
Something little commented on is that, both in this performance
and in that of its composer Lucio Demare, we get a part of the
second verse, rather than a repeat of the chorus. Could this be the
first time that a tango is interpreted this way by a dance orchestra?
In the discography in Appendix B you will see a curiosity: there
were two takes of this tango, and they are rather different. Later in
the year, on 12th June, the disc was reprinted but with a different
version of Malena. This second is the one that was included in
subsequent compilations on LP and CD. Probably this was a sec­
ond take made on the 8th Januar)’ session, but it just might be a
new recording.
The way to tell them apart is from Fiorentino’s vocal42. In the
second, familiar version, he sings: con ese tono triste de callejony which
is what Juan Carlos Miranda sings with the orchestra of the tango’s
composer Lucio Demare, but in the first take Fiore sings: con ese
tono triste de la cancion.

42 Federico Silva, Informe sobre Troilo, p!02

music: Agustin Bardi
There can seldom have been a greater contrast between two sides
of a 78 rpm tango disc, because on the other side of M a len a ap­
peared this rip-roaring instrumental, a tour de force for Orlando
Goiii. His crashing bass opens the tango, but he is all over the
keyboard, improvising in the upper register, and at times bubbling
along in the middle register underneath the rest of the band. The
piece goes full pelt for two minutes, but when the first theme is
being reprised for the final time, Troilo suddenly seizes it from
Goni and changes the mood in heart-melting fashion.

29 M ica s tig o 16.04.1942

vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Cesar Felipe Vedani
music: Julio Cesar Sanders
This tango has an excellent lyric but, be honest: isn’t the melody
rather weak and unattractive? It doesn’t really sing, both the verse
and the chorus have melodic lines that are completely flat - a
single note repeated again and again. Despite this, Fiorentino’s
phasing makes it sound interesting and eventually the work starts
getting under your skin. Even so, I think this may be the weakest
tango Troilo ever recorded.

36 S u er telo ca 15.06.1942
(L u ck y)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Francisco Garcia Jimenez
music: Anselmo Aieta
Infinitely more subde than Enrique Rodriguez’s up-beat version,
this tango has an interesting change of key when Fiorentino en­
ters. The reason for this is actually to accommodate Fiorentino’s
voice, but why not simply transpose the whole piece up a tone?
Changing key changes the character of a piece, so Troilo chooses
to preserve the key selected by the composer for the instrumental
introduction.
The lyric uses a game of cards as a metaphor for life. The lyric
says: at first I thought it was just about having good luck, but then
I realised that the ones who stayed lucky were actually cheating.
Vocabulary: boca means mouth, but in Spanish it is a way of refer­
ring to the side of a playing card: whilst we say, face up or face
down, they say, mouth up, or mouth down. Acertar (to guess cor-
recdy) la carta de la boca thus has a double meaning —guessing the
card, or perhaps saying the right thing.

37 L os m a r e a d o s 15.06.1942
(T h e drun k s)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Enrique Cadicamo
music: Juan Carlos Cobian
One day Troilo turned up at lyricist Enrique Cadicamo’s house
with an old record of Frescdo’s sextet from 1922, an instrumental
called L os d o p a d o s by Juan Carlos Cobian (the composer of
N ostalgias). Troilo loved Cobian’s melody and wanted to turn
the piece in to a vocal number. Unaware that the tango had a lyric,
Troilo asked Cadicamo to write one. Cadicamo wanted first to get
permission from Cobian, who was away in the United States, but
Troilo, full of enthusiasm for the project, insisted, and the lyric
was written. It seems loosely inspired by the original tide (the
lunfardo dopado is derived from the English doped, and means
‘stoned’). Today it’s considered one of the great tangos, perhaps
the definitive account of someone drinking not to oblivion, but
draining a glass as a final farewell to a painful memory. Despite its
greatness, there are fewer versions than one might expect: Co­
bian’s melody is unusually spacious, and the piece is considered
difficult to perform; Fiorentino changed one of the words in the
lyric - not something a singer did lighdy, and the next recording
was not until 1951.
Troilo’s version is a slow burner. The opening - 1942 style - today
sounds a bit too restrained; Salgan’s 1952 version shows what
might have been done with the piece. But the interpretation un­
folds to reveal first the beauty of Cobian’s melody; Goni’s work in
the instrumental chorus just before Fiorentino enters, with its
characteristic free notes in the left hand, is masterful. Then Fioren­
tino sings, and we are in more familiar territory. After his interven­
tion, Goiii takes the melody back as the piece closes, outshining
Troilo’s notes: Goni seems to share the singing of this tango with
Fiorentino.
This piece was one of those affected by the censorship of 1943
(see chapter 15); the lyric was rewritten to remove the offending
words, which included the tide. The tango was then renamed E n
m i p a s a d o , a phrase taken from the chorus: “Hoy vas a entraren mi
pasado ": “Today you will enter into my past”.

39 La ta b la d a 23.07.1942
( T he sla u g h ter h o u se)
music: Francisco Canaro
Troilo’s recording of La ta b la d a is a key tango because it displays
a particular aspect of Goni’s genius: his ability to reflect Troilo’s
phrasing.
The opening bars consist of a simple, short phrase tossed between
the two men, without the orchestra. They take advantage of this
freedom to explore an exquisite and sensitive timing. It’s all over
in a few seconds, but - what a moment! The rapport between
them is total; in terms of feeling, the contrast to earlier versions of
this tango (such as Edgardo Donato’s) could not be greater.
The tango then begins to unfold, but maintaining a subtlety that
we have not yet heard in an instrumental: this is a very long way
from the band’s previous instrumental tango, C. T. V, recorded six
months earlier.
Troilo takes one of the most delicate solos and the piece then
finishes without a ναήαάόη but with a crescendo of the whole or­
chestra in an almost DiSarlian fashion. Tango is developing very
fast indeed in 1942, and Troilo is on the leading edge.

40 Le/os de Buenos Aires 01.09.1942

(Far from Buenos Aires)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Oscar Rubens
music: Alberto Suarez Villanueva
An extraordinary opening, with the melody taken in a high register
by bandoneon, piano and violin pizzicato simultaneously: a soft
staccato, immediately modulating to a smooth legato. The whole
introduction is a model of restraint; before Goni takes the melody,
Troilo intervenes with a single note.
Today this tango is better known in the excellent interpretation of
Raul Beron with Miguel Calo. It’s interesting to compare the two
versions. Troilo’s interpretation with Fiorentino is subtle and nu-
anced. When Beron’s performance is held up to the Troilo-
Fiorentino version, it begins to sound a little detached.

43 Tristezas de la calle Comentes 18.09.1942

(Comentes Street Blues)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Homero Exposito
music: Domingo Federico
Exposito’s lyric presents a dystopian image of Calle Corrientes,
tango’s most important street and the epicentre of the city’s night­
life, rather at odds with the popular one of all-night partying in
“the street wdiich never sleeps”. In the lyric, the street is unnatu­
ral - a river straightened into a canal; the revellers are chasing
impossible dreams, and their laughter is hollow'.
The tango even criticises tango and its sad lvrics, condemning it as
in industry' turning misery' into songs for profit. Wow. And don’t
 think this is all about someone else: no, the lyric says, this is about
you, about us; and that’s the saddest thing of all.
This tango was the follow up for its authors to the super romantic
AI c o m p d s d e l co ra z o n , which had been a huge hit in May. One
might expect something similar, but this tango could not be more
different, and demonstrates Homero Exposito’s range as a lyricist.

46 L a m a le v a 09.10.1942
( T h e w ic k e d g i r l)
music: Mario Pardo
Like many other early tangos (e.g. D o n J u a n ), La m a le v a has a
lyric but is universally known as an instrumental. Firpo recorded it
in 1927, Canaro in 1938, and Biagi in a memorable version in
1939. Troilo’s version has almost as much punch as Biagi’s, thanks
to Goni’s powerful bass, but it also has the dynamic and shading
for which the band are legendär)7.
The piece has the structure A-B-A-B-A. When the orchestra re­
turns to the ‘A’ theme for the final time, instead of building to a
crescendo, it passes the theme first to the violins, with delicate
work by Goni, and then to Troilo, who produces one of his most
subtle solos.
 14
Gricel

Sometimes we speak of an artist as having a single theme that they

work out throughout their whole life. Never was this more true than
in the case of the lyricist Jose Maria Contursi.

Gricel was a historical figure and the love of Contursi’s life. She lived
in the remote village of Capilla Del Monte in the mountains in the
province of Cordoba, and it was on a trip to Buenos /Vires to visit
the singer Nelly Omar and her sister - formerly neighbours when
Gricel lived in Guamini - that a 16 year old Susana Gricel Vigano
first met the dashing young poet, not yet known as a lyricist, who
was working as an announcer at Radio Stentor.

With her angelic face, blue eyes and rare blonde looks (she was of
German descent), Gricel was considered quite a beauty' and it was
not long before Contursi - married, although unhappily so, and
already with a daughter, set off to the mountains in pursuit of her.
It’s said that Contursi was a practiced seducer and made his con­
quest -the lyric confesses as much - but he got more than he bar­
gained for: Contursi fell in love.

Now, Jose Maria Contursi was the son of Pascual Contursi, the
author of the first ever tango cancion, M i n o c h e triste. 1lis child-
hood had been as unhappy as his father’s tangos, indelibly marked
by his father’s infidelities and eventual desertion of the family home.
Jose Maria had lived with each parent for six months at a time, and
was determined not to inflict a similar fate on his own children. He
had decided therefore never to leave his wife —a promise he kept.

Contursi was now in a bind: really in love, but determined not to end
his marriage. The tremendous inner tension this generated gave rise
to his great flourishing as a lyricist, beginning in 1939 with Quiero
verte una vez mäs (‘1 want to see you just once more’ - in the
Troilo orchestra’s repertoire but unrecorded), continuing that year
with Toda m i vida (“Now you are far away from me, but I’ve left
my whole life by your side”), and En esta tarde gris (“The regret of
knowing I will never ever see you”).

This revelation culminates in 1942 with the tango Gricel\ in which

Contursi names his lover. Whilst this did not arouse suspicion in
Buenos Aires - Contursi’s daughter Amalia certainly never knew at
the time43 - it did not go unnoticed in Capilla Del Monte, where
some began to speak of Susana Vigano as ‘La del ‘Gricel’.

In the lyric, we can imagine that the words of a young girl bidding
farewell to her lover are exacdy those of Gricel to Contursi as he
returns to the big city:

‘Όοη 7forget me, jo u r Gricel!'*

This wasn’t the end of the story. 1943 brings Cada vez que me
recuerdes (‘Each time I remember’); 1944 produces Sombras nada
mas (“Shadows, nothing more, between your life and my life”) and
Cristal (“How many years have passed: my hair and my life have
both turned grey”). In 1945, Troilo records two more, some of the
band’s strongest recordings in this period: Garras and La noche
que te fuiste (‘The night you left’).

43 Interview with Amalia Contursi in Jo s i Maria Contursi & Gricel, La Voz Del
Interior www.lavoz.com.ar, 3 Feb 2012.
These are great tangos, perhaps Contursi’s greatest work, but he is
still in love, still suffering the same inner tension, and this produces
more work in the following years. In 1946, M i ta n g o t a s t e (‘My sad
tango’); in 1947, Y la p e r d i (‘And I lost her*) and many more. The
lyrics speak without end of a love that cannot be fulfilled but will not
go away.

In 1955, with the fall of the Peron government, Contursi was re­
moved from his post as secretary of SADAIC (the Argentine com­
posers society)44, which he loved. His mother was sectioned in a
psychiatric hospital, where she died the following year. Contursi, a
broken man, fell into a deep depression and took to drinking heavily.

Amazingly, the story has a happy ending. Both Contursi and Gricel
were widowed. In 1962, after some years of inaction, Ciriaco Ortiz
decided to intervene. On a trip home to Cordoba, he just happened
to drop by Capilla Del Monte and visit Gricel, mentioning the news
that Contursi had been widowed.

Taking her life in her hands, Gricel immediately telephoned Contursi

and they made an appointment to meet in Buenos Aires at the fa­
mous Confiteria El Molino, where they were reunited exactly 20
years after Contursi had penned G ricel Seeing the state he was in,
Gricel declared: “We’re going to Capilla Del Monte, but the whisky
stays here”. Contursi willingly gave up the city for a life he would
once have run from, and the two were finally married in 1967.

Over the years, these lyrics have generated a good deal of comment.
Some have said that G ricel itself is far from being Contursi’s most
accomplished lyric. I find it difficult to comment, because of the
emotional impact of the lyric, but one can only agree that there are
some remarkable lyrics in this series. S om b ra s n a d a m d s is truly
shocking. The lyric opens with: “I want to slowly open my veins...
all my blood pouring out at your feet... to show you that I cannot
love more; and then, to die”. Today this lyric sounds operatic, and

SADAIC is the organisation that administers copyrights and performing rights

and officially registers music as having been published.
perhaps it was at the limit of what the public would find acceptable45,
but accept it they did. They understood it.

49 G d cel 30.10.1942
vocals: Francisco Fiorendno
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Mariano Mores
Contursi’s real life cry7 of desperation to the woman he loved but
could not have (see the story7above).
lli e take number on the record reveals that the band took four
takes to get a result that Troilo was satisfied with —very unusual
for Troilo, who mostly recorded everything in one take.
No debtpensar jamäs J should never have thought
en lograr tu cora^on o f winningyour heart
y sin embargo te busque and all the same, I soughty o u out,
hasta que un dta te encontn until one day I mety o u
y con mis besos te aturdi and disturbed y o u with my kisses
sin importarme que eras buena... without caring thatyo u were good.
Tu ilusion fu e de aistal, Your jo y was made o f glass
se rompio cuando parti it broke when I left
pues nunca, nunca mas m in . .. and then I never came back...
/Que amarga fu e tu penal How bitteryo u r pain was!

No te olvides de mi, Don 7forget me,

de tu Gricel\
me dijiste al besar
el Cristo aquel
y hoy que vim enloqueddo
porque no te okide
ni te acuerdas de mi...
/Gricel! /Gricel!
Your Cancel
You said as yo u kissed
The image o f Christ
and now I live in a state o f madness
because I didn 7forget you
You don 7 even remember m e...
Gricel! Gricel!

45 Rafael Flores Montenegro, Amor en el Tango: Gricel-Josä M° Contursi, p59

 15
Alberto Marino,
the golden voice
(1943)

In the 1940s, all the big orchestras had two singers - there was so
much work that it was difficult for one singer to be able to cope with
it all comfortably on his own, even if he wanted to (which he often
did!). This two-singer trend had started with Canaro back in 1938, a
change that had precipitated the departure of Roberto Maida from
his orchestra. Even the great Roberto Rufino was forced to accept
that Alberto Podesta would sing alongside him in Di Sarli’s orchestra.

1943 saw the arrival of Alberto Marino (b. 1923) to sing alongside
Horentino. Now, Troilo’s discography might make one think that he
had managed with one singer up till now, but this is not quite true.
Horentino had been the orchestra’s only singer right through 1942,
but prior to this the band had Amadeo Mandarino as second singer.
The problem was that Mandarino’s gentle voice could not hold its
own with Fiorentino’s, and so RCA-Victor preferred to record only
Fiorentino. No doubt this is why Mandarino left Troilo at the end of
1941.

With Marino it was not like this. He was a true equal to Fiorentino,
although with a different voice. He revealed in an interview that his
greatest influence as a tango singer had been not Gardel, nor even
Fiorentino, but the man whom Troilo preferred to Fiorentino but
who had refused the job: Antonio Rodriguez Lesende.

Marino had such ability as a singer that he always made everything

sound easy, and this led his enemies and the uneducated to criticise
his singing as lacking in warmth. Born in Verona in Italy, Marino
emigrated to Argentina with his family as a child but nevertheless his
voice shows the influence of the Italian bei canto school. He could
switch effortlessly between powerful high notes and a deep bass -
just the kind of ability that Troilo needed to create the shading and
colour he wanted in his music.

The story of Marino’s arrival in Troilo’s orchestra is a little convo­

luted, although not untypical of what went on in those days. Marino,
whose real name was .Alberto Marinaro, had been singing since 1939
in the orchestra of Emilio Orlando46 under the stage name of
Alberto Demari, although with no great personal success. This or­
chestra left no recordings, but in 1942 it had acquired Roberto
Rufino as lead singer, in one of his periodic absences from the or­
chestra of Di Sarli. The first violin was Oscar Herrero, whose name
would later become inextricably linked with Osvaldo Pugliese. Surely
this was a great line-up — one can only wonder what the group
sounded like.

Troilo was looking for a second singer who, unlike Mandarino, could
be a true vocal partner for Fiorentino. One evening he went with his
wife Zita to listen to the singers in the orchestra of Emilio Orlando:
Roberto Rufino, and a young unknown called Alberto Marino. There
are different versions of what happened; the popular version of the
myth says that Troilo went with the idea of hiring Rufino, but hired
Marino instead. In a way this is true, but it happened slightly differ­
ently. A newspaper report from the time says that Rufino went for
an audition with Troilo where he sang F a ro lito d e p a p e l and
C u a n d o talla n l o s r e c u e r d o s , a song which, although it today

46 This orchestra was initially conducted by Emilio Balcarce, but it was always
Orlando's orchestra
‘belongs’ to Marino, had been premiered by Rufino with Emilio
Orlando. It seems that everything was arranged, when at the last
minute, Rufino patched things up with Di Sarli and returned there
instead47, a development to which Troilo did not object because of
his great respect for Di Sarli. Marino meanwhile had accepted an
offer from Rodolfo Biagi.

Troilo immediately invited Marino to join his orchestra. For Marino

this was a dream come true, quite apart from the fact that Troilo’s
offer was much more lucrative, and so he accepted. It was then up
to Marino to have the difficult conversation with Biagi, explaining
that to sing with Troilo was simply too good an opportunity to miss.
Biagi was crushed but had to accept the inevitable.

Marino had his debut on 1st April 1943, and we know he played at
the club Έ1 Talar’ on 4th April48, but the real test came at the Tibid-
abo on 5th April 1943. This was a highly anticipated event: no-one
could really imagine that the new singer might be on a par with
Fiorentino, who wras considered one of the very best singers of the
day. Those who were there49 remember that the night began with the
instrumental Pablo, after which Fiorentino sang one of his hits.
Then came the moment everyone had been waiting for. Marino, with
no apparent nerves, came to the microphone and sang Tango y
copas, which he had recorded that very afternoon. With Troilo’s
orchestra, Marino’s beautiful voice rang out as it had never done
before, and the performance received an ovation. Three years later,
the violinist and orchestra leader Alfredo Gobbi would nickname
him La i>o%de oro del tango —tango’s golden voice.

Once again, Troilo’s intuition had not failed him. Not only had he
made an excellent choice of second singer: he now had the best
vocal partnership in Buenos Aires. Under Troilo’s careful steward­

47
Pedro Colombo & Perla Lorenzo de Rufino: Roberto Rufino, p23
43 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p61
49
reported by Ricardo Espinosa ΒβΙέη on the website el portal del tango. See:
http://www.elportaldeltango.com/especial/marino.htm [accessed 03-06-2014]
ship there was no rivalry between the two men, and the orchestra
went from strength to strength.

We should add that the arrival of Marino precipitates further musical

development for the orchestra. He is a different singer to Fiorentino,
with a different voice, and a different style. For Troilo, this didn’t
just mean selecting new repertoire, it meant evolving the sound of
the orchestra to best suit Marino’s qualities. The two men were not
interchangeable; they were complementary, and having both ex­
panded the musical range of the orchestra.

This period also sees the beginning of censorship in Argentina. Fol­

lowing the military7 coup of 4th June, 1943, the new government
pursued a policy of moral and linguistic purity. ‘Unsuitable’ songs
were banned from the radio, unless their lyrics could be rewritten.
This included all use of lunfardo (the local slang); the tango De
barro—recorded by Troilo two days before the coup —was banned
by mistake because it contained the word ‘pucho’ (cigarette butt)
which sounded lunfardo, but w^as actually Quechua (the native lan­
guage of the Quechua people in the north-wrest of Argentina). Per-
cal\which fortunately for us had already been recorded, was banned
because the girl in the cotton percale dress of the tide was only fif­
teen. Other tangos were re-written: Manzi’s Tal vez sera su voz
(‘Perhaps it was your voice7) was originally Tal vez sera m i alcohol'
which is just a little bit darker.

59 Cada vez que me recuerdes 05.04.1943

(Each time I remember)
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Mariano Mores
Naturally, the protagonist is remembering a lost love. The per­
formance has many delights, of which the highlight for me is the
extreme portamento —sliding in pitch from one note to another —
which Fiorentino uses in the chorus. This could sound terrible if
not done well, but it sounds just wonderful here.
As we will soon come to expect from Troilo, the interpretation is
now layered. When Fiorentino is singing, the band does not simply
accompany, but provides counter melodies in the violins or ban-
doneons, even imitating in the piano the lonely tolling of the bells.

66 F arolito d e p a p e l 02.06.1943
(L ittle p a p e r la n tern )
vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Francisco Garcia Jimenez
music: Teofilo and Mario Lespes
The little paper lantern of the title is the one that lights the room
where the narrator meets his lover. Today, however, he has found
her goodbye letter underneath the pillow where yesterday he
swore eternal love. He feels like an idiot, and despite the lantern’s
faithful light he feels in the dark. She, meanwhile, is brightening
another man’s side.
litis is an important performance because of the dynamic range
that Troilo achieves with Marino’s vocals. When Marino returns
after the instrumental bridge to reprise the chorus, his voice drops
to the quietest pianissimo, but without whispering. It’s remarkable
singing from Marino and daring from Troilo, and it transmits to us
the protagonist’s crushed feelings as he realises that he is now
alone.
Also impressive is the recording technology of RCA-Victor. Mar­
ino’s voice is completely audible - more so than Rivero’s in a
similar moment in the recording of S ur in 1948.
 16
The death of
Orlando Gobi

The golden decade of the 1940s was a very special era. The bohe­
mian life of the cabarets, which so repulsed Astor Piazzolla, was
lived to the full not just by its patrons but by its musicians.

In this regard, Orlando Goni was a total bohemian. Although he had

studied the piano with great fervour as a boy50, we should not imag­
ine him as a highly disciplined individual. His life was one of total
disorder, given over to his music and to the hedonistic night-life that
the city had to offer. For Horacio Ferrer, Goni’s liberty' at the key­
board could not be had without his libertine lifestyle.51

Every photograph ever taken of Goni shows a pale face with large
dark circles around the eyes. Fie was an extremely heavy drinker, an
alcoholic even, and his face has a haunted look.

50 According to Luis Adolfo Sierra, Gofti and Alfredo Gobbi used to go together
to the Cine Select on Calle Lavalle to listen to Julio De Caro when Gobbi was 14
and Gobi just 12. They sat at the front of the balcony to see what the musicians
were doing, writing down what they observed on paper, striking matches to see
what they were doing.
From an article by Juan Yala in the journal CLUB DE TANGO No. 13 March-April
1995, see http://www.clubdetango.com.ar/articulos/ogoni.htm [accessed 02-
07-2014J
51 Horacio Ferrer, El gran Troilo, pp75-76
Gofii was often too drunk to play, but given his unique talent, he
was a hard man to replace in an orchestra. In dire emergencies, As-
tor Piazzolla would be able to play a few numbers in Goni’s style,
but mostly Goni’s absence meant the band could not perform.

Running a tango orchestra was not simply a matter of having a style

and a group of great musicians. It required professionalism, careful
management of relationships not just with the owners of the caba­
rets and clubs where the bands worked, but also amongst the musi­
cians themselves. To give one example, in 1942, Edgardo Donato’s
orchestra did not survive the love triangle that developed between
the bands three singers. Donato was forced to fire all three, his star
musician left, and before long the remaining members of the band
had reformed under the baton of Donato’s brother. Problems in the
ranks could easily destroy an orchestra, and a good band leader was
not just a great musician, but a great leader of people.

Each month, long before payday, Gofii would have gambled and
drunk away all of his substantial salary, and would beg Troilo for an
advance. Wisely, Troilo always refused: clearly there was no future in
advancing money to such a man.

The constant shortage of money was no deterrent to Gofii. A story I

find painful to recount concerns a day at the races. As the horses
swept past with his nag trailing badly, Gofii was heard to mumble:
“There goes my father’s piano”. He had gambled away his most
precious possession on a worthless bet.

As time went on, Goni’s absences became more frequent. One

lunchtime in mid August 1943, coming out from their performance
at Radio El Mundo, Gofii advised his friend Hugo Baralis that he
was not going to bother turning up for work that night. As it was
frustrating to go out to work when one could not play, Baralis de­
cided not to bother, and took a girl out to the pictures instead.

Troilo meanwhile had decided that enough was enough. That night,
having told Gofii that he should turn up “even if he were dead”, he
installed himself at the door of the venue with a notary (the musi­
cians had contracts, and could not be fired willy-nilly). With the
names not just of Goni but also of Baralis missing from the register,
they were both fired. The following evening, the notices of their
dismissal were pinned to the door of the cafe where they were due to
play, and Baralis read it when he presented himself for work. Think­
ing it was just a problem about women, Baralis went to Troilo to
plead for his job, but Troilo was implacable.

If this separation was painful for Baralis, for Goni it proved disas­
trous.

At first, everything seemed to go well. He started his own orchestra

with an outstanding line-up. The bandoneon section was one of the
greatest ever assembled, including Roberto Di Filippo (a virtuoso
who would play first bandoneon in Piazzolla’s 1946 orchestra), and
the singer was Antonio Rodriguez Lesende, the man who had been
Troilo’s first choice ahead of Fiorendno in 1937. They opened at the
famous Cafe Nacional on 1st December, playing there for 15 days,
and it’s estimated that 25,000 people came to see them. The press
reports were favourable in the extreme, with the newspaper El
Mundo christening him E l manscal del tango, the field marshal of
tango (!). Soon the band was playing on Radio Belgrano.52

Although the band didn’t get a recording contract, further success

came in April 1944 when he joined forces with Fiorendno, who had
gone solo. This proved to be the high point of Goni’s career as a
bandleader. Like Troilo, Fiorentino soon found that it was impossi­
ble to work with him, and he went his own way after just two
months.

After this, Goni entered a decline which would prove terminal. The
drinking and the drug-taking only increased, and by the end of the
year he was so ill that he was unable to continue working. Like a

52 Article by Juan Ayala on clubdetango.com.ar

http://www.clubdetango.com.ar/articulos/ogoni.htm
wounded animal, he took refuge in the house of his friend Juan
Esteban Martinez (a bandoneon player in his orchestra) in Uruguay.
There, on 5th February 1945, he died. He was 31 years old.

Goni’s orchestra left no commercial recordings because it was not

signed by the record companies (which were effectively a duopoly at
that point). It’s not clear why they didn’t take him on, but these
companies were famously conservative, refusing to sign the orches­
tra of Horacio Salgan at around the same time because they objected
to the deep bass-baritone voice of Edmundo Rivero. We know that
Goni’s music was popular, and the sound was something the public
had heard before.

We have four test recordings - made not on shellac unfortunately,

but on acetate. The numbers chosen were: Y s ie m p r e ig u a l (with
the voice of Raul Aldao); Goni’s own milonga, with a lyric by Enri­
que Dizeo, M i r e g a lo (with the voice of Osvaldo Cabrera); the clas­
sic if demanding Chiqu6\ and Agustin Bardi’s E l taura.

What any educated listener cannot fail to notice about these re­
cordings is how similar they sound to the Troilo orchestra of 1938—
1941. They have tremendous rhythmic drive, with great syncopation
and swing. Goni is not copying Troilo here: these recordings are the
proof, if any were needed, of the influence and importance that
Goni had exerted on the style of Troilo’s orchestra, which would go
on to develop in a different direction without him.
 17
The Arrangers

Arranging consists of two related skills. One is deciding what the

band is going to do with the theme. For instance, in the opening of
Troilo’s very first recording, C o m m e i l fa u t; certain decisions have
been taken: to start strongly with the whole orchestra, and to impose
a 3-3-2 rhythm; then to have a sudden break, into which the ban-
doneons float a few notes, and so on. This process is more a matter
of intuition than learning, more of an art than a science.

Troilo was a master of intuition (Piazzolla even called him a “mon­

ster of intuition”). Understanding arranging in this basic sense, all
the early arrangements (1937-1940) are his work, in cooperation
with his musicians. Piazzolla stated that the arrangements of
C o m m e i l fa u t; M ilo n g u e a n d o e n e l 40 and C.T.V. were by
Troilo himself.

The other main element of arranging is orchestration. To give a

trivial example: suppose you want the string section - four violins,
viola, cello and double bass - to make a chord: which instruments
play w'hich notes? Unlike deciding on how* to treat the theme, or­
chestration is a skill that must be learnt. It’s not really something
intuitive.

Unfortunately, Troilo never made a formal, in depth study of music:

his bandoneon teacher declared that he could not teach him any­
thing more after six months. In an interview in 1956, Troilo said that,
if he could have his time over again, he would study more. As the
ranks of bandoneons and violins swelled to four, five or more in­
struments, and the music became more sophisticated, he did not
have the technical knowledge to do the orchestrations. This made
him peculiarly dependent on his arrangers, but he surrounded him­
self with good people (supe elegir —“he know how to choose’7) and
always knew what he wanted the band to sound like. Most important
for him was a sense of space: silence within the arrangement, and
that at any time, there was one main line, so that the melody was not
obscured.

Many people who had learnt the skill of orchestration were tempted
to put in too many notes, or too many voices. Piazzolla complained
that Troilo erased half the notes he wrote down on his scores, but he
was not the only professional arranger to be treated in this manner.
Troilo treated all his arrangers this way, the great exception being
Emilio Balcarce’s La b o rd o n a , of which Troilo did not change a
single note53.

On every other occasion, however, Troilo’s famous eraser was at

work. Argentino Galvan recounts attending a rehearsal where the
orchestra was trying out a new piece for the very first time. Every'
few bars, Troilo would stop the band and ask Galvan’s permission to
cross out some note or other: “Might we change this, like this,
Galvan?” At the end of the rehearsal, Galvan remarked peevishly
that since the arrangement was bought and paid for, Troilo was free
to do what he liked with it. Troilo just smiled. The thing that upset
Galvan was that every7change improved the piece. “Troilo carried in
his soul the modifications that I was not able to trace on the stave”.

Galvan’s role as arranger in the orchestra is well-known; the ar­

rangements of S ut; P a lom ita b la n ca and R o m a n ce d e b a irio , to

53 Interview with the violinist Jos£ Votti (violinist with Troilo 1955-1960) by Julio
Nudler in the newspaper Pagina 12. "Emilio was moved, because Troilo's eraser
was implacable." Quoted by Pagina 12 on a feature on the 30th anniversary of
his death, 18th May 2005
name just three, belong to him. He became the principal arranger
once Piazzolla left the orchestra in July 1944. His arrangements are
characterized in general by his preference for the strings, demon­
strated most clearly in the groundbreaking tango fantasia R e c u e r d o s
d e b o h e m ia (1945). For some historians his greatest arrangement
for Troilo was the S e l e c c i o n d e t a n g o s d e J u li o D e C aro (1949),
but for the dancer there are better arrangements than either of these.

Less well-known is the work of Hector Maria Artola. One source

claims that even some of the tracks on Troilo’s first session with
RCA-Victor (4th March 1941) belong to him54. At this time, Artola
was also playing in Fresedo’s orchestra, and his importance for
Troilo seems to have been overlooked; according to his own testi­
mony, he did nearly all the arrangements in the time of Fiorendno,
except the first ones, and again in the time of Floreal Ruiz55. The
tango historian Luis Adolfo Sierra ranks him alongside Galvan:
“They were two greats who put tango on the music stands”.

On one occasion in 1942, Troilo needed an arrangement of the

milonga candombe at short nonce for a competidon, the radio pro­
gramme ‘Ronda De Ases’, in which each orchestra had to play a new
arrangement. The first competition had taken place on 2nd August
1941, with six orchestras: Fresedo, Di Sarli, De Caro, Donato, Troilo
and Tanturi56. The programme was broadcast live by Radio El
Mundo. Six orchestras on stage together took more space than even
their 500 seat radio theatre could provide, so the competition took
place at the Teatro Casino, two blocks down from the studio. Run­
ning almost weekly from 1941-1943, and then revived in 1956, it
took place 140 times in total.

Although Hector Maria Artola was the main arranger at this time, a
competition called for a more spectacular style. Troilo wanted Ar­
gentine Galvan, but he was not available, and Piazzolla hustled for
the job. Troilo was reluctant, but finally gave in because there was no

54
Arturo Dorner Linne, Anibol Troilo: Perfil y discografia
55 Oscar Zucchi, El Tango, el Bandoneön y sus Intirpretes volumen IV, p l646
56 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, pp54-55
alternative. Piazzolla had to do the arrangement overnight57. This
time, Fresedo premiered Ronda de ases (named after the competi­
tion) and D’Agostino his milonga A si me gusta a mi. Troilo won
the competition with Azabache, but he didn’t like really like it and it
was never recorded.
Nevertheless, from this time onwards Troilo started giving Piazzolla
more arrangements to do, mainly instrumentals. Piazzolla made ten
arrangements whilst he was a band member. There were seven ins­
trumentals: Inspiration, E l distinguido tiudadano, La cumpar-
sita, Chiqu6, Bien portefio, E l entreiriano and Quejas de ban-
doneon, and three vocal numbers: Farolito de papel, Uno and La
luz de un fosforo. Listening to these today, it’s clear that it’s in the
instrumentals that Piazzolla makes the most impact.

There was tension between Troilo and Piazzolla because, as Piaz­

zolla openly admitted, he didn’t care what the dancers thought, so
long as the musicians had a smile on their face. When the band saw
the arrangement of Inspiratiön, one fellow musician remarked:
“Man, are you crazy or did you just get it wrong?” In the trio (third
section), Piazzolla built on an idea of Pedro Maffia, who had given
the solo to the cello. In the new arrangement, the solo opens in the
cello, whilst the rest of the string section introduces a counter mel­
ody underneath, but halfway through the two switch roles. It con­
fused the dancers: at a carnival dance at Boca Juniors football club,
some stopped to listen, while others left58. The arrangement of
Chique was even less well received, bringing jeers from the crowd.

Although Piazzolla’s departure from the orchestra was not on

friendly terms, he continued arranging for Troilo after he left, infre­
quently through the 1940s, and then intensively in the early 1950s
when he had temporarily abandoned making his own music. In later
years, the two men were fully reconciled.

57 Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez, Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, pp62-63

58 Maria Susana Azzi & Simon Collier, Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of
Astor Piazzolla p34
 18
Jose Basso
(1943)

Jose “Pepe” Basso was the pianist chosen by Troilo to replace the
unique talent that was Orlando Goni - either an enviable job, or an
impossible one, depending on one’s point of view. Goni had im­
printed his style on the orchestra, and Basso would have to try to
follow in his predecessor’s footsteps, much as Juan Polito had when
he replaced Rodolfo Biagi in Juan D’Arienzo’s orchestra in 1938.

This tough assignment was made more difficult by the fact there was
not really any music for Basso to play. Goni improvised all his parts,
which meant that, up till this time, the arrangers had not bothered to
write down anything more than the plain outline of the piano part.
There was no point - Goni would just improvise something better.

The saving grace for Basso was that it was no longer 1938: it was
1943, and not so much rhythmic drive was required as before. Nev­
ertheless, we cannot help but compare him with Goni, just as the
public must have done back in the day. His walking bass sounds
quite plain without Goni’s bordoneos. The right hand, in which Goni
reflected Troilo’s phrasing back to him, was a bit easier for Basso to
copy, bur Basso lacks Goni’s touch and subtle timing; it’s difficult,
for instance, to imagine the opening of C.T.V. with Basso at the
keyboard. He is an excellent pianist, but he is not Orlando Goni. In
the instrumentals, he cannot take advantage of space to create some­
thing new; so the arrangers (Piazzolla and Galvan) change the style
so that there is less space for him to fill. In a strange way, however,
he is more exposed in the vocal numbers where he is not able to
dialogue with the singer as Goni had done. The change of pianist
accelerates a change that had already begun in the band: the pianist,
whilst still a central figure, is becoming less important than before.

The departure of Goni had another significant consequence for the

orchestra: without his improvising genius on piano, Troilo had to
rely much more on the arrangers. And for the music of 1943 this
was no bad thing. The growing sophistication of tango music in the
early 1940s meant that all the bands were beginning to use arrangers.
Much as we lament the departure of Goni, the development that the
Troilo sound now undertakes is in a way facilitated by his departure.
How the band would have sounded and developed with Goni still
on board is one of tango’s great unanswered questions.

In the meantime, Basso became Troilo’s pianist for the next three
and a half years, a period which would see Alberto Marino making
some of his best music, as well as the departure of Francisco Fioren-
tino and his eventual replacement by Floreal Ruiz. For dancers, this
period is second in importance only to that with Goni, but in com­
parison it is neglected. There are 88 recordings. The early repertoire
seems designed to disguise Basso’s limitations; but by the December
1943 session Basso - with Galvan’s help - is doing a very good job,
sounding much more like Goni. One obvious change in the style is
that the cello of Alfredo Citro, which had been quite hard to hear in
the arrangements up till now, becomes more noticeable than before.
73 Farol 30.09.1943
(Street lamp)
vocals: Fiorendno
words: Homero Exposito
music: Virgilio Exposito
Which version of this iconic tango do you prefer: Pugliese with
Roberto Chanel, or Troilo with Fiorendno? They are very differ­
ent beasts, creadng different moods. The Troilo orchestra is mag­
nificent, and there’s a wonderful moment when Basso, playing
underneath Fiorendno, creates in his piano the clock that is “strik­
ing two in the morning”. All the same, I am in two minds about
this interpretation. Once the instrumental break comes, the violins
are given some very beautiful lines, but they feel too pretty - I’d
rather have had more of Troilo’s bandoneon, as we had in the
introduction.
Vocabulary: una cortada (a cut) refers to a street. Cut streets, which
are dead-end streets, get their name because they cut across the
normal grid pattern in which Buenos Aires is laid out.

78 Sosiego en la noche 05.11.1943

(In the peace o f the night)
vocals: Fiorendno
words: Carlos Bahr
music: Roberto Garza
Basso’s piano, in an arrangement by Argentino Galvan, delicately
echoes Fiorentino’s voice; you can hear that - with Galvan’s
help - the two men are trying to reproduce Goni’s style, and they
almost pull it off.
The lyric is a sentimental depiction of a cowboy (tropero) driving
his cattle across the pampa in the still of a starry night. The only
sounds are the cowbells, and the cattle driver calling out to his
herd, in a silence which swallows his voice: jHuija... oh... oh...! The
arrangement evokes the peace and stillness of a starry night in the
vastness of the pampas.
music: Gerardo Matos Rodriguez
Canaro said that perhaps the secret of the success of La cu m p a r­
sita (there are hundreds of interpretations) was that the tango
allowed an orchestra to impress its own personality upon it. Here,
in a great arrangement by Piazzolla for Troilo, we can hear what
Canaro meant. The performance maintains a largely introverted
mood from start to finish, and is especially remembered for
Troilo’s final bandoneon solo, an exercise in minimalism that
never fails to give me goose bumps, even before he gets to his
second note. It’s another masterpiece, and we are beginning not to
miss Goüi.

84 D e sp u e s 03.03.1944
(A fterw ards)
vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Homero Manzi
music: Hugo Gutierrez
Now, this is more like it! A dark, dramatic tango. Marino is out­
standing - could it be he’s more suited to this new style that the
band is developing than Fiorentino?
This is a tango about the moment just before you break-up with
someone, when you feel that it has to be done but how awful it’s
going to feel afterwards: this is the Afterwards of the tide. Manzi’s
lyric, if I can be forgiven for saying so, is remarkable not for the
images it offers but for the way it fits with the music.
The tango opens quiedy enough, but not softly: a low moaning
tone in the bandoneon is answered by menacing syncopations in
the violins. When Marino enters, these answering chords get even
darker underneath his vocals.
85 C hiq u 6 (E l e l e g a n t e ) 03.03.1944
(C h ic)
arrangement: Astor Piazzolla
music: Ricardo Brignolo
This has always been a tango for showing off: even the tide (Chic)
implies as much. Performing it presents challenges. Troilo handed
it to Piazzolla and it’s easy to hear why this interpretation caused
such a stir: the extended pizzicato at 1Ό0” sounds like something
from classical music, which of course it is - Piazzolla was intro­
ducing everything from his lessons with Alberto Ginastera in these
arrangements. Today it stands as an outstanding piece of music
although one that appeals more to my head than to my feet; one
can well understand how this confused the dancers.

86 T a b a co 03.03.1944
(T o b a cco )
vocals: Francisco Fiorentino
arrangement: Hector Maria Artola
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Armando Pontier
A man lights a cigarette and, in the smoke, sees the figure of the
woman he loves. The strings in this arrangement are just fantastic,
especially in their contra canto with Fiorentino. The arranger —not
Argentino Galvan, but Hector Maria Artola, uses them to evoke
the shimmering haze of the smoke, as well as the trembling in the
man’s heart as the memories disturb him. The central image, con­
necting the aroma of the tobacco to her fragrance, strikes a false
note today but don’t forget that this was an age when almost eve­
ryone smoked. This is a typical Contursi lyric, blaming himself and
not the other.
 19
Adios, Fiore

In 1944, after seven years with Troilo, Fiorentino split to go solo.

Perhaps after such a long time he just needed a change, or perhaps
he was noting what other singers were doing: he was one of the
most famous singers of the day, and Alberto Castillo had success­
fully turned solo the year before. Various dates are quoted for his
departure. We think that his official despedida or farewell performance
took place at a dance at Boca Juniors on Thursday, 25th May 1944,
with his final performance with Troilo being at a smaller dance at
Club Rivadavia on the following Saturday59. The last tango they sung
together was Pa* que seguir- why go ö//?’60.

Fiorentino’s departure was a real blow for Troilo, who took some
months to replace him.

Fiorentino’s first act in his solo career was to join forces with Or­
lando Goni, but like Troilo he found Goni’s lack of discipline im­
possible to work with, and the venture lasted just two months. The
violinist Hugo Baralis came with him, and the two had an idea: what
about asking Astor Piazzolla to direct the orchestra and write the
arrangements?

59
original reserach by Michael Krugman, www.tangodecoder.com
60 el album del Tango (Cancionero Coleccionable) No.8, Ediciones Continental,
1992. Troilo's recollection that the last tango they sang was Adiös, pampa m(a
(Maria Esther Gilio, Anibal Troilo - Pichuco: Conversaciones, p29) seems unlikely,
as the work was not premiered until 1945.
Piazzolla was still working for Troilo, and Baralis was so nervous
about the proposal that he refused to tell Piazzolla what it was all
about until he had him safely sat down at a cafe. The band played for
the first time on 2nd September 194461. Such was Fiorentino’s ca­
chet that they immediately got a radio contract, debuting on Radio
Belgrano on 11th September, as well as playing in clubs. They re­
corded on Odeon in 1945 and 1946. After this, Piazzolla went his
own way and the direction of the band passed to Ismael Spitalnik.

Piazzolla and Spitalnik were both excellent arrangers, and the quality
of the music is high, but something is missing. It’s tempting to point
the finger at Piazzolla, who never cared for the dancers, but it’s more
than this. Even in the numbers we remember from this collaboration
such as the milonga S o y u n a ß er a , what sticks in the mind is not
really the work of Fiorentino. Not only was Fiorentino not the same
before Troilo: he was never the same afterwards, either. Troilo’s
orchestra had been the perfect vehicle for him, and in fact was the
perfect vehicle for any singer. Roberto Seiles concludes:

Listening to Fiore's earlier recordings, one realises that it was Troilo who
moulded his twice to the characteristics o f the orchestra... on the other hand, he
had a most particular phrasing and achieved a total integration with the style o f
the orchestra 62

In 1948, which seems to have been a difficult time for tango, offers
of work dried up. Fiorentino dissolved the orchestra and on 2nd
May joined pianist Jose Basso, who had recently split from Troilo to
form his own group. There he was successful but despite Basso’s
pleas to the contrary he left the group two years later, almost to the
day (on 30th April 1950).

Fiorentino then joined the orchestra of Alberto Mancione, success­

fully reprising his old hits. Although he had a two year contract with

61 Maria Susana Azzi & Simon Collier, Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of
Astor Piazzolla, p36 from a report in the newspaper El Mundo.
62 Roberto Seiles in the collection Tango Nuestro published by Diario Popular
Mancione, he left after one year because he had been promised a
tour of Central America, which he hoped would earn him enough
money to buy a house and thus provide some financial security for
his children. In the event, the tour never came off63. He then spent
some time performing in Montevideo, where he made his final re­
cordings in November 1951. Returning to Buenos Aires, he had no
orchestra and no regular work, only some odd-jobs at parties and
private functions.

This was a sorry state of affairs for someone who had once been a
pop idol. Then, one day in 1955, he received a phone call from
Troilo, inviting him to make some vocal recordings with the Troilo-
Grela quartet. Would Fiorentino be interested?

This was just the news that Fiorentino had been waiting for; and he
told friends excitedly about the news. First though he had to fulfil an
engagement in the provinces with his friend Roberto Flores.

Travelling back to Mendoza from the small town of Tres Arboles on

the night of 10th September, 1955, Fiorentino’s driver - the theatre
manager who had booked him - lost his way. The car came off the
road and turned over in an irrigation ditch. Fiorentino was knocked
unconscious in the bottom of the ditch, where he drowned in a few
inches of water.

On the first anniversary of his death, Troilo paid tribute to Fioren­

tino’s interpretative gifts:

Su ductilidad le permitia compenetrarse en el espmtu mismo de cada cannon,

transformdndosey elevdndose en un ruego en interpretation acabada de la letra.

His flexibility allowed him to fuse with the very spirit o f each song, transform­
ing it and elevating it in a prayer in a perfect interpretation o f the lyric.

63 Interview with Alberto Mancione by Nestor Pinsön, reported on todo-

tango.com
 20
Marino solo
( 1944)

“The orchestra ofAnibal Troilo continues to get along

with its usual efficiency. The singer
Alberto Marino has doubled his always brilliant work.
But... Fiorentino is a very difficult space to fill... isn V
that righty Gordo? ” 64

This wry comment in a newspaper report of 22nd July 1944 outlines

the situation in which the orchestra now found itself: still ven strong,
but lacking a partner for Marino.

Troilo auditioned Orlando Verri and Raul Benin's brother Jose

Benin (or was it both Raul and Jose65?) without offering either of
them a place66. Meanwhile, rumours of Fiorentino’s return were rife,

64
Gordo - "Fats" - was one of Troilo's nicknames: he liked to live well.
65 Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, p68
66 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p67
especially once he separated from Goni, but as we know, it never
happened. The situation persisted for three months, right through
the winter, during which time the orchestra recorded thirteen more
songs - two instrumentals, and eleven vocal numbers, all, naturally
with Marino.

As with Fiorentino, we also have some unrecorded repertoire with

Marino. Sheet music covers hint at performances of Trenzas (re­
corded by both Laurenz and Calo, and written by Homero Exposito
and Armando Pontier) and the tango Turbiön de recuerdos, which
we know from Jose Garcia and His Grey Foxes. Marino’s repertoire
is also thought to have included Salgan’s Un vals; Manoblanca,
with a lyric by Troilo’s beloved friend Homero Manzi (especially
memorable in its interpretation by the two angels, D’Agostino and
Vargas); and the Gardel number Mano a mano. This was recorded
by many other dance orchestras: Lomuto (1936), Canaro (1938) and
De Angelis (1946).

91 Piropos 11.04.1944
(Compliments)
music: Juan Carlos Cobian
Juan Carlos Cobian is one of the mystery men of tango. The com­
poser of romantic tangos of the highest level such as Nostalgias,
his progress as a bandleader was interrupted by disastrous roman­
tic adventures which twice saw him ending up in North America.
Troilo had been playing in his orchestra in the carnival dances of
1937 alongside many of the man who formed his first orchestra,
and had always admired his compositions. E l motivo (Pobre
paica) was in the songbook of both Fiorentino and Marino, with­
out ever being recorded - although there is a tremendous radio
transcription of the Troilo-Fiorentino version from early 1941,
and Marino would record it as a soloist in 1947; and this is not to
mention Troilo’s resurrection of Cobian’s Los dopados as Los
mareados.
P ir o p o s has several beautiful melodies and a wonderful change
from the verse to the chorus. Its intense romanticism seems to call
for a lyric that isn’t there; I wish Troilo had asked Cadicamo to
supply a lyric, as he had for L o s m a re a d o s .
About the title: a piropo is a special kind of compliment, the flatter­
ing kind that a man pays to a woman.

92 T res a m ig o s 11.04.1944
( T h r e e fr ie n d s )
vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Rosendo Luna (Enrique Cadicamo)
music: Enrique Cadicamo
T res a m i g o s is one of Marino’s best performances with Troilo,
even if it isn’t quite at the heights, or rather the depths, of tracks
such as C oto rrita d e la s u e r te , S iga e l c o r s o or F a r o lito d e
p a p e l This is a different kind of lyric, typical of Cadicamo but not
of Troilo, which doesn’t concern itself with affairs of the heart. As
with the tango E l c u a r t e a d o r ; Cadicamo used the pen name
Rosendo Luna to sign the lyric, something he did for this lighter
style of tango.
Nevertheless, although this is a tango about friendship, it is still a
tango about loss: the trio of friends has been dispersed. At this
point Troilo again takes the opportunity7 to darken the tone, heav­
ily emphasising the syncopations, and there are several places
where the band falls completely silently as Marino sings, without
disrupting the flow of the music as a dance piece.
We also get the second verse, something not brought to us in the
competing versions of Francisco Canaro or Ricardo Malerba. This
is something that Troilo is pioneering and it means that we get
more of the story.
93 S iga e l c o r s o / 07.06.1944
(O n w ith th e ca rn iva l!)
vocal: Alberto Marino
words: Francisco Garcia Jimenez
music: Anselmo Aieta
Another tango from the repertoire of Gardel, who chose it to
open his performances in Paris in 1928. Corso —literally, Corsican,
or piratical, refers here to a carnival procession, taking place at
night, in which all the participants are masked. Carnival nights
should be gay and flirtatious:
Decime quien sos vos, Tell me, who areyou,
decime donde vas, tell me whereyou're going,
alegre mascarita happy masked reveller,
que me grit as al pasar shouting to me asyou pass by
According to Francisco Garcia Jimenez67, this tango was inspired
by a corso he observed take place spontaneously in the centre of
Buenos Aires in the carnival season of 1926.

103 Q u eja s d e b a n d o n eö n 27.09.1944

music: Juan De Dios Filiberto
The famous bandoneon ναήαάόη that concludes this piece is nei­
ther in the original sheet music, nor the work of the arranger Astor
Piazzolla: it belongs to Feliciano Brunelli, with whom Troilo had
played in the old style ‘Cuarteto del 900’ (i.e. quartet from 1900)
around 1936. Troilo asked Piazzolla to include it, and today no-
one can imagine the work without it.
This tango is today one of the standards and a favourite of show
dancers, but it only achieved the fame it did once it was adopted as
a show piece by the dancer and choreographer Juan Carlos Copes
in 1947. The final variation allows the dancers the opportunity’ to
show off, and Copes used this piece for decades.

Francisco Garcia Jimenez, Asi nacieron los tangos, 2nd ed,ppl85-188

 21
Floreal Ruiz
( 1944)

In October 1944, Troilo found the replacement singer he had been

seeking for six long months: Floreal Ruiz, who had been singing
with Alfredo De Angelis to great acclaim. Some say the appointment
was at Marino’s suggestion, although Oscar del Priore says that
Troilo was turned on to Ruiz’s voice when he heard his recording of
B a jo e l c o n o a z u l with De Angelis on a jukebox.

Perhaps it’s only today, with the passage of the years, that the great­
ness of Floreal Ruiz’s performances with Troilo can be appreciated.
At the time, Ruiz could never just be himself in the public mind: he
was Fiorentino’s replacement68. The same problem persists today
amongst the modern dancing public, for whom Troilo’s repertoire
divides into Troilo-Fiorentino 1941, and the rest. But looked at in
their own right, these are magnificent performances. Ruiz has be­
come, like Gardel, a singer who sings better even’ day.

Ruiz’s induction in the orchestra was to join Troilo for a weekend

working in Mar del Plata. Ruiz travelled down in Troilo’s car, which
gave Troilo the opportunity to outline the repertoire he thought
would suit him69. This repertoire had a strong Gardelian base, as we
shall see.

68 Ricardo Garcia Blaya on todotango.com

69 Horacio Ferrer, El gran Troilo, pl08
There are many significant recordings in the Troilo-Ruiz songbook
and many stories, but there is one that deserves highlighting because
it reveals a great deal about how Troilo approached a lyric. This
concerns the tango N aranjo e n ß o r ; which was written by the Ex­
posito brothers Homero and Virgilio. This tango was very different
to what had gone before; full of metaphors, whose images are drawn
from nature, it resembles literature more than a song lyric, and it
cost Troilo a lot of effort to prepare the work for performance. One
day, many weeks after the tango had been delivered to Troilo,
Homero Exposito bumped into him in the street: “Gordo, are you
going to give N aranjo e n ß o r its debut for me?”. Troilo’s cryptic
reply was, “Ask Floreal Ruiz whether I will debut the work”.

Taking him at his word, Homero Exposito telephoned Ruiz. The

latter explained that he had been meeting with Troilo privately every
day before rehearsals for the past 23 days, “looking for the form”.70
What this meant in practice was going through the tango line by line,
working out how to shape each phrase. The process took nearly a
month.

With Marino & Ruiz, Troilo now once again had a top-notch vocal
pairing, and one well suited to the sophisticated music he was devel­
oping. The musical team was complemented by the arrangers, the
principal one at this time being Argentino Galvan. His arrangement
of the vals P a lom ita b la n ca is widely considered his best before
1948’s Sur.

70 Reported by the newspaper darin 18/5/2010,

http://edant.clarin.corn/diario/2010/05/18/espectaculos/c-02196729.htm
[accessed 02-07-2014).
105 M anoneta 06.10.1944
(Puppet)
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Armando Tagini
music: Juan Jose Guichandut
This had been one of Floreal Ruiz’s big hits with De Angclis, a
song from the repertoire of Gardel. Tagini’s lyric was inspired by
events from his own life. As a child, he had witnessed a puppet
show' in the patio of a large old house. Tagini remembered a very
poor girl, six years of age, who had been especially excited: shout­
ing, smiling, clapping and laughing like no-one else. Years later,
Tagini encountered the girl again, working as a copera in a cabaret.71
The second verse of the lyric, which as usual we don’t get in this
dance version, finishes by comparing her to a puppet, dancing
without end.
In Troilo’s arrangement, the first few bars of the opening, with
high bandoneon notes and gentle p i^ ica to in the violins, playfully
evoke a childhood atmosphere; and after Ruiz’s verse and chorus,
the band return to this childhood theme for the simplest of in­
strumental bridges. The tango is an excellent example of how
Troilo would do more with a theme than his contemporaries.

110 Cafe de los Angelitos 19.12.1944

(Caf6 o f the little angels)
vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Catulo Castillo
music: Jose Razzano
Originally called the Bar Rivadavia, this almost mythical cafe
opened its doors in 1890 in the barrio of Balvanera. It received its
name from the local police sergeant, ‘little angels’ being an ironic
reference to some of the barrio’s wildest inhabitants. In those days
this was a poor area outside the town centre, but today it’s just twro

n Hector Angel Benedetti, Las mejores letras de tango, p572

blocks from Congreso, the Argentine houses of parliament. The
lyric pays homage to the great payadores (Argentine singers who
performed in verse duals or payadas) who used to frequent the cafe
such as Gabino Ezeiza or Jose Bednotti (composer of the vals Tu
d ia g n o sticö ). Troilo was a regular, as was Julio De Caro, and the
lyricist of this tango, Jose Razzano - Carlos Gardel’s original sing­
ing partner - was here when Gardel and Razzano signed their first
recording contract in c. 1911.
The cafe closed its doors in 1992, the roof having collapsed after a
rainstorm. In 2000 the structure was declared unsafe and it was
demolished. However, the cafe was rebuilt and reopened its doors
in 2007. It’s a great place to go for coffee.
In the performance, unusually, Marino sings the full lyric: after the
first verse and the chorus, he gives us the second verse as well.
This is where the band changes the mood. The second verse
opens softly, in a gende, introspective fashion, with Marino’s voice
being answered by plaintive notes in the piano: On cold rainy nights,
I return to this same spotfrom the past, andfeel Betinoti at my side once more.
He dien sings without words a quote from the old vals P o b r e m i
m a d r e q u erid a , which was Betinotti’s most famous composition.
The orchestra concludes this break, Marino repeats the chorus,
and the tango finishes.

112 G arras 09.10.1945

(C law s)
vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Anibal Troilo
Troilo’s dramatic music, Contursi’s desperate words, and Marino’s
golden voice come together in one of the band’s best interpreta­
tions from the mid 1940s, clearly surpassing Calo’s version.
Even the instrumental introduction moves very rapidly between
different emotional moods: strong opening chords, suddenly sof­
tening into gende strings, then immediately intensifying - there are
too many such changes to describe them all. And of course, it’s
the same when Marino enters. The cello is prominent throughout,
adding its dark tone to Contursi’s story of (his) unfulfilled love.
G arras is a landmark because of the way it combines words and
music. Early tangos often had quite sad lyrics over happy music,
creating a false impression amongst those who don’t know the
lyrics; just think for instance of T od a m i vid a from Troilo’s first
session with RCA-Victor in 1941. With a tango such as G arras it’s
not possible to make such a mistake.
This deeper union of words and music requires a much closer co­
operation between the lyricist and the composer, and it’s here, as a
composer, where Troilo is so important to the development of the
tango song in the 1940s, forging three famous partnerships with
the lyricists Homero Manzi, Catulo Castillo and, as here, Jose
Maria Contursi.

113 Y u yo v e r d e 28.02.1945
(W ild g r e e n p la n t s )
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Homero Exposito
music: Domingo Federico
If anyone is unsure whether or not Floreal Ruiz is a great singer,
then this is the tango for you. The opening line presents a tremen­
dous challenge, as the lyric starts quiedy {Callejon, callejon) and then
soars into the heavens (lejano! lejanol). The ease with which Ruiz
dispenses with this difficulty places him a class above all his rivals,
including Alberto Moran (singing with Pugliese).
Homero Exposito’s lyric is, as ever, original, and unafraid to in­
corporate countryside metaphors (as he did with N a ra n jo e n
d o r ), whilst still delivering the killer blow. The poet remembers a
summer of young and innocent love. Where the road {callejon)
peters out, wild plants {yuyo) grow green, like a symbol of forgive­
ness, but even that wouldn’t be able to revive this love, because
from the road the girl has taken, no-one ever comes back.
120 La noche que te Zinste 05.06.1945
(The night you left)
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Os mar Maderna
Madcma was still Calo’s pianist when he wrote the music for Con-
tursi’s wonderful lyric. Calo also recorded a beautiful version, but
Troilo’s rendition has more complexity. For instance, at the very
beginning, both orchestras take the beautiful main theme in the
violins, but Troilo adds a second violin singing in counterpoint
(‘contra canto*). Both then hand the theme to the piano, but when
Troilo does so, the violins sing the counter melody behind the
piano.
It’s the same when the singer enters: Troilo has more going on
behind the singer. This layering adds a lot of texture to the piece,
without overwhelming it. Troilo is also unafraid to change the
mood, as he so often does: when we reach the key phrase, La noche
que te fuiste, the band falls silent, and Ruiz’s voice is echoed just by
Troilo’s bandoneon. Following these layers is where the enjoy­
ment of the performance lies; and if one doesn’t pay attention to
them, then Calo’s simpler interpretation, which makes fewer de­
mands on the listener, is to be preferred.

122 Cotorn ta de la suerte 28.06.1945

(Lucky parrot)
vocal: Alberto Marino
wTords: Jose De Grandis
music: Alfredo De Franco
A simple but affecting lyric. A girl, a child labourer and already
sick from work, has her fortune told - something like a fortune
cookie: a paper drawn at random by a parrot. In this performance,
we don’t get to hear the fortune, because it’s in the unsung part at
the beginning of the second verse, but the fortune reads: “a boy­
friend, long life” Instead we hear Troilo’s violins singing tenderly
in contracanto (two different lines rather than a simple harmony).
This is just to soften us up for the killer blow. Marino returns,
once again in the very soft pianissimo that he does so well, and tells
us the rest of the story: the girl’s days fly by happily but her health
does not improve. As she lies on her death bed, she asks her
mother: “he didn’t come?”
When this lyric was written (1927), child labour was still a fact of
life in Europe and the United States. In the United Kingdom,
children had a right to an education from 1870 onwards, but child
labour was not actually banned until 1933.

126 M aria 09.10.1945

vocals: Alberto Marino
words: Catulo Castillo
music: Anibal Troilo
There are so many tangos about girls with Trench names, i low would it be i f
we create one with the name o f the Virgin, a tango simply called Maria ?
With these words, Troilo not only planted the idea for this tango
in the mind of his friend Catulo Castillo, he also gave him his first
line.
Castillo’s highly poetic lyric - his first for Troilo - is not easy to
translate. The finished work is a perfect fusion of words, music,
Marino’s voice, and the arrangement. To give just one example,
pingicato in violins is used to depict the melancholy raining down
on the narrator’s heart. The piece received its debut on the radio
on 30th September and was a big success at the time.
In the arrangement, Alberto Marino enters where we expect (after
a minute), singing a verse and a chorus, but then the usual pattern
is changed: after a brief instrumental bridge, an echo of the final
part of the chorus, Marino immediately returns and sings the sec­
ond verse. The piece then ends suddenly, leaving the strong at­
mosphere of the lyrics hanging in the air.
 Recuerdos de
bohemia
(1945)

Galvdn allowed the music of his favourite

musician to seep through: Claude Debussy72

In 1945, Troilo decided to make an arrangement that demonstrated

to everyone just how high the musical level now was in tango. He
turned to Argentino Galvan, an innovator, but also (unlike Piazzolla)
an arranger working within the traditional boundaries o f tango.
Galvan’s response was R e c u e r d o s d e b o h em ia . This old tango of
Enrique Delfino, known as a romantic composer, exists in a fine
danceable version by Osvaldo Fresedo with vocalist Roberto Ray
f 1935). Galvan turned it into a tango fantasia, completely abandon­
ing any pretence of making a dance number. It was a revolution at
the time. The opening is treated as a work for string quartet: a long
cello introduction (twenty seconds) gives way to rich string playing
unaccompanied by either bandoneons or piano. This is all the more
impressive given that Troilo’s first violin David Diaz had had an

Gaspar Astarita, quoted in Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo p79

accident and could not play on the day of the recording, leaving the
violin section a man short and without its best player.

It's almost two minutes before Troilo’s bandoneon finally enters,

and when it does, it is in classical fashion, as a solo instrument ac­
companied by the strings. When the piano finally enters after three
minutes, Basso sounds more like Gershwin than anything in tango.
The piece never turns into a classical tango, even when Marino
briefly enters - this only after almost four minutes!

At almost 5Vi minutes long, the piece had to be split across both
sides of a 78rpm record when it was first released, only being joined
together when Troilo’s RCA recordings were re-released on CD in
1998.

One often reads how this tango demonstrates Troilo’s string section,
with - in addition to the violins, and the cello of Alfredo Citro - the
viola of Simon Zlotnik. But is he playing? I think he isn’t. One
source says that Zlotnik joined in 194473, but others that it was 1947.
The 2004 CD release “Troilo en RCA Victor” agrees: Zlotnik does
not join the orchestra until 1947. R e c u e r d o s d e b o h e m i o was re­
corded in March 1946.

For the dancer, the strongest performances in this period came a bit
later. At the end of 1946, the band’s style begins to increase in inten­
sity, emphasising once again the syncopation that was so in evidence
in their 1941 recordings. There are some tremendous performances,
most notably M i t a n g o tr is te (from November 1946) with Marino
on vocals.

73 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p60

 23
Edmundo Rivero
(1947)

I never sangfor money.

Money is just the consequence of what I do.

When Marino left the orchestra to go solo at the beginning of 1947,

the last person anyone thought Troilo would choose as his next
singer was Edmundo Rivero.

First o f all, he was not a tenor voice, but a deep bass-baritone. The
public liked and were accustomed to tenor voices. On one occasion,
the young Rivero was hired to accompany a silent movie by playing
his guitar. In one scene, the protagonist sang a tango, so Rivero
decided to sing it as well as to play the music. The reaction ot the
public was so bad that the owner o f the cinema sacked him.

Secondly, and com pounding the first difficulty, Rivero had a strange
way of singing, which was nothing at all like the Gardelian style. The
record companies had refused to record him when he was with Sal-
gan’s first orchestra in the mid 1940s, which as a consequence went
unrecorded. In 1937, Julio De Caro sacked him after two days be­
cause he sang too well - people stopped dancing to listen to him.
After all these setbacks, Rivero stopped singing professionally alto­
gether between 1939 and 1944 and joined the army.

Thirdly, Rivero was considered ugly. He looked a bit strange because

of his acromegaly, which gave him unusually large hands and very
strong facial features. One of his nicknames was “El feo” - the ugly
one. How could such a man be a pop idol? Nevertheless, this was
the man chosen by Troilo, whose legendary intuition never failed
him.

It nearly never happened. Troilo had decided to hire Roberto Rufino,

who was singing with the orchestra of Enrique Francini and Ar­
m an do Pontier, but had asked Rufino not to say anything until he’d
had the chance to speak with the two men. However Rufino could
not contain himself and the news got out. This annoyed Troilo, for
whom it was very important to do things properly, and he withdrew
his offer74. Rufino would have to wait until 1963 before he finally
sang with the orchestra.

Troilo’s vocal team was now Edmundo Rivero & Floreal Ruiz, two
outstanding but highly contrasting voices. This was as good as team
as the orchestra ever had, and in a way it is also the high watermark
of tango music: the golden decade of the 1940s would soon be draw­
ing to a close, and Troilo, who had previously had Fiorentino &
Marino, and then Marino & Ruiz, would never again have a partner­
ship of this quality.

Musically the band is, as a dance orchestra, at its absolute peak. The
music is highly sophisticated, requiring a lot of attention from the
dancer to the changes in colour, which are sometimes quite rapid.
This is still good dance music, but it’s advanced.

The story of Rivero’s audition is a beautiful one and deserves retell­

ing in full. Troilo had heard Rivero singing with Salgan’s orchestra
on the radio. Impressed by what he heard, he and his wife Zita went
to listen to Rivero sing live at El Jardin de Flores on Rivadavia. They

74 Oscar del Priore, Toda mi vida, pp73-74

liked the performance and invited Rivero to join them in a small bar
where Troilo had reserved a table. This was no regular audition.
Rivero had brought his guitar and began playing and singing a few
tangos, and Troilo —who had a sandpapery voice, but perfect pitch
and as we all know, a love for tango songs —joined in. The singing
and chatting carried on until four in the morning, when all of a sud­
den, Troilo get down to business.

Look, I'd like you to sing in my orchestra these things thatyou sing on your
guitar. It will be something completely new. So, tell me whatyou want in or­
der to come and sing in my orchestra - what areyou after?

Troilo and Zita were expecting Rivero to name his price, which was
what the “business” of singing in tango orchestras was so often
about. Rivero’s reply took them aback:

It's like this: what Vm after is a good repertoire. So tell me what you like,
amongst everything that I sing, so we can include it in the repertoire o f the or­
chestra. You can give me other repertoire, and like this we'll complete a good
one (repertoire) fo r the orchestra.

At this, Troilo shot Zita a look, but it was dark and Rivero couldn’t
see exacdy what passed between them. Years later, Troilo explained
to him what had happened:

I was expecting you to ask fo r money like all the others, but you didn't —
you spoke about repertoire and didn 't mention money

That's fine, Rivero replied, because I never sang fo r money. Money isju st
the consequence o f what I do.15
Rivero got his wish, and in 1949 the orchestra recorded M ilon ga e n
n e g r o , Rivero’s own arrangement of some traditional themes.7576

75 Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, pp82-83

Another piece from Rivero's repertoire that was performed by the orchestra
was a tonada Los otros tordes te vf, in which Rivero also played guitar. It was
never recorded. Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p88.
Rivero’s opening with Troilo is another funny story that Troilo en­
joyed telling. Their first performance took place outside the city at a
dance in Tigre. It seems that many of Rivero’s fans had travelled
especially to see him. When Rivero was announced, the wild ap­
plause seemed exaggerated to Troilo. During the opening number,
people stopped dancing and drew near to the stage; and at the end of
the piece, the crowd not only applauded, they shouted and threw
things into the air.
Troilo was worried:
Look, Rivero, better get o ff stage; it seems to me that things are
turning nasty
It seems toyou ?
Can 'tyou see that they are throwing things?
A h, well, they always applaud me like this at dances
A reyo u sure, Rivero?
Y es... no need to worry... nothings going to happen

Troilo calmed down. Having overcome so many prejudices in his life,

Rivero had convinced Troilo but he still had to convince some of
the musicians in the orchestra, who badmouthed him to Troilo be­
hind his back. But Troilo knew what he was doing, and the two men
developed a deep and lasting friendship. When Rivero left Troilo
three years later to go solo, he did so recognised as one of the great­
est voices in tango.

Also in this period we find the departure of Jose Basso, who - like
all of Troilo’s pianists - left to form his own orchestra. Troilo went
to check out Carlos Figari who was playing with the orchestra of
Edgardo Donato at a cafe on Corrientes. There he was able to ob­
serve not only that Figari was every bit as good as his sources had
told him, but also - and this was the clincher - that in the intervals
he drank nothing stronger than milk.77

77 Ernesto Abälsamo, Cronicas de Tango: El fenömeno Piazzolla, biblioteca

virtual, http://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/300885.pdf
 156 C o n fesiö n
(C o n fessio n )
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Enrique Santos Discepolo/Luis Cesar Amadori
music: Enrique Santos Discepolo
For his first recording of 1947, Troilo revived two old tangos of
Discepolo from 1930. The first was the iconic Yira... y i r a a
tango about poverty during the Great Depression. It’s remem­
bered as one of Rivero’s best performances with Troilo, but it’s
blown away by the tango on the other face of the disc: C on fesiön .
To describe this performance is to run out of superlatives. This is
the music I hear when I read: “the syncopation of this orchestra
hits you like a wave”78. The lyric makes tough reading: a man de­
scribes hoping that his girlfriend will leave him, because he can see
that he treats her badly, but is too weak to end the relationship.
Much to his relief, she eventually leaves.
There are heartbreaking moments: “Sol de mi vida! Fui un fra-
casao” - “Light of my life! I was a failure”. Ruiz captures every
nuance, moving between drama and moments of melting tender­
ness. He so dominates the performance that I can’t even imagine
Fiorentino with this lyric. The arrangement, by Artola, is one of
his best: the many rapid changes of colour never overwhelm the
interpretation, something he manages even better than Galvan,
and the cello counterpoint behind Ruiz’s vocals is wonderful.
When C o n fesiö n was first composed, in 1930, there were a spate
of recordings: from Canaro (as an instrumental), Ricardo Brignolo,
Pedro Maffia, and the Orquesta Tipica Porteria, as well as a magis­
terial performance by Carlos Gardel. Troilo takes this tango to
another level. The performance has all the vigour of the lyric, and
of the band’s early years, and reaches a level of intensity not always
associated with this orchestra. However, the piece doesn’t figure in
the repertoire of the other dance orchestras of the 1940s. Perhaps

78 A description of the orchestra on the sleeve notes of an Argentine LP

the lyric was just too strong. I am reminded of another of Disce-
polo’s tangos, T o rm cn ta , which had to wait for Carlos Di Sarli in
1954 before it received an interpretation that was equal to the lyric.
Fue a conciencia pura
queperdi tu amor...
/Nada mas que p o r salvarte!
Hoy me odia syyo feli%
me arrinconopa' llorarte...
E l recuerdo que tendrds de m i
sera honvroso,
me wras siempre golpedndote
como un malvao...
jY si supieras, bien, que generoso
fu e quepagase asi tu buen amor..!
/Sol de mi vida!...fui un fracasao
y en mi caida
busque dejarte a un laof
porque te quise tanto...panto!
que al rodar,
para salvarte
solo supe hacerme odiar.
Hoy, despues de un ano atro%
te ti pasar.
/me mordipa' no llamarte!...
Ibas linda como un sol...
jSeparabanpa' mirarte!
Yo no se si el que tiene asi
se lo merece,
solo se que la mtseria cruel
que te ofrect,
mejustifica
al verte hecha una reina
que vivirds major lejos de mi..!
1 knew fu ll well what I was doing
when 1 lost your love...
Only to saw y o u !
Todayyo u hate me, and Vm happy
to sit in a comer and weep fo r y o u ...
The memoiyyou 'll have o f me will
be awful:
you'll always see me hittingyou, like
a wicked m an...
A nd i f yo u knew, how generously
your good love was repaid...!
Tight o f my life! I was a failure...
In my downfall
I fried to leavey o u to one side
Because I loved y o u so, so much!
that in the end,
the only way I knew to saveyo u
was to makey o u hate me.
Today, after an atrocious year,
I saw yo u pass by:
I had to bite m yself not to call out to
you!
You were as lowly as the sun...
people stopped to look aty o u
I don 7 know i f the man who has
you know deserves to;
I only know that the cruel misery I
offered you, Ijustify
seeingyou like a queen
who will live betterfa r from me!
157 Flor de lino (vals)
(Flax Üower)
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Homero Exposito
music: Hector Stamponi
The flax plant (from which linen is made) has a beautiful blue
flower. This simple but beautiful vals, which sits beautifully in the
range of Floreal Ruiz, is set in the countryside. The protagonist
sees a girl blossom like a linen flower. If only she knew he loved
him - but before he gets round to declaring himself, she’s off.
Homero F^xposito was a perfectionist who would modify his lyrics
interminably. Stamponi recounts what happened with Flor de
lino. After many weeks Exposito said: “Here’s the definitive ver­
sion”. Stamponi read it and said: “It’s perfect. We’ll release it like
this”. That night, his phone rang: it was Exposito. “It’s just that
I’ve got this nagging doubt: does flax have a flower?”

163 Romance de barrio (vals) 19.08.1947

(A neighbourhood romance)
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Homero Manzi
music: Anibal Troilo
One of Manzi’s most beautiful lyrics, perfectly melded with
Troilo’s music, Romance de barrio tells of a young love which
didn’t work out, but remarkably doesn’t seek to apportion blame.
The word play on the Spanish word ‘culpa’, which means sin, guilt
and blame in Spanish, is impossible to translate into English, but
says something like: we weren't guilty; we both must take the blame.
Argentino Galvan’s arrangement is widely considered one of his
best. Remarkably, no-one else recorded this vals for 20 years.
 164 Yo te bendigo
(I bless you)
vocal: Edmundo Rivero
words: Juan Bruno
music: Juan De Dios Filiberto
Rivero was righdy proud of his interpretation of this tango, espe­
cially its final phrase79, in which his voice, dropping into nothing­
ness, reflects the lyricist’s image of a light being extinguished.
Daba la diana el gallo,
ladrando un perro desde lejos contesto
y el arrabal al despertar
al nuevo did saludo...
Lejospasaba un cocbe...
Cual centinela que la guardia termino,
la lu% temblona de un fa rol
como un lamento se apago.
Rompio el silencio el bordonear de la
guitarra
y p o r sus cuerdas el dolorpaso llorando
y una w% que la pena desgarra
canto de este modo su cruel dolor.
jYo te bendigo pese al dano que me has
hecho
aunque otros bravos te acaricien y te
abracen,
pues el rencor no ha cabido en elpecho
que un dia lienaste de lu y j de amor!
79 Luis Alposta, Todo Rivero, 2nd ed, p54
The cock crowed\ and in the distance
a dog barked in answer
and waking up, the arrabal
greeted the new day...
In the distance a car went by...
A nd its guard duty over,
The trembling tight o f a street lamp
went out tike a lament.
The silence was broken by the
strumming o f a guitar
and pain passed weeping through its
strings
and a mice broken by pain
sung o f its cruel pain in this manner.
I blessy o u in spite o f the pain y o u ’ve
injticted upon me
Although other arms now caressyo u
and embraceyou,
fo r there ’s no room fo r resentment in
my breast,
whichy o u filled with tight and love!
 169 Sur
(S outh )
vocal: Edmundo Rivero
words: Homero Manzi
music: Anibal Troilo
Sury a monster of a tango, was Troilo’s own favourite vocal tango.
In any Argentine book on Troilo, you can be sure that this will get
a chapter on its own. However, in my opinion, this tango is diffi­
cult to approach for non-Argentines because of its deep cultural
roots. S ur refers to the south side of the city, which was the
poorer part, and often thought of as more authentically tanguero
than the richer northern districts. The images Homero Manzi
evokes, a wall marking the edge of the city with a plain beyond it,
tell us that Manzi is referring back to his youth in the early 1920s.
His nostalgia is hard for a foreigner to share.
Nevertheless, the performance exerts a fascination. Rivero’s voice
modulates between moments of great power and a hushed stillness
that casts a hypnotic, almost mystical aura. One can imagine that,
when the tango was performed, the whole room would be in rapt
attention in a deep silence, and it turns out that this is exacdy what
happened: Rivero recalls that “it seemed as if all the girls had
stopped breathing, the place was left in an almost religious
trance”.80
A great deal has been written about this lyric; Jose Gobello, for
instance, has analysed it to see exactly which part of Buenos Aires
is meant, and in what era. For Francisco Garcia Jimenez, the key
to understanding the lyric is to appreciate the state of mind of
Manzi, who had been diagnosed with the illness that would kill
him81. The return to the barrio of his childhood is thus illusionary,
and the lyric is a poignant farewell: “I already know: everything is
dead”.

80 Jos£ Maria Otero, ABC Del Tango, p339

Francisco Garcia Jimenez, Asi nacieron los tangos, 2nd ed, pp267-270
 172 D e s v e lo / D e ß o r e n ß o r
( S le e p l e s s n e s s / F r o m ß o w e r to ß o w e r )
vocal: Floreal Ruiz
words: Enrique Cadicamo
music: Eduardo Boncssi
This is a great tango but not an easy one. The first recording of
D e s v e lo , by the orchestra of Antonio Rodio in 1944, takes a sim­
ple approach and avoids pitfalls, but the inherent drama of the
tune might encourage an arranger to do more. Here, an unknown
hand82 either produces one of his best arrangements or over-eggs
the pudding, depending on your point of view. The tango only
really became famous in 1953 when it was a big hit for Alberto
Moran with Pugliese, and that is the version wc most remember
today.
The reason for the two titles is that this is another of those tangos
which had two lyrics. Eduardo Bonessi, who was Gardel’s singing
teacher, wrote the music some time before 1923. He played the
music to Gardel (on his harmonium!) when the two were on a
boat from Montevideo to Spain. Gardel liked it and asked the
journalist Domingo Gallicchio to write a lyric. This became the
tango D e ß o r e n ß o r ,; which Gardel recorded in 1924 and again in
1930.
In 1938, Bonessi asked Enrique Cadicamo to write a new lyric to
this music for a film he was working in. This new tango was D e s ­
v elo. Problems arose because Gallicchio, being Uruguayan, had
registered the work in Uruguay but the new tango was registered
in Argentina. This led to a protracted legal dispute between SA-
DAIC (the Argentine authorial society) and its counterpart in
Uruguay. The judgement was that the tango must always be pub­
lished with both names and both lyrics, and since that time the
tango has, rather inaccurately, carried both titles.

82 Ferrer says it's Galvän but Dorner Linne identifies the arranger as Artola.
 24
Aldo Calderon
(1949)

Towards the end o f 1948, something happened to Troilo that had

never happened to him before: someone poached one o f his singers.
The deciding factor, naturally, was money.

The culprit was Francisco Rotundo. He realized that a great singer

could help guarantee work and success for his orchestra which didn’t
have a strong personality o f its own, so he made Floreal Ruiz an
offer he couldn’t refuse. Reports o f the sums involved are some­
times exaggerated, but it was a fabulous offer: instead o f the $700 a
month he received from Troilo, Rotundo offered him $300083. Ruiz
called it “a fortune”. As a signing on bonus, Rotundo bought him a
new car8485. In addition, Rotundo (who was with Pampa, a subsidiary
of Odeon and thus a com petitor to RCA-Victor) had to pay a
“transfer fee” o f $100,000 to RCA-Victor to compensate for lost
earnings83. (As an aside, we might mention that Rotundo’s orchestra
did very well during the Peronist era, helped by the fact that his wife
was a senator in the government; but when the government fell in
1956, so did the orchestra, which found itself unemployable. Ruiz
went on to work for Jose Basso, but Rotundo was forced to aban­
don music for a few years, and his wife was jailed).

83 Ruiz's own words, quoted by Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p85

http://www.laverdadonline.com/noticias/cultura/floreal-ruiz-quotel-
tataquot-una-de-las-grandes-voces-del-cuarenta
85 . . . .
ibid
Ruiz’s replacement in Troilo’s orchestra was Aldo Calderon, a good
singer, but not at the level of his illustrious forebears. It’s telling that
Rivero gets most of the recordings, and when Calderon does partici­
pate, it’s more likely to be a duo with Rivero (3 recordings) than solo
(2 recordings before Rivero’s departure). Indeed, even Calderon’s
debut on disc, U na la g r im a tu y a is a duo with Rivero. Through no
fault of his own, Calderon’s arrival somehow marks the beginning of
the slow decline of tango music; and the event is also a powerful
example of what happens when economic forces (which took Ruiz
a w a y from Troilo) are no longer aligned with musical ones.

Troilo’s last published recordings with RCA-Victor were made on

26th October 1949. 1 say published, because there were more which
were never printed because of the sudden separation of Troilo from
RCA-Victor. An article about Aldo Calderon by Abel Palermo on
todotango.com lists the following four themes as recorded but not
printed: M ed ia n o c h e , T a rd e, A ten ti p e b e t a and D e s te llo s . Since
RCA-Victor destroyed all their masters in 1960, we must consider
them definitively lost.

Also lost may have been some tracks with Rivero and perhaps even
some instrumentals. I especially wonder about Armando Pontier’s
innovative tango A J o s a m ig o s . Galvan made the arrangement and
the piece came into Troilo’s repertoire around 1949, but it now sur­
vives only on a radio transcription disc.

What happened with Troilo and RCA? Troilo’s arrangements were

becoming more modem and daring. A 1950 interpretation of T a rd e
for instance, which survives on a radio transcription disc, features an
opening with the cello and viola playing in harmony. RCA-Victor
were willing to record this music because it was so successful, but
they didn’t really like it anymore. When word of this reached Troilo,
he was so annoyed that he quit. However he did not go to RCA’s
rival’s Odeon, with whom he is said to have had an uneasy relation­
ship. Instead, he helped to set up a new record label. He didn’t come
back to RCA until 1961.
185 La m a n p o s a
(T h e b u tterß y )
vocal: Edmundo Rivero
words: Celedonio Esteban Flores
music: Pedro Maffia
Maffia originally wrote this beautiful melody as an instrumental in
1920 and it was premiered as such by Canaro. The following year,
Flores added the lyric and the tango was later picked up by Gardel,
who recorded it three times.
A mariposa (butterfly) is here a party girl who doesn’t stay long with
any one boyfriend, just as a butterfly doesn’t setde long on any
one flower. Given the year of the composition, we might call her a
flapper. In the lyric, the male protagonist complains that the girl
has broken his heart and warns her that, if she carries on in such a
fashion, things might turn out badly for her.
This tango enjoyed a widespread and enduring popularity. As an
instrumental, it was included in his repertoire by Juan D’Arienzo
in the 1930s, whilst Julian Plaza’s 1965 arrangement for Osvaldo
Pugliese became one of that orchestra’s most popular pieces (al­
though Pedro Maffia hated what Pugliese did to his tango).
Troilo’s version was the first vocal interpretation by a dance or­
chestra, giving us the chance to enjoy the lyric as we dance, rather
than having to choose between dancing and listening.

186 S e le c t io n d e ta n g o s d e J u li o D e C aro 22.07.1949

Arranger: Argentino Galvan
In 1949, Troilo asked his long time arranger Argentino Galvan to
make five arrangements for him which would be a selection of
themes by a composer, mixed together. The composers selected
were: Julio De Caro, Francisco Canaro, Eduardo Arolas, Agustin
Bardi and Juan Carlos Cobian. (Ten years later, Julian Plaza would
arrange a sixth on themes by Discepolo for the show ‘Caramclos
surtidos’).
S e l e c c i ö n d e t a n g o s d e J u l i o D e C aro was the first to be re­
corded. The selection of Canaro themes was recorded in 1952, and
that of Arolas in 1967, but the other two were never recorded; the
selection of Cobian’s themes was considered too difficult to even
perform.
It's worth nothing that at the moment this recording came out, in
1949, De Caro was about to return to recording after an absence
of almost six years; in fact, he entered the studio just four days
later. Troilo’s arrangement was thus more than a tribute to a great
figure of the past: it was an active support to De Caro. After a
long introduction, the arrangement - which comes in at four min­
utes long - breaks into Μ α ία ju n ta , but it actually covers seven
tangos in all. The others are: B u e n a m ig o , M ala p in to , G uardia
vieja, B o e d o , T ierra q u e iid a , and E l m o n ito .

188 La v ia jera p e r d id a 20.10.1949

( T h e l o s t tra v e ller )
vocal: Edmundo Rivero
words: Hector Pedro Blomberg
music: Enrique Maciel
Like many numbers from the same song writing team, this had
been a hit for the well-known Argentine folklore singer Ignacio
Corsini back in the early 1930s. Ismael Spitalnik’s arrangement,
with an exquisite violin solo in the hands of David Diaz, is consid­
ered a model of good orchestration: modern, but still within the
tango tradition, displaying great taste. Rivero is his usual magiste­
rial self. The tango is taken at a slow piece and with its intense
colour is at the border of what can be danced; Pve never heard it
at the milonga.
190 Τύ
(Y ou)
vocal: Edmundo Rivero
words: Jose Maria Contursi
music: Jose Dames
This song is effectively in the G n ce l cycle of love songs written
by Contursi for the love of his life Susana Gricel Vigano (see
chapter 14). It’s now almost ten years since Contursi and Gricel
last met, and the protagonist seems more at peace. The lyric is a
tender giving of thanks for a love that has dispelled the dark shad­
ows of yesterday, and there’s no hint that this is a lost love.
There is a delightful moment in the chorus as the orchestra imitate
the delicate sound of crystal glass, referred to in the lyric as the
sound of his lost lover.
 25
Chau, Rivero
( 1950)

In 1950, Rivero left Troilo to plough his own furrow as a soloist. It

was the m ost am icable o f departures. R ivero’s farewell perform ance
took place on a live radio perform ance on 4th April, 195086. A t a
certain m om ent, Troilo took the m icrophone and bid Rivero fare­
well:

After three years o f work together, after m any hours o f rehearsal a n d

shared effort,

Edmundo Rivero, deep voice o f tango, leaves ou r orchestra seeking, as

is the law o f life, his ow n nest on his ow n branch.

And in reality, h e ’s not really g o in g aw ay

For a true separation, there has to be a rupture: som e rancour or bit­

terness. In this case, Rivero leaves as h e arrived: a frien d . Loyal...
a retirin g man in private, brotherly in the concentration expression
o f his fe w words

His adventures w ill fo r ev er be recorded in ou r m em ory;

His trium phs w ill fi n d a happy echo in ou r expectations

Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p87

 His voice, his creole voice, his sober voice, his dramatic voice, will
resonate as i f he were still in this orchestra singing his songs
Therefore, in my name, and in the name o f all the lads in the or­
chestra, who are his companions, I embrace you and I simply say:
good luck, gaucho 87.
They then performed S ilen cio (silence), a song that allows the
singer’s voice to be fully displayed. It was a great hit for Gardel, and
also a hit for Troilo and Rivero. The arrangement was not intended
for dancing, and they often used it to close a performance. Although
they didn’t record it commercially88, the radio broadcast was re­
corded on a transcription disc. You can listen to it on YouTube, and
I don’t need to tell you that it was, is, a very fine performance.
Whether intended or not, everyone listening must have been think­
ing: the sound of Rivero with Troilo will now fall silent forever.

87 Gaucho was Troilo's personal nickname for Rivero

88 A list of Rivero's unrecorded themes with Troilo includes 'Puente Alslna,
recorded by Vidal with Pugliese in 1949. One can easily imagine It with Troilo-
Rivero - it must have been wonderful.
 26
The 1 9 5 0 s

19.SU was a vcar rhat saw dramatic shifts in the tango scene and in
the Troilo orchestra, with t\u) big changes happening together.

Astor Piazzolla became ihe orchestra’s principal arranger and this

time l milo gave him tar more freedom to alter the style ot the mu
mc . People were beginning to dance less, and tango was becoming as
much for listening as tor dancing, \tter \ears ot rejection b\ the
tango establishment, Piazzolla’s innovations were now welcome.

I cjualb contentious was the change ot record label. 1 roilo lett R( .\-
\ ictor, leaving a number ot recordings unpublished. 1 his was in the
Pen mist era, a time of \rgentine nationalism, and resentment w as
building up against the two main record companies, ΓΜΙ Odeon
and R( Λ -Victor, both of which were foreign owned With the d e ­
cline in tango as a dance cra/e, these companies were being less
active in promoting tango music and were importing music trom
abroad - not just rock and roll from the Tinted Nates, but other
international music from Mexico and from I urope. \nd, of course,
this was a question of monev Peron had introduced union rates tor
even thing. I*his had seemed like a good idea, but it backfired, be­
cause it meant that importing music from abroad was becoming
cheaper than recording it locallv. Possiblv this was one o f the rea­
sons behind the breakup o f Di Sarli's orchestra in 1949.
Against this background, two new local companies sprang up: Music
Hall, and the one that concerns us: TK. This label immediately
signed Troilo, Salgan, and the new orchestra of violinist Raul Kaplun,
with Di Sarli emerging from retirement and signing with them the
following year.
TK later went bust and very little is known about them. No-one
even knows what the letters TK stand for. It’s rumoured that TK
actually stands for Troilo Kaplun; that these two men were the driv­
ing force behind the creation of the new label, and that Troilo pro­
vided some seed capital; and that other artists joined because they
knew Troilo was involved; but no-one seems to know, and those
that might appear not to wish to speak about it - possibly because
the enterprise ended in failure.
TK now had to produce records without any of the experience in
recording and manufacturing enjoyed by their foreign competition.
Moreover, what about the materials? Records were still being made
from shellac, a naturally occurring product that had to be imported
from India. TK managed to secure supplies, but of a lower quality7.
The coarser shellac they obtained meant that the records were nois­
ier because during playback the needle literally bumps along the
bottom of the groove, which was never perfectly flat, and was now
rougher than it was before.
The first results were so poor that Troilo’s first record on TK had
no sooner come out than it was withdrawn. And it was not just the
finished records that were poor; the masters were poor as well. TK
was discovering that producing records was a highly sophisticated
operation in which experience counted for a great deal.
The new company worked hard to improve all aspects of their re­
cording and manufacturing operations. A priority was to develop the
new vinyl material to the point at which it could be used instead of
shellac, but this only increased the amount of research they needed
to do. RCA had launched vinyl in America in 1949 after developing
the material for more than a decade. TKs effort? meant that their
quality was continuously improving, but they never reached the level
of RCA-Victor. Troilo himself left TK for Odeon in 1957, and they
went bankrupt in 1963.
TKs earliest recordings were the poorest technically, so the re­
cordings most affected include those with Raul Beron, who joined
Troilo on 1st February 1951. This is really a pity, because these are
among the best of Troilo’s 1950s recordings.

When TK went bust, the rights to their catalogue were acquired by a

chain of companies but eventually fell into a legal limbo. This is why
there have been so few reissues, with the more scrupulous compa­
nies waiting for the 50 year copyright rule on Troilo’s TK recordings
(1950-56) to expire in 2006 before re-printing them not from the
masters, but from 78s. Rumour says that the masters exist; but who
owns them? It’s not clear.

Turning now to the singers in this era, Troilo needed someone to

replace Edmundo Rivero and his choice was Jorge Casal, who had
made a name for himself singing in the orchestra of Florindo Sas-
sone. It’s said that Troilo poached Casal from Sassone —a common
enough story - and that Sassone sued Casal for breach of contract.
Howrever Casal contradicts this story in an interview. According to
his own testimony, he received many offers to sing with other or­
chestras, the first of which came from Pedro Laurenz just three days
after he began singing with Sassone in 1946. Other offers came from
Calo, Di Sarli and finally Troilo. Flowever, he turned them all down
as a matter of honour - this despite the fact that Casal found Sas­
sone quite unpleasant.

Casal says: “I went to see Troilo personally in his apartment and told
him [that I had to decline]. Fie replied: Ί congratulate you, son; not
many would do what you have just done’ ”89. Flowever Casal and
Sassone finally separated by common consent in 1950, and he was
immediately signed by Troilo. Today we remember Casal for his

89
Casal interviewed by Nestor Pinsön:
http://www.eldiario.com.ar/extras/impresa/imprimir.php?id=100543 [accessed
24-06-2014]
1954 recording of La ca n tin a , but like Calderon, he does not cast
quite as much light as the great luminaries who preceded him.

His partner would be Raul Beron. For some these are Beron’s best
recordings, surpassing even those from his golden year with Calo in
1942; others feel that his voice is beginning to go, and that only the
poor technical quality of the recordings on TK prevents us from
noticing this. It’s a great shame that the technical quality of the re­
cordings is not better.

Beron’s tenure with the orchestra lasted for five years and ended,
like those of so many others, when he got the sack for a disciplinary
infringement: he turned up the volume on his microphone after
Troilo had asked for it to be turned down.90

The music meanwhile in this time is developing fast, away from the
vocal tango that had so dominated the 1940s. Having worked hard
to keep Piazzolla’s arrangements danceable in the early 1940s, Troilo
now championed his new musical ideas. He was also a great admirer
of the pianist Horacio Salgän, whom he jokingly called “the best
bandoneon player in Buenos Aires”. When he decided to record
Salgan’s A f u e g o le n t o , he actually went to Salgan and asked for his
charts (the written arrangements for all the instruments).

As you can see from the discography (see Appendix B), this was a
period when instrumental numbers had become more popular than
they had been in the 1940s, when nearly all the numbers had been
vocals. The instrumentals provide some of the finest performances
of the period. I am thinking in particular not just of R e s p o n s o ,
which we talk about in the next chapter, but also the 1950s versions
of Q u ejas d e b a n d o n e o n and especially O jos n e g r o s , which is the
same arrangement as the tender 1948 version but taken a bit quicker.
They have more energy than their 1940s counterparts.

90 Horacio Ferrer, El gran Troilo, p339

191 Para lu d rse 24.11.1950
(In order to shine)
music: Astor Piazzolla
Troilo’s first recording of the year is a Piazzolla composition, ar­
ranged by Piazzolla too, and with a typically provocative title: who is
meant to shine in this tango —the orchestra, or the composer?
The music is a rupture with what has come before. Jose Basso,
who had left Troilo in 1947, developed a reputation for making
danceable versions of Piazzolla numbers, but the same cannot
really be said of Troilo; the combination of his shading and Piaz-
zolla’s out-of-the-box thinking makes music that is beautiful and
interesting, but that is leaving the feet and heading up to the intel­
lect. Suddenly we are in a new world order.
It’s clear that this tango is the starting point for all of Piazzolla’s
1950s compositions, such as T nunfal and Lo que vendrar, Piaz­
zolla himself said exactly this in his memoirs91. In comparison to
these later works, Para lu d rse sounds unripe. I don’t like it.

195 Prepärense 21.03.1951

(G etting ready)
music: Astor Piazzolla
Now this is much more like it! Not over-complicated, strong
rhythms - one can even hear a premonition of Mariano Mores’
Tanguera in the string pizzicato when the theme returns at Γ57”.
When the theme returns for the final time at 3Ό7”, Piazzolla
scores it as a chamber work for cello, viola and the sweet violin of
David Diaz. It’s completely successful. Two months later, this
tango would even be recorded by Fresedo. With hindsight, one
wonders whether Piazzolla would not have been better off swap­
ping the titles of his first two compositions for Troilo: this tango
shines, but Para lu d rse displays an idea that is simply getting
readv.

Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez, Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, p47

 vocals: Jorge Casal
words: Catulo Castillo
music: Mariano Mores
This tango would go on to have a far greater repercussion than
anyone might have imagined. Taken from a film that opened in
August 1951, in 1953, author Catulo Castillo decided to turn it
into a musical comedy92. Troilo collaborated with him on some
additional songs {Patio m io , Una c a n c iö n , V uelve la seren a ta)
and played the role of the early bandoneon player and prolific
composer Eduardo Arolas.
The play opened on 24th April 1953 and was hugely successful,
running for two seasons with over 500 performances - very useful
professionally at a time when there were fewer opportunities for
dance orchestras than before. Astor Piazzolla directed the orches­
tra and wrote the arrangements.
As a final note: in 1954, the milonguero couple Rodolfo & Maria
Cieri were asked to perform in the show, but turned them down:
Rodolfo wasn’t interested in becoming a professional dancer.

92
This project took place in the Peronist era and was propelled by the govern­
ment, who insisted that Troilo was involved, despite the fact that Troilo had
suggested Mariano Mores, the composer of the music, as the more obvious
choice. There were 146 people in the company: 145 Peronists, and Troilo, who
was staunchly apolitical. Troilo said: "145 scrupulously wore the Peronist badge
on the lapel of their jacket. Not me. And no-one said a word I"
198 N .R (N oplace) 21.03.1951
(D idn’t place)
vocals: Radi Beron
words: Francisco Loiacono
music: Juan Jose Riverol
This is a tango about horse racing, one of the great loves of the
portenos\ Gardel and Canaro were frequent visitors to the track, to
name just two.
The lyric tells of a horse which always loses money for its owner
because it doesn’t place, i.e. doesn’t finish in one of the top posi­
tions, usually the first three. The tango inspires a lot of affection
amongst portenos\ it was also recorded by Fresedo, Salgan, Angel
Vargas and even D’Arienzo. To the modern public, for whom
going to the races is not a regular part of life, its appeal is rather
opaque.
 27
Responso
(19 5 1)

Hace veinte anos sefue la mitad de mi corazon

... mi hermano

Twenty years ago I lost half my heart

...my brother93

It takes a very special tango to get a chapter all to itself, but such is
the case for R e s p o n s o (Responsory - a funerary prayer), Troilo’s
favourite, or rather best-loved instrumental tango.

The simple but affecting story behind this tango is that it was
Troilo’s response to the early death of his close personal friend and
long time collaborator, the poet and lyricist Homero Manzi, the
author of great lyrics such as M alena, Sur, R o m a n ce d e b a rrio and
dozens more - a list on W ikipedia has eighty - as well as being the
man who in 1932 created the modern milonga alongside composer

93 Troilo interviewed on television in 1971, on the 20th anniversary of the death

of Homero Manzi
Sebastian Piana. His great theme was the poor urban barrio and its
inhabitants, whom he always depicted with sympathy and tenderness.

Manzi was an educated man who had worked as a professor of lit­

erature and Spanish, but he was expelled from his professorship for
political reasons. He said of his life at this time, “I have two roads
before me: hacerme hombre de letras, to make myself a man of letters, or
hacer letras p o r los hombres, to write lyrics, for men (Jetras is also the
Spanish word for lyrics). He chose the latter path.

Manzi was already quite weak from the cancer that killed him when
he finished the lyric of D iscepolin, his tribute to Enrique Discepolo;
he dictated the lyric to Troilo over the telephone. He passed away on
3rd May 1951. In the event, D iscepolin and Responso were re­
corded on the same day (29th May 1951) and published on the two
faces of a single record. Discepolo himself passed away the same
year on Christmas Eve after suffering a massive stroke.

Responso ca m e ou t on e n ight w hen w e w ere a t hom e; som e p eop le

w ere there p la yin g baccarat a n d I, I don't know... I didn Vf e e l that
I was there. It was fo u r in the m orning, a n d suddenly I g o t up,
w en t to m y room a n d began to p la y a fe w notes, a n d like this even ­
tually Responso cam e out. I think it's th e best tn b u te that w e can
pay to Homero.

Responso aroused strong and painful emotions in Pichuco94 and,

once he had recorded it, he preferred not to perform it. In an inter­
view given in September 1956 he said that he had not been able to
play it for over a year.95

94 Pichuco was one of Troilo's nicknames; see Chapter 34 for an explanation of

how he got it. His other nickname was 'Gordo' - 'Fats'.
95 http://www.magicasruinas.com.ar/revistero/argentina/tango-anibal-
troilo.htm [accessed 25-06-2014]
 vocals: Raid Beron
words and music: Homero Stamponi
This vals, recorded by both Troilo and Di Sarli in 1951 (and by
Salgan in 1953), has one of the most beautiful and important lyrics
in the whole tango canon. The lyric represents an important evolu­
tion in what the tango poets had to say about love, as it is a plea
that a new relationship should be not just an affair (“the same old
story”), but something lasting.
Beron’s wistful, romantic tone is just right for this vals, and for me
this is their most successful interpretation together.
Confusingly, Hector Stamponi also contributed to a tango with the
same title in 1940. Despite an illustrious parentage - Homero
Exposito wrote the lyric, and Enrique Francini collaborated on the
music with Stamponi - this tango disappeared without a trace.

207 T a n gu a n go ( n e w r h y th m ) 30.07.1951
music: Astor Piazzolla
In 1951 Troilo went on tour to Brazil where he opened at the
Night & Day club in Rio de Janeiro. This new rhythm of Piaz-
zolla’s was a big hit. The piece opens with drums (a borrowing
from the African influenced candombe96). We expect them to stop -
drums are never used in tango, just very occasionally in milonga -
but instead they take more space, developing into layers. Their
insistent rhythm is supported by all the instruments as they enter
in turn: Kicho Diaz’s double bass, then the piano, then even the
violins and the bandoneons. It’s exciting and innovative, and the
piece maintains a high level of energy through to the finish.
Tempting as it is to think that Piazzolla composed the piece spe­
cifically for the trip to Brazil, it seems unlikely: the piece was re-

96 Candombe was a style of music and dance that developed in the 19th century
amongst African slave communities in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
 corded in July, and the tour did not take place until November97.
The piece was not so well received at home. Troilo had to remove
it from his set list when a fight broke out between pro- and anti-
Piazzolla fans at a dance98.
A final tale: Piazzolla sold the rights to this tango twice, to two
different publishers, destroying his relationship with the publisher
Alfredo Perrotti, who had been one of his few personal friends.
Perrotti was in debt, and had borrowed the advance from the bank.99

245 C o n tr a b a je a n d o 28.02.1954
music: Astor Piazzolla/Anibal Troilo
This tango is a homage to the double bass (contrabajo) in general
and to Kicho Diaz in particular. The tango opens with the theme
being played solo by the double bass, and it features as a solo
instrument throughout the piece. To add power to the bass parts
elsewhere in the tango, a second double bass was added for the
recording (Rafael Ferro). When Piazzolla recorded it himself in
1961 - again with Kicho Diaz on double bass - it was in a new
arrangement by the cellist Jose Bragato.

249 La ca n tin a 29.04.1954

( T h e ta v er n )
vocals: Jorge Casal
words: Catulo Castillo
music: Anibal Troilo
This charming tango is one of Troilo’s best recordings from the
1950s. It evokes a tavern by the Riachuelo river, i.e. in the district
of La Boca, a poor part of town populated by Italian immigrants.
One of them plays the accordion, making everyone nostalgic. The

97
2nd November - 20th December: see Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p93
98
Maria Susana Azzi & Simon Collier, Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of
Astor Piazzoiia, p47
99 ibid p48
 protagonist remembers a girl {golondrina,, a swallow)100 who seems
to have returned home, leaving him with only the memory of a
salty kiss.
Note the change in the style of the interpretation: Casal enters
after only half a minute, not a minute, and sings both verses.

100Golondhna, swallow, was also a nickname given to the Italian migrant work­
ers who planned to come to Argentina for one season, earn some money, and
then return home. As we know, most never returned.
 28
The Troilo-Grela
Quartet
(1953)

In the 1953 m usical p lav 101102“ l ;.l patio de la m orocha”, R oberto G rela
plaved guitar alongside Troilo. They had one solo num ber together:
La c a c h ila . On the opening night, their rendition was so w ell re­
ceived that they were forced to repeat it. TK im m ediately suggested
they record it, and thus the Ί ro ilo -(irela quartet was born. They
recorded a dozen num bers betw een 1953 and 1955, and another ten
in 1962.

The first period was the best one for the quartet. They perform ed
together tor a tim e, som etim es even with a singer, although none ot
these tracks were ever recorded - Troilo had invited 1 iorentino tor a
recording session, but it was not to b e 1"2.

In 1954 Troilo announced on the radio that the quartet would be

visiting Jap an , but the trip never took place. Grela never found out
what happened.

Listening to the recordings toda\, two things com e across. Fürst o f

all there is the freshness o f the playing. At a rime when the w ork o f

101 In Argentina these plays were called sainetes. These were comic plays or
farces, originally written in one act.
102 See above, chapter 17
the full orchestra had come to rely on arrangements, these numbers
are performed in the old style, a laparilla, i.e. without a formal writ­
ten arrangement. The valses P a lom ita b la n ca and Un p l a c e r ;
which (being valses) naturally have a lighter feel, are simply delightful.

Secondly, in this more intimate setting and with only four musicians,
it’s much easier to hear the quality of sound that Troilo produces on
the bandoneon than it is when he plays with his orchestra. Troilo
didn’t like playing α cappella, (unaccompanied), but here we get close.
In particular, he often deploys a delicate and trembling vibrato which
we can hear and enjoy very clearly in these performances.
 29
La liltima curda
1956

One evening in the sum m er o f 1956, T roilo asked Ldm undo

Rivero - no longer a singer in his orchestra, but a soloist - to com e
to his apartm ent on Calle Parana because he had finished the music
for a new tango: C atulo C astillo ’s La U ltima c u r d a . R ivero w ent
over w ith his wife Julieta. O ver a couple o f w hiskies, Troilo and
Rivero got dow n to rehearsing.

The night was hot and still. The doors to the balconx w ere open, but
the only thing really cooling the men down was the ice in their
drinks. Rivero recalls that “ Pichuco sat by the balcom w ith his ban-
doneon and 1 sang next to him .” A fter a couple o f hours, well
into the sm all hours o f the m orning, the tango w as ready. Singing it
through, the two men w ere astonished w hen their rehearsal was
greeted with cheering and loud applause from the street below. G o­
ing out onto the balcony, they looked down and saw' a crowd ot
perhaps a hundred people on the pavem ent. The apartm ent was just
opposite the C hantecler C abaret, and people com ing out at closing
time had heard the music and stopped to listen. Troilo and Rivero
were forced to make a proper perform ance, in effect the unofficial 103

103 Luis Alposta, Todo Rivero, 2nd ed, p53

premier of the tango, from the balcony to the crowd below, who
stood in the street to get the best possible view, blocking the traffic.

Later that year, Troilo brought Rivero back into the studio to record
this tango, with a newr recording of S ur on the other side of the
record.

263 La Ultima cu rd a 08.08.1956

(T h e ß n a l b in g e )
vocals: Edmundo Rivero
words: Cätulo Castillo
music: Anibal Troilo
An unremitting look in to the abyss, Catulo Castillo’s lyric portrays
a man preparing to binge not just on alcohol, but on his most
bitter feelings. The lyric has stayed in the public mind ever since.
The contemporary tango band Bajofondo sampled one of
Goyeneche’s recordings (I think his final one, in 1993) for the
track M i co ra z o n on their first album, and the name of their
group comes from this tango as well. Troilo would have been
horrified by Bajofondo’s innovations: he hated the idea of hard
beats, brass instruments, or even amplification, because for him
tango must always convey tenderness.
Argentino Galvan’s arrangement is a masterpiece, conveying a
sense of drama, tension and impending doom from the opening
notes. Goyencche recorded the tango with Troilo in 1963 but the
original recording with Rivero is my favourite version by far.
The lyric has left many phrases embedded in the language of
tango. Of these, the most widespread, something I had heard long
before I came across this song, is this: la lida es una herida absurda —
life is an absurd wound. Castillo’s unforgettable image of drunkenness
is just as arresting: corriendole un telon al common - drawing a curtain
across the heart. Truly a stunning tango.
 Lastima, bandoneon,
mi coravpn
tu ronca maldicion maleva. ..
Tu lagrima de ron me Hem
hacia el hondo bajo fondo
donde el barro se subleva.
jYa se, no me digas! jTenes ra^on!
La vida es una berida absurda,
y es todo todo tan fu ga^
que es una curda, jnada mas!
mi confesion.
Contame tu condena,
decime tu fracaso,
ino ves lapena
que me ha kendo?
Y hablame simplemente
de aquel amor ausente
tras un reta^o del olvido.
jYa se que te lastima!
jYo se que me hace dado
Uorarte mi sermon de vino!
Pero es el viejo amor
que tiembla, bandoneon,
buscando en el licor que aturde,
la curda que al final
termine la funcion
corriendole un telon al common.
Un poco de recuerdo y sinsabor
gotea tu reyongo lerdo.
Marea tu licory arrea
la tropilla de la %urda
al volcar la ultima curda.
Cerrame el vcntanal
que quema el sol
Bandoneon,
It hurts my heart,
your wicked, growling curse...
your tear o f rum
is dragging me down to the bottom
where the mud is rising up.
I know, don't tell me! You 're right!
IJfe is an absurd wound,
eveiything is so fleeting
that, I confess, it's nothing more
than a binge.
Tell mey o u r sentence
tell meyourfailure
don't you see the sorrow which has
wounded me?
A nd talk to me plainly
o f that absent love
over a cup o f forgetfulness.
I know it hurtsy o u !
I know I harm m yself
crying my sermon o f wine!
But it's that old love
which shim s, bandoneon, and seeks, in
the liquor thatfuddles the brain,
the drunkenness thatfinally
ends the show,
drawing a curtain across the heart.
Your hopeless grumbling drips
with memory and disgust.
Your liquor intoxicates
and disturbs the heart
to pour out the fin a l binge.
Close the window fo r me,
the sun bums
 su lento caracol de sueno, it's snail's pace o f sleep,
ino ves que vengo de unpats can'tyou see, I am from the ever grey
que estä de olvido, siempregris, land o f forgetfulness, always after a
tras el alcohol... ? drink...?
The text given above is not the published lyric, but what Rivero
sings in the recording. Rivero had made a couple of changes in the
lyric of Sut; but here he makes half a dozen. This is exceptional
for a tango singer.
Vocabulary: “s^urda” means the left hand or foot, but here is an
allusion to the heart (which is more on the left side of the body).
With “arrear”, to harness, and “la tropilla", the team, the lyric re­
fers to horses and then to horse racing; we expect it to go on to
say, “al ivicar la ultima curia", rounding the final curve, but Castillo
cleverly switches it back to “la ultima curdai" .104

104 Bias Matamoro in La Opinidm 21-10-1975, quoted in an article on the lyric at

http://www.nuevociclo.com.ar/100decatulocastillo.htm
 30
Roberto Goyeneche
1936

The departure o f vocalist Raul Beron from T ro ilo ’s orchestra was

unfortunate but it created the vacancy w hich w ould eventually be
filled by Roberto G oyeneche (1 9 2 6 -1 9 9 4 ), the greatest tango singer
o f the 1960s and 1970s. W ith his sandpaper)· voice and unusual
deliver) , he was a great teller o f stories, in w hich sense he is effec­
tively the successor in the orchestra to Kdm undo R ivero. Like
Rivero, he cam e to Troilo from the orchestra o f H oracio Salgan.
W hilst T roilo had been unafraid to incorporate “ LI feo” (“The ugly”)
R ivero in his orchestra, he had doubts about G o yen ech e’s appear­
ance: “ H ow am I going to put a singer in my orchestra w ho looks
like a cow boy?”

O f his style, G oyeneche said: “ I always rem em ber w hat Troilo told
me: one must tell it to the public, not sing it, because the orchestra is
in charge o f singing” . This may well have been advice Troilo gave to
all his singers, but G oyeneche seem s to have taken it to heart more
than anyone. W ith Troilo, his style progressivel) reveals itself.

For the m odern listener, G oyeneche’s style m itigates the fact that the
dance era has now com e to a close. As a singer o f music for dancing,
he cannot com pete w ith Fiorenrino, or with the other singers from
the 1940s, because he was sim ply never given the opportunity. H ow-
ever, his unique phrasing and delivery make his performances pleas­
urable to listen to in their own right. In 1962, his rendition of
Fiorentino’s hit Gania was so embraced by the public that the tango
became identified with him.

Goyeneche left Troilo after 7 years in 1963, gendy pushed from the
nest into a solo career with these words: “Well, Polaco, it’s time to
go ... to gain the popularity and the money that I can’t give you. But
don’t worry: we’ll get back together some day”. And that’s exacdy
how things turned out: Goyeneche returned to record the LP
“Nuestro Buenos Aires” in 1968, and then again in 1971 to record
Troilo’s final LP, “Te acordas, Polaco?” (“Do you remember, Po­
laco”, a pun on the tango Te acordds, hermano - do you remember;
brotherή, in which the two men record some of Troilo’s old hits with
other singers, in effect reliving Pichuco’s glory days.

Goyeneche continued singing until very shordy before his death in

1994. Although his voice declined, he retained his pitch and the
passing of the years only added to the emodonal depth of his per­
formances. At the time of his death he was the greatest living singer
in Buenos Aires, and his passing left a void in the life of tango and
of the city that has not been filled.
 316 E l tn o t iv o ( P o b r e p a ic a ) 18.08.61
( T h e r e a s o n - ( P o o r g i r l) )
vocals: Roberto Goyeneche
words: Pascual Contursi
music: Juan Carlos Cobian
Cobian wrote the tango E l m o t iv o as an instrumental in 1914,
only later (in 1919) asking Pascual Contursi to add a lyric so that
they could offer the work to Gardel. The new work was tided
P o b r e p a ic a and achieved widespread popularity.
Cobian later asked his trusted friend Hnrique Cadicamo to write a
new lyric. !Tie name of the new tango was changed back to E l
m o tiv o . Sheet music from the time shows that Troilo, who had
been performing the original version with Fiorentino105, adopted
the new version106; this was likely to have been in 1943, after Co­
bian returned from his disastrous second voyage to North Amer­
ica. However, as soon as the new lyric was published, Jose Maria
Contursi - the son of Pascual Contursi —approached Cobian and
asked for it to be withdrawn107. Cobian consented, and Troilo
reverted to the original lyric. When Cobian finally recorded the
tango himself in 1944, he did so as an instrumental. As far as I
know, there are no recorded versions of Cadicamo’s lyric.
Troilo only finally recorded this tango in 1961, with the voice of
Roberto Goyeneche. The arrangement is superb. In the opening,
the melody is given only to the violins, whilst the bandoneons play
a repeated riff underneath, adding interest and tension. Goyeneche
is as good as ever, but for a dance audience it feels too slow, and
it’s not really intended for dancing. The band then changes down a

105 In a radio transcription of Troilo-Fiorentino from 1941, Fiorentino can be

heard singing Contursi's original lyric.
106 The cover says: "Another of the hits of the repertoire of the great orchestra
of Anibal Troilo. Recorded on Discos Odeon by the orchestra of Julio De Caro".
De Caro's versiön, an instrumental, was recorded on 28-10-1942.
107 Oscar del Priore & Irene Amuchästegui, den Tangos fundamentales, 2nd ed,
pp60-63
 gear for Goyeneche’s entrance at 0*33”. With this slower pace, the
short spoken part of the lyric at Γ44” loses energy because the
orchestra is no longer driving hard underneath.
Having said all this, this slower delivery works perfecdy in the
more intimate setting of Troilo’s quartet. We have video of them
performing this with Goyeneche on TV from around the same
time. The video allows one to appreciate Goyeneche’s strong stage
presence, and they bring the house down.
In my fantasy world, we teleport the 1961 orchestra arrangement
back in time to 1946, and Troilo records it with Marino. Oh, and
we have the Troilo-Fiorendno 1941 version on disc as well.
This lyric was the first to present the archetype of the milonguera or
more commonly milonguita as the fallen woman: the pretty girl who
abandons an upright life for the dubious demi-monde of the
milonga, and ends up poor and abandoned, in a state of physical
and moral decay108·

108 see for instance Dulce Maria Dalbosco, La construccidn simbdlica del arque-
tipo de la milonguera en las letras del tango, Revista de mitocritica 'Amaltea'
ISSN 1989-1709, vol.2 (2010) p32.
 31
Troilo for Export
1963

In 1963, the executives at RCA, w ith an eye for the export m arket,
decided to record some tango album s in the new stereo form at. The
artists chosen w ere Ju an D ’A rienzo, w ho w ould eventually record
four such album s, and T roilo, w ho w ould record three. The album s
were titled “ ... for E xport”, and with this in m ind only instrum ental
num bers were recorded.

T roilo’s first export album , “T roilo for E xport”, with twelve tangos,
was issued in the U nited States as “ H aunting! The A uthentic A rgen­
tine T ango” by “Troilo and his O rchestra Yipicd'. RCx\ w ere o f
course onlv really interested in selling records, and the front cover
sports a couple in the style o f R udo lf V alentino and partner, whilst
the blurb on the back tries to explain that this is “The true argentine
tango - different and fascinating” .

Em not sure how successful these album s were in opening up the

export m arket, but they w ere very successful in Argentina and have
been in-print more or less continually ever since - quite an achieve­
ment.

RCA had scaled back their operations in A rgentina and had sold
their old studios, so for the recordings they had to rent the studios
of CBS. From the paperwork this generated, we know that the ses­
sions occupied fourteen hours of studio time over four days in April
1963.

These were glossy instrumental performances, mostly old hits in new

arrangements with four new numbers. The sound fidelity is fantastic,
and I am surprised to say that stereo really does add something to
the performances. For the recordings, four extra violins (including
Fernando Suarez Paz)109 and a second viola were added, giving the
whole thing a symphonic air. Troilo didn’t play on the album: he
directed the orchestra and the lead bandoneon part was taken by
Ernesto Baffa. This was a time when Buenos Aires is no longer
dancing tango very much, so perhaps it should not surprise us that
the whole thing just fails to catch fire.

343 La cu m p a rsita April 1963

arrangement: Armando Pontier
Troilo’s 1943 recording of La cu m p a rsita had been a classic;
what would he do with the piece 20 years later? The new arrange­
ment incorporates a quotation from Filiberto’s tango E l
p a ß u e lito , an idea borrowed from Julio De Caro’s epic four and a
half minute recording on the Brunswick label in 1932. When it
comes, however, the elaborate interpretation of Berlingieri on the
piano makes for an extreme contrast with the distilled simplicity of
Troilo’s bandoneon. I find it dissonant and jarring, and a sign that
after more than 25 years of musical development, the band is now
in decline.

Federico Silva, Informe sobre Troilo, p93

 32
Nocturno a mi barrio
(1 9 6 8 )

Gordo... Gordo...
stay here... stay here...

Pichuco w rote his poem N o c tu r n o a m i b a r rio as early as 1956, at a

time w hen he was recuperating in a clinic from the excesses o f the
bohem ian nightlife that was finally catching up w ith even his strong
constitution.

It was intended that the actor Santiago Arrieta w ould speak this lyric,
accom panied bv Troilo and his orchestra, but the planned p erfo rm ­
ance was never developed and the w ork rem ained forgotten until the
recording sessions o f T roilo ’s quartet in 1968.

Like many bandoneon players, Troilo had developed arthritis in his

hands and it was becom ing difficult for him to play. G uitarist
L baldo Dc Lio cam e up with the idea o f recording this poem .
T roilo’s reply was: Take out your guitar and give me something in D minor
O ver the course o f a couple o f nights, the w ork was done.
The recording session was something special. Aquiles Giacometti,
artistic director of RCA-Victor at the time, remembers: There was an
atmosphere o f bated breath, charged with emotion, as if one knew that something
very important was about to happen.110

To understand this poem, ‘Nocturne to my barrio’, one has to un­

derstand what it meant to be a porteno in the 20th century. For the
immigrant, the extended family and the land of one’s birth were far
away, beyond reach. The barrio was everything. It provided a place to
belong, and most importantly, friends. Without the extended family
of the country of one’s ancestors, and without any kind of social
security, friends were all one had.

Troilo had lost his father when he was very young, leaving him “with
the pain of not remembering his voice”. All his life he had set great
store by his friendships, but one by one, all the people he loved had
died. The childhood friends of his barrio that he recalls in this poem,
the lyricist Homero Mansi, his mother - they were all gone. This
ever increasing and enveloping loss explains the atmosphere of in­
tense feeling that pervades this poem.

110 Reported by Jos6 Maria Otero on his blog,

http://tangosalbardo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nocturno-mi-barrio.html [ac­
cessed 04-06-2014]
 Mi barrio era as/,
as/...as/... ast.
Es decir,
que se'yo si era ast.
Pew j o me lo acuerdo ast:
con Yacumin, el carbuna
de la esqutna,
que tenia las homallas llenas de hollin
j quejugo siempre deja s i^guierdo
al lado mio, siempre, siempre...
tal ve^pa ' estar mas cerca de mi cora^on
Alguien dijo una re%
quej o me fu i de mi barrio.
Cudndo?... Pero cudndo?...
si siempre estoj llegando.
Y si una ve% me oltide,
las estrellas de la esqutna
de la casa de mi vieja,
titilando como si fueran manos amigas
me dijeron: Gordo... Gordo...
quedate aqui... quedate aqui.
111 Jaz izquierdo, left half, refers to a position in a football team - Troilo had
loved playing football as a boy.
M j barrio was like this,
like this, like this, like this...
That's to say, what do I know
i f it was reallj like that.
But that's how I remember it,
With Yacumin, the coalman from
the comer,
with his stoves fu ll o f soot,
and who always played left h a lf111
by my side, always, always...
perhaps to be closer to my heart
Once someone said to me
that I would leave my barrio
When? But when?
when 1 am always arriving.
A nd i f l should everforget,
then the stars above the comer
o f my mother's house,
twinkling like friendly hands,
would say: Gordo... Gordo...
stay here... stay here...
 Anibal Troilo in 10
tangos

We have followed Troilo and his Orchestra on their journey through

different times, musicians, singers and style. With 485 recordings
spanning more than 30 years, and barely a bad number amongst
diem as well as a number o f changes in style, navigating Troilo’s
repertoire can be a daundng task. The following list o f ten tangos is
intended to help you follow the development o f his music.

Tliis is not a list of my favourite Troilo tangos; it is more like a set of

stepping stones. Mosdy they are representadve o f his developing
style. Two - R e c u e r d o s d e b o h em ia and the final track, N o ctu m o
a m i barrio - are not typical, but are included because they reveal
another aspect to Troilo’s art.

• 1938: C o m m e ilfa u t
• 1941 \ Yo s o y e l ta n g o (Fiorentino)
• 1942: M alen a (Fiorendno)
• 1943: F a rolito d e p a p e l (Marino)
• 1946: R e c u e r d o s d e b o h em ia
• 1948: Sur (Rivero)
• 1951: R e s p o n s o
• 1954: La ca n tin a (Casal)
• 1956: La illtim a cu rd a (Rivero)
• 1968: N o ctu m o a m i b a rrio (Troilo)
 Part 3

The man
&
the myth
 34
Pichuco:
a short biography

Birth and early life

Anibal C arm elo Troilo, “P ichuco”, was born on 11th Ju ly 1914 to
Italian parents in the barrio o f A lm agro. He acquired his nicknam e
“Pichuco” as an infant. The w ord is likely a variant o f picduso , which
m eans cry-baby in the N eapolitan dialect. H is father w ould pick him
and say: “D o n ’t cry, p ic h u c o ...” .

He was the youngest o f three children. The first born was his
brother M arcos, w ho later played bandoneon in T ro ilo ’s orchestra.
Then cam e his sister C oncepcion, w ho died in infancy.

T roilo ’s father, a butcher, died w hen the young A nibal was just eight
years old. T roilo ’s m other opened a kiosk to support the family.
Troilo rem ained very close to her until her death in 1963.

Pichuco had few m em ories o f his father; one was o f him playing
G ardel records when he had a fever. Troilo later speculated that this
was perhaps w hen his love for tango song entered his being.

His first bandoneon

Troilo fell in love with the bandoneon at a very early age after hear­
ing it played in local cafes and in the park w here the fam ily w ent to
picnic at w eekends. The park was full o f fam ilies eating and m aking
music. On one such occasion, a Greek bandoneon player allowed
the young Anibal to hold his bandoneon in his lap. After this, Anibal
pretended that his pillow was a bandoneon, and nagged his mother
until she agreed to buy him one. The oft-told story7is that she went
to a nearby music shop on Calle Cordoba, run by a Russian, where
they had an instrument for $140 - a considerable sum. The family
could not afford it, and Troilo’s uncle negotiated that they would pay
in monthly instalments of $10. However after four months, the
Russian shut up shop and disappeared (his brother Marcos thinks he
died112), and no-one ever came for the rest of the money. The ban­
doneon thus cost only $40, and it stayed with Troilo for the rest of
his life.

Lessons
Troilo began lessons with one Juan Amendolaro, practising hard -
Marcos recalls that he even had the bandoneon on his knees during
meal times. After six months, Amendolaro announced that he had
nothing more to teach him. There are stories about some other
teachers; Troilo even had a few lessons with Pedro Maffia, one of
the leading players of the day, but they didn’t get on —Troilo found
Maffia too serious. From here on, Troilo was self-taught.

First performances
Troilo was just 11 when he played in public for the first time, at a
party put on at the local cinema, the Petit Colon. His performance
received an ovation and the owner of the cinema immediately of­
fered him a job. Still in short trousers, he then played for a couple of
weeks in a ladies orchestra at a cafe. In 1927 Troilo quit school to
play music full time. At 14 years of age, he briefly formed his own
quintet.

The thing to note about these early experiences is of course Troilo’s

age. Whilst he would only be 23 years old when he formed his or­
chestra in 1937, he would already have had 10 years experience as a

112 Federico Silva, Informe sobre Troilo, p24

professional musician. The combination of this experience with the
vigour of youth is a common story amongst tango musicians in
those days and surely a factor in the success that was to follow.

Journeyman

The next few years see Troilo as a journeyman musician, working in

many different formations in a musical scene that appears to have
been highly fluid. The list of people he played with reads like a
Who’s Who of tango: Elvino Vardaro, Julio De Caro, Alfredo Gobbi,
Ciriaco Ortiz, Juan Maglio, Luis Petrucelli. He was also used from
time to time by RCA-Victor as an extra musician on recordings. For
instance, he plays on one of D’Arienzo’s recordings in 1935: S ä b a d o
i n g l e s . Listening to these recordings is a fruitless exercise for those
trying to detect Troilo’s playing: he assimilates himself to the style of
the group.

Turning to the bands he played with in the first half of the 1930s, it’s
important not to get lost in the details. Troilo himself couldn’t re­
member the order with which he played with each group. We can
see that he experienced many different kinds of music. This was
important first of all for his own style as a player, which synthesized
the styles of the players he admired, but also for his developing vi­
sion of the music he wanted to make. Troilo placed himself at the
centre.

We can also see that, amongst the many musical encounters he has
in this period, there are a number which are pivotal in his future
development: Orlando Goni, Ciriaco Ortiz, but also the violinist
Alfredo Gobbi, who was highly esteemed by Troilo and, like Vard­
aro, did not achieve the success as a band leader that his music de­
served. Troilo refused to interpret the tango C h u z a s (composed by
Agustin Bardi113) because he felt that Gobbi’s rendition was perfect.

113 Troilo records a num ber called Chuias in 1956, but this is another piece - in
fact it's a milonga.
At the end of 1930 - only five years after picking up the bandoneon
for the first time, and still only 16 years of age - Troilo joined the
most advanced musical group of its day, the Vardaro —Pugliese
sextet. There he played alongside the violinist Alfredo Gobbi, whom
he always gready admired. The group has its debut at a cinema on
1st December 1930, but the music was too advanced for its day and
they were not very popular. In 1931 the first bandoneon player Mi­
guel Jurado was replaced by Ciriaco Ortiz, who would so influence
Troilo’s style. The sextet played for carnival dances in Februar)7 1931.
Once these were over, they disbanded, but Gobbi and Pugliese or­
ganised another sextet and Troilo went with them. After this, too,
broke up, Ortiz took Troilo into his new group “Los Provincianos”.

In 1933 Vardaro formed his now legendary sextet with Anibal Troilo
and Jorge Argentino Fernandez as the bandoneon players. The
group broke up without leaving any recordings except a test pressing
of T igre viejo. This is the first occasion when we can hear Troilo’s
emerging style, a mixture of Ciriaco Ortiz’s conversational phrasing
and Pedro Laurenz’s brilliant sound.

The next really significant step was Troilo’s return to the group of
Ciriaco Ortiz, now called the Orquesta Tipica Ciriaco Ortiz. Our
story in this book begins when that group disbanded, and Troilo
formed his own orchestra.

Zita

Troilo met his wife Zita for the first time in 1936. The first introduc­
tion did not impress Zita: Ay! No more fa t guys... but two years later,
she and her aunt walked into the Cafe Germinal, where Troilo was
playing, and the romance began. They spoke on the phone ever)7day
and after six months started living together. They remained a couple
for the rest of Troilo’s life.

Zita was many things to Troilo, not only a lover, but a confidante
and trusted friend. She understood Troilo very well, not just as a
person, but also musically. Zita recalls that, if Troilo could not sleep,
they would sit up together listening to the radio - perhaps scouting
for new talent, and we have already read how Zita accompanied
Troilo when they went to listen live to the singers Alberto Marino
and Edmundo Rivero. She had many affectionate nicknames for him
which recall his round face, and the way he would play with his eyes
half closed: Buddha, and The Japanese.

Films

Troilo appeared in eight films, the first as early as 1933. We of

course are interested to see him in action, and for this the interesting
films are Έ1 tango vuelve a Paris’ (1948), in which Alberto Castillo
sings with the orchestra, and V ida nocturna’ (1955), in which we
have the charming performance of La ca n tin a with Casal.

The 1972 conceit in the Colon

In August 1972, Troilo appeared alongside other artists at a gala
concert entided “Concierto de musica ciudadana” (“Concert of city
music”) at Buenos Aires’s prestigious Teatro Colon.

Troilo took the more subtle solos but the technically demanding
running variation in Q ue/as d e b a n d o n e o n was played by Do­
mingo Mattio (Raul Garello was absent because he was away in
Mexico114). There was no singer. Five other groups were present,
and they had roughly the same amount of time on stage. The TV
channel Canal 7 broadcast the concert live and it was recorded.

Troilo’s performance was the highlight of the evening and he re­

ceived a hero’s welcome, but like the other bands (except Salgan’s
which played seven), he played only five numbers. It was a wonder­
ful evening, but not really Troilo’s concert in the Colon.

114 Horacio Ferrer, El libro del tango pp480-481

Final days

Although his health had deteriorated in his final years, requiring

some breaks from performing, Troilo had returned to the stage in
April 1975, performing in a show at the Odeon theatre called simply:
‘Pichuco’. On Saturday 17th May, friends invited him out to dinner
after the performance, but he said he preferred to have a quiet night
at home with his wife Zita. The following morning he felt unwell
and asked Zita to call a doctor. He was taken to hospital, where that
night he suffered a brain aneurysm and he passed away shortly be­
fore midnight. The death certificate was signed just after midnight,
making the official date of his death 19th May 1975.

In the morning, the bright weather Buenos Aires had been enjoying
was replaced by grey skies, and a fine drizzle fell on the thousands
queuing to pay their last respects at the wake.

On the 1st July 1997, the 70th anniversary of Troilo’s debut at the
‘Marabu’, a tribute was held at the same venue, now called the ‘Ma­
racaibo’. Zita Troilo passed away that same day.
 35
If only they could
speak

In 2010, the musical director Juan Carlos Cuacchi got involved in a

project to revive the musical “HI patio de la morocha”, written by
Troilo in 1951. Remembering that Piazzolla had been involved in the
arrangements, he had an idea, and decided to find out if the ar­
rangements were still in existence.

Λ few phone calls later, someone opened a cupboard in the Troilo

family household to find an unimaginable treasure: not just the
original arrangements of the Troilo orchestra for “El patio de la
morocha”, but an archive of all the arrangements the band had writ­
ten out - four hundred and eight)’ nine of them.

At this point, Javier Cohen, who teaches tango at EM PA (Escuela de

Musica Popular de Avellaneda) was called in to create digital ver­
sions of these arrangements, so that they could be shared with others.
He started work around the beginning of 2011. The idea was to scan
the music into a computer and digitize it, but extensive manual cor­
rection was required. In the end it took him three years to complete
the work.

The original arrangements, now in individual plastic sleeves and

neatly filed in alphabetical order, have been rehoused in the office of
the Centenario Anibal Troilo, and I went to visit them in 2014.
These are not photocopies, or even manual copies, but the original
hand-written sheet music, the majority written - and sometimes
signed and dated —in the arranger’s own hand. These papers would
have been present at the first rehearsal of each new piece; they heard
the music play; they heard Troilo discussing the arrangement with
the arranger. If only they could speak!

Javier Cohen soon noticed that he could recognise the arranger from
the sty le of his handwriting - not what we normally mean by hand­
writing, because there are no words, but from the way of writing: the
way of forming a note on the staff, and also the kind of notes - their
quantity and density7, and so on.

I am allowed to open a packet and pull out an arrangement. It’s by

Piazzolla, and —wouldn’t you know it! What Piazzolla said about
Troilo erasing half his notes is really true, only this time it’s a blue
biro. Whole bars are scribbled out, and Troilo has written, with the
economy that characterises his music, “solo” or “canto” (‘sing’).
 36
Troilo on Troilo

On himself:

Yo no soy un buen m üsico; soy un buen tanguero

I am not a good musician: I am a good tanguero.

N unca p u ed o escribir m usica p o r escribir. Preciso una letra prim ero.

Una letra que m e guste. Entonces la mastico. La aprendo d e m emoria.
Todo el dia la tengo en la cabeza. Es com o si la fiiera en volvien do en
la musica. Es m uy im portante para m i lo que d ice la letra d e una
cancion.

I could never write music just for the sake of it. First I need a
lyric. A lyric which I like. Then I chew it. I learn it by heart. I
have it in my head the whole day long. It’s as if it were wrapping
itself in music. What a song’s lyric says is very important to me.

On tango

No hay tango viejo ni tango nuevo. El tango es uno solo. Tal vez la
ünica diferen cia estd en los que lo hacen bien y los que lo hacen mal.
There is no such thing as old tango and new tango. Tango is one.
Perhaps the only difference is between those that do it well, and
those that do it badly.
On life and the city

El sacrificio no estd nunca en renunciar a lo que uno es. El verdadero

sacrificio estd en seguir siendo lo que uno es.
Sacrifice does not consist in renouncing what one is. True sacri­
fice consists in continuing to be what one is.

El que no se acuerda de lo que ama, es porque no se acuerda de nada

He who doesn’t remember what he loves, remembers nothing

La calle es el m ejor lugar de todos. Se aprende. En el hogar se aprende

la educacion, pero en la calle se aprende a vivir... Ysi no m e lo digan
a ml. Todo lo que aprendi, lo p oco y extrano que aprendi, lo aprendi
en la calle.
The street is the best place of all. At home one gets an education,
but in the street one learns to live... Everything I’ve learnt, the
little and the strange that I have learnt, I learnt in the street

De Buenos Aires tendria que decir muchas cosas... Que es mi vida,

que es el tango, que es Gard e l que es la noche... Que es la m ujer, el
amigo... Tendria que decir muchas cosasy muchas no sabria como
decirlas... Pero anote esto: agradezco haber nacido en Buenos Aires.
I would have to say a lot about Buenos Aires... that it is my life,
that it is tango, that it is Gardel, that it is the night... That it is
the woman, the friend... I would have to say many things and
there are many I wouldn’t know how to say. But note this: I am
grateful to have been born in Buenos Aires.
Appendices
 Appendix A: Troilo on CD

In 1970, RCA-Victor reprinted all of their Troilo recordings on LP.

This was quite an undertaking: we are talking about all the 1940s
recordings (188), plus all those from the 1960s onwards (173), mak­
ing 361 recordings in total. In those days 12 tracks was standard for
an LP and the finished work spanned 26 LPs.

The original matrices (the true physical masters) had been destroyed
in 1960 and the transfers were probably taken from shellacs. These
were not in perfect condition, and RCA-Victor decided to try and
“improve” the sound.

The decisions about what to do would have come down to two men:
the sound engineer in charge of the transfer process, and the execu­
tive directing the project. Sometimes, the decisions they made were -
and I have to say this unequivocally - poor, and this is a lamentable
fact because we are still living with the consequences today.

Back then, the recording and printing of records was still performed
entirely in the analogue domain; the kind of sophisticated digital
technology that can be used today to clean up old recordings had not
been invented. The sound engineer decided to cover up the imper­
fections by adding reverberation and even echo to many of the
1940s tracks, marring the clear melodic line of the Troilo orchestra.
The high-energy 1941 recordings didn’t suffer so badly, but from
1942 onwards the effects are deleterious.

There were also more specific crimes, as it were. The worst of these
took place on the track C olora o , c o lo r a o (1942), in which Troilo’s
subde bandoneon solo suffered particularly badly from noise on the
78 rpm record they were using. This was too difficult to clean up, so
the sound engineer decided to simply chop out about 15 seconds of
this solo, reducing the piece from 2’50” to 2’35” (I can hear you
rushing to your music library). Meanwhile, P a ja ro c i e g o is missing
its opening chord, for no good reason whatsoever; and there is a
jump in the introduction of S om b ra s n a d a m a s (where the needle
has skipped from one groove in the record to the adjacent one), and
the same thing again on the vals U ruguaya.

As the tango revival gathered pace in the 1990s, RCA were keen to
release all their Troilo recordings on CD in this new digital age. The
first reissue was again a complete one, this time on 16 CDs released
between 1997 and 2000, entided Obra Completa en RCA-Victor’.
The series was prepared with some care, with sleeve notes by Oscar
del Priore including details of all the physical recordings (disc and,
where applicable, matrix numbers). However, the basis fo r this reissue
was the LJ* reissue from the 1970s, not the originals, and don’t let anyone
tell you otherwise. The proof? Just listen to the transfers of the
tracks we mendoned, such as C olorao, co lo ra o .

On the other hand, these CDs (and the LPs they were based on)
were the only versions of Troilo’s recordings that anyone had heard
since the 1940s (except in Japan where the Victor Company of Japan
were reissuing Troilo from 78s), so these problems went largely
unnodced. The first hint that anything was wrong came from the
small Bridsh label Harlequin, whose CD “Great Bands of Tango’s
Golden Age” slipped out quietly in 1997115. This had a transfer of
E n es ta ta rd e g n s from a shellac record. The record was not in
very good condidon, and the transfer is noisy, but Harlequin didn’t
perform any processing. Devoid of the trickery to which we have
become accustomed, the music sounds momentarily plain and na­
ked - a little more like other tango orchestras, in fact.

Back in Argentina, RCA’s parent company BMG discontinued

“Obra Completa”, but beginning in 2004 that series was superseded
by a new one, “Troilo en RCA Victor Argentina”. These have excel­
lent multimedia bonuses: song lyrics, photographs, and even some
original newspaper reports. However, the problem was once again
the sound. It is a little different to that on “Obra completa”, generat­

115 HQCD-89: Great Bands of Tango's Golden Age 1936-1940

ing reams of discussion and opinion amongst tango geeks outside
Argentina, but the differences are trivial because the basis was, once
again, the previous re-masters made for the LPs. The proof? Yes.
C olora o, c o lo r a o is still butchered, and P a ja ro c i e g o is still missing
its opening note.

Given the way that digital music has led to widespread copying of
music, it’s extremely unlikely that Sony-BMG will ever commit the
resources to preparing a new release, because it would not be profit­
able. However, you can hear many of the 1940s tracks without proc­
essing from TangoTunes, the digital music store. The results are not
always better than what is already available, but in many cases they
are.
 Appendix B: Discography

The discography includes an index number (1, 2, 3...), the recording

date (as best we know) and, where known, the name of the arranger.

Arrangers

AG: Argentino Galvan

AP: Astor Piazzolla
EB: Emilio Balcarce
HA: Hector Maria Artola
IS: Ismael Spitalnik
JP: Julian Plaza
HS: Horacio Salgan
only from 1955 onwards:
AC: Alberto Caracciolo
CG: Carlos Garcia
ER: Eduardo Rovira
OF: Oscar de la Fuente
RP: Roberto Pansera
only from 1967 onwards:
RG: Raul Garello
APo: Armando Ponder (Ponder arranged all the numbers on an LP
recorded at the end of 1968, also “co-directing” the orchestra.
This would be unusual to say the least, and it’s not clear
whether Troilo truly participated, or only lent his name).
 1 07.03.38 Com m e II faut
2 07.03.38 Tinta verde
3 04.03.41 Yo soy el tango Fiorentino
4 04.03.41 Mano brava HA Fiorentino milonga
5 04.03.41 Toda mi vlda Florentlno
6 04.03.41 Cachirulo HA
7 16.04.41 Con toda la voz que tengo Fiorentino milonga
8 16.04.41 Te aconsejo que me olvides Fiorentino
9 28.05.41 Tabem ero Fiorentino
10 28.05.41 Päjaro ciego Fiorentino -
Mandarino
11 17.06.41 El bulin de la calle Ayacucho Fiorentino
12 17.06.41 Milongueando en el 40
13 11.07.41 Guapeando HA
14 11.07.41 Una carta Fiorentino
15 18.07.41 En esta tarde gris Fiorentino
16 18.07.41 Cordon de oro
17 08.09.41 Total, pa' que sirvo Fiorentino
18 08.09.41 El cuarteador Fiorentino
19 09.10.41 Maragata Fiorentino
20 09.10.41 Tu diagnostico Fiorentino vals
21 09.10.41 Cautivo Fiorentino
22 23.10.41 Tinta roja Fiorentino
23 23.10.41 No le digas que la qulero Fiorentino
24 23.10.41 El tamango HA
25 21.11.41 Sencillo y compadre Fiorentino
26 21.11.41 Del tiempo guapo Fiorentino milonga
27 08.01.42 Malena HA Fiorentino
27/1 08.01.42 Malena HA Fiorentino
28 08.01.42 C.T.V.
29 16.04.42 Mi castigo HA Fiorentino
30 16.04.42 Papä Baltasar HA Fiorentino milonga
31 16.04.42 Pa' que ballen los muchachos HA Fiorentino
32 12.06.42 Fueye HA Fiorentino
33 12.06.42 Un placer vals
34 12.06.42 Colorao, colorao HA Fiorentino
35 15.06.42 Soy un muchacho de la guardia HA Fiorentino
36 15.06.42 Suerte loca HA Fiorentino
37 15.06.42 Los mareados HA Fiorentino
38 23.07.42 Acordändome de vos HA Fiorentino vals
39 23.07.42 La tablada HA
40 01.09.42 Lejos de Buenos Aires HA Fiorentino
41 01.09.42 El encopao HA Fiorentino
42 10.09.42 Pedadto de delo HA Fiorentino vals
43 18.09.42 Trlstezas de la calle Corrientes HA Fiorentino
44 18.09.42 No te apures carablanca HA Fiorentino
 45 09.10.42 Ficha de oro HA Florentlno milonga
46 09.10.42 La maleva HA
47 22.10.42 El chupete HA
48 22.10.42 De pura cepa HA milonga
49 30.10.42 Gricel HA Fiorentino
50 14.12.42 Barrio de tango HA Florentlno
51 14.12.42 Pa' que seguir HA Fiorentino
52 14.12.42 Por las caHes de la vida HA Florentlno
53 29.12.42 Buenos Aires HA Fiorentino
54 11.03.43 Corazon... no le hagas caso HA Florentlno
55 11.03.43 Margarita Gauthier HA Fiorentino
56 25.03.43 Perea 1 HA Florentlno
57 25.03.43 Valsecito amigo HA Fiorentino vals
58 05.04.43 Tango y copas HA Marino
59 05.04.43 Cada vez que me recuerdes HA Fiorentino
60 27.04.43 Cuando tallan los recuerdos Marino
61 27.04.43 Soy del 90 HA Fiorentino
62 03.05.43 Inspiration AP
63 03.05.43 Ropa blanca Marino milonga
64 03.05.43 Soy un porteno HA Florentlno milonga
65 02.06.43 De barro HA Fiorentino
66 02.06.43 Farolito de papel AP Marino
67 30.06.43 Uno AP Marino
68 04.08.43 Sonar y nada mas Fiorentino - vals
Marino
69 04.08.43 Tal vez sera su voz Marino
70 04.08.43 Gama HA Fiorentino
71 04.08.43 El distinguido ciudadano AP

In August 1943 Orlando Goni was dismissed by Troilo along with

Hugo Baralis.
 72 30.09.43 Cantando se van las penas Marino
73 30.09.43 Farol HA Florentino
74 20.10.43 Umguaya Fiorentlno - vals
Marino
75 20.10.43 Glme el viento HA Florentino
76 20.10.43 Pablo
77 05.11.43 El barrio del tambor Marino milonga
78 05.11.43 Sosiego en la noche HA Florentino
79 05.11.43 A bailar Fiorentino
80 05.11.43 La cumparsita AP
81 17.12.43 Orquestas de mi ciudad HA Fiorentino
82 17.12.43 La luz de un fösforo AP Marino
83 17.12.43 Cada dia te extrano mas HA Fiorentino
84 03.03.44 Despu£s Marino
85 03.03.44 Chique (El elegante) AP
86 03.03.44 Tabaco HA Fiorentino
87 03.03.44 El desafio HA Fiorentino - milonga
Marino
88 30.03.44 Tem blando HA Florentino vals
89 30.03.44 Bien porteno AP
90 30.03.44 Sombras... nada mäs Marino
91 11.04.44 Piropos AG
92 11.04.44 Tres amigos Marino
93 07.06.44 Siga el corso Marino
94 07.06.44 Crtstal Marino
95 27.06.44 Naipe Marino
96 27.06.44 La vi llegar AG Marino
97 27.06.44 El entrerriano AP
98 01.08.44 Rosa de tango Marino
99 01.08.44 Me estan sobrando las penas AG Marino
100 31.08.44 Alhucema Marino
101 31.08.44 Nada mäs que un corazon Marino
102 27.09.44 Con permiso! Marino milonga
103 27.09.44 Quejas de bandoneon AP
104 06.10.44 Torrente Marino
105 06.10.44 Marloneta AG Ruiz
106 23.11.44 Naranjo en flor AG Ruiz
107 23.11.44 Palomita blanca AG Marino-Ruiz vals
108 19.12.44 Copas, amlgas y besos AP Marino
109 19.12.44 Milonga en rojo Marino-Ruiz milonga
110 19.12.44 Caf0 de Los Angelitos HA Marino
111 19.12.44 Luna llena HA Ruiz
112 28.02.45 Garras HA Marino
113 28.02.45 Yuyo verde HA Ruiz
114 27.03.45 Equlpaje HA Ruiz
115 27.03.45 Ya estamos iguales Marino
116 27.03.45 La embrlaguez del tango HA Ruiz
(La borrachera del tango)
117 27.03.45 Me quede mirändola Marino
118 29.05.45 Fuegos artificlales HA
119 29.05.45 Juan Tango HA Ruiz
120 05.06.45 La noche que te fulste HA Ruiz
121 05.06.45 Cimarron de ausenda Marino-Ruiz milonga
122 28.06.45 Cotorrita de la suerte Marino
123 28.06.45 Soledad... la de Barracas Marino
124 10.08.45 Fruta amarga AG Marino
125 10.08.45 Lloraras, lloraras Ruiz vals
126 09.10.45 Maria HA Marino
127 09.10.45 Amor y tango HA? Ruiz
128 09.10.45 Cancion desesperada Marino
129 25.10.45 Color de rosa HA
130 15.11.45 Adios pampa mia Marino-Ruiz
131 15.11.45 El africano AP
132 18.12.45 Margo Marino
133 18.12.45 Tedio Marino
134 23.01.46 Mis amigos de ayer HA Ruiz
135 23.01.46 Principe Marino
136 12.03.46 Recuerdos de bohemia AG Marino
137 22.03.46 Milonga triste AG Marino milonga
138 22.03.46 Bandita de mi pueblo Ruiz
139 10.04.46 Fuimos Marino
140 10.04.46 Bienvenida AG
141 14.05.46 Tres y dos AG
142 14.05.46 Con mi perro Marino milonga
143 14.05.46 En came propia HA Marino
144 14.05.46 Tarde gris HA Ruiz
145 14.05.46 Camino del Tucuman HA Marino-Ruiz
146 11.07.46 Buen amigo AG
147 11.07.46 Rosider Marino
148 11.07.46 Qu£ me van a hablar de amor Ruiz
149 25.09.46 Solo se quiere una vez HA Ruiz
150 25.09.46 Asi es ηΐήόη Marino
151 22.10.46 Sin palabras Marino
152 22.10.46 La revancha AG
153 28.11.46 Mi tango triste Marino
154 28.11.46 Mientras gime el bandoneon HA Ruiz
155 29.04.47 Yira... yira Rivero
156 29.04.47 Confeslon HA Ruiz
157 29.04.47 Flor de lino HA Ruiz vals
158 29.04.47 El mllagro Rivero
159 29.04.47 Carnaval Rivero

Pianist Jose Basso left Troilo in 1947 to start his own orchestra. The
transition to Carlos Figari is seamless, not so surprising when we
consider that the pianist is now playing entirely from arrangements,
rather than improvising.

Piano: Carlos Figari

160 04.07.47 Y dlcen que no te quiero Ruiz

161 04.07.47 El morocho y el oriental Rivero/Ruiz milonga
[Gardel - Razzano]
162 04.07.47 Tu palldo final Rivero
163 19.08.47 Romance de barrio AG Ruiz vals
164 19.08.47 Yo te bendlgo Rivero
165 07.10.47 Los ejes de mi carreta Rivero milonga
166 07.10.47 Y la perdi HA Ruiz
167 24.10.47 Corazon de papel HA Ruiz
168 24.10.47 Tapera Rivero
169 23.02.48 Sur AG Rivero
170 23.02.48 De todo te olvidas AG Ruiz
[Cabeza de novia]
171 28.02.48 Tu perro pekines Rivero
172 28.02.48 Desvelo HA? Ruiz
173 08.07.48 Cafetin de Buenos Aires IS Rivero
174 08.07.48 Lagrimitas de mi corazön Ruiz/Rivero vals
175 01.10.48 OJos negros IS?
176 01.10.48 Com o tii Rivero
177 30.03.49 Una lagrima tuya EB Rivero/Calderon
178 30.03.49 Pat&ico IS
179 31.03.49 A unos oJos EB Rivero/Calderon
180 31.03.49 Ei Liltimo organito EB Rivero
181 31.03.49 Cuando volveras AP Calderon
182 31.03.49 Milonga en negro Rivero milonga
183 30.06.49 Mi noche triste IS Rivero
184 30.06.49 A la parrilla IS
185 22.07.49 La mariposa Rivero
186 22.07.49 Seleccion de tangos de Julio AG
de Caro
187 20.10.49 Mirinaque Rivero/Calderon milonga
188 20.10.49 La vlajera perdida IS Rivero
189 26.10.49 Y volvemos a querernos AP Calderon
190 26.10.49 Tu Rivero

In 1950 Troilo switched to the new Argentine label TK, whose re­
cordings had a poor fidelity as discussed in Chaper 26. TK did not
document the dates of the recording sessions, only the years. Some
were reported at the time. The remainder have been identified by
various researchers, but some doubt about them must remain. The
second recording of R e s p o n s o is particularly uncertain as, whilst it
is believed to have been recorded in 1952-53, it was not released
until 1954. TK’s technolog)' was never as good as that of Odeon or
RCA-Victor, and they struggled valiandy to improve. An improve­
ment in technolog)' would be a reason for a second recording of
R esp o n s o , which was Troilo’s favourite instrumental tango. It was
released together with E l en trerria n o , E l m o n ito and S e le c c io n d e
ta n g o s d e F r a n cisco C anaro on an EP (54/001) —when this latter
selection was first printed, it was too long to fit on the record, and
so had to be cut down116.

191 24.11.50 Para lucirse AP

192 24.11.50 Che bandoneön Jorge Casal
193 19.02.51 Mi vieja viola Jorge Casal
194 19.02.51 Tata no quiere Aldo Calderon milonga
195 21.03.51 Preparense AP
196 21.03.51 El patio de la morocha Jorge Casal
197 18.04.51 La trampera milonga
198 18.04.51 N.P. (No place) Raul Berön
199 29.05.51 Discepolin AP Raul Berön
200 29.05.51 Responso AP
201 26.06.51 De vuelta al bulin IS Raul Berön
202 26.06.51 Bien milonga IS
203 30.07.51 La cumparsita AP
204 30.07.51 Un momenta Raul Berön vals
205 30.07.51 Inspiration AP
206 30.07.51 La violeta AP Jorge Casal
207 30.07.51 Tanguango AP nuevo
ritmo
208 20.03.52 Buenos Aires Jorge Casal
209 20.03.52 Contratiempo AP
210 28.03.52 Cualquier cosa Raul Berön
211 28.03.52 Quejas de bandoneön AP
212 28.03.52 Amigazo Jorge Casal
213 28.03.52 El Marne AP
214 08.05.52 Tedeando
215 08.05.52 Medianoche Raul Berön
216 14.05.52 Cenizas AP
217 14.05.52 Uno AP Jorge Casal
218 05.06.52 Flor campera Jorge Casal

116 Federico Silva, Informe sobre Troilo, p l0 2

 219 05.06.52 Chlquö AP
220 07.08.52 Fuegos artifldales
221 07.08.52 Ventanita de arrabal Jorge Casal
222 18.08.52 Selection de temas de AG
Francisco Canaro
223 18.08.52 Malena Raul Berön
224 18.08.52 El entrerriano AP
225 18.08.52 El choclo Raul Beron
226 18.08.52 Orlando Goni IS
227 11.09.52 Barrio viejo del 80 Jorge Casal milonga
228 11.09.52 Del suburbio Jorge Casal
229 11.09.52 Mano brava milonga
230 23.11.52 Araca corazön Jorge Casal
231 12.12.52 Inspiraciön AP
232 12.12.52 La mentirosa Jorge Casal
233 12.12.52 La cumparsita AP
234 23.03.53 Trlunfal AP
235 23.03.53 Vuelve la serenata AP Casal - Beron vals
236 23.03.53 Mensa je AP Raul Beron
237 23.03.53 El monlto AP
238 1953? Responso AP
239 19.05.53 Una cancion AP Jorge Casal
240 28.07.53 Ojos negros IS
241 22.09.53 Patio mio AP Jorge Casal
242 22.09.53 Milonga del mayoral AP Casal - Berön milonga
243 12.02.54 Carmin Jorge Casal
244 12.02.54 Don Juan IS
245 28.02.54 Contrabajeando AP
246 28.02.54 El polio Ricardo AP
247 24.04.54 De muy adentro HA
248 24.04.54 Corrientes angosta Raul Berön
249 29.04.54 La cantina AP Jorge Casal
250 29.04.54 P e ro y o sö Raul Berön
251 27.08.54 Un tango para Esthercita Raul Beron

Piano: Osvaldo Manzi

252 06.09.54 Los cosos de al lao Jorge Casal
253 06.09.54 La chiflada
254 06.09.54 Taquito mllitar IS milonga
255 07.07.55 El irresistible RP
256 07.07.55 Recordändote RP Carlos Olm edo
257 14.07.55 Intermezzo OF
258 14.07.55 El cantor de Buenos Aires RP Carlos Olm edo
259 13.09.55 Ivette Raul Berön
260 13.09.55 A fuego lento HS*
 261 18.07.56 Color de rosa HA
262 18.07.56 Quiin? RP Angel Cärdenas
Edmundo
263 08.08.56 La tiltima curda AG Rivero
Edmundo
264 08.08.56 Sur AG Rivero
265 10.08.56 Viejo Baldio Pablo Lozano
266 10.08.56 Corralera IS milonga
267 07.09.56 Bandoneon arrabalero Goyeneche
268 07.09.56 Chuzas Angel Cärdenas
269 07.09.56 Calla Goyeneche
270 07.09.56 Pablo
271 02.11.56 Vamos, vamos zaino viejo RP Angel Cardenas
272 02.11.56 Fraternal IS
273 09.11.56 Callejön AG Angel Cardenas
274 09.11.56 Milonga que pelna canas IS Goyeneche
275 09.11.56 Cantor de mi barrio Goyeneche
276 09.11.56 Que risa! IS Angel Cärdenas

* Troilo was so impressed by Salgan’s own arrangement of A fu e g o len to

that he asked Salgan for his arrangement, which he then retouched.

For the tango Q uien?, the date would suggest that Pablo Lozano was the
singer. However this date refers to when the orchestra track was laid down.
When the time came to record the vocal, Lozano had left to be replaced by
Angel Cardenas.

Cuarteto Troilo-Grela - first period (1953-55)

The quartet has no arranger; the music is played “a la parilla”, as in

f o r m e r tim es.

277 08.05.53 La cachila

278 08.05.53 Palomita blanca
279 18.12.53 A Pedro Maffia
280 18.12.53 Sobre el pucho
281 28.02.54 Diablito
282 28.02.54 Un placer
283 21.04.55 La cumparsita
284 21.04.55 Nunca tuvo novio
285 15.06.55 Ml refugio
286 15.06.55 A la guardia vieja
287 16.09.55 El abrojito
288 16.09.55 Taconenado
Troilo switched back to Odeon in 1957

289 25.09.57 Inspiracion AP

290 10.07.57 La flor de la canela AG Goyeneche -
Cärdenas
291 10.07.57 Te llaman malevo JP Cärdenas
292 10.07.57 Lo que vos te mereces Goyeneche
293 10.07.57 Retirao

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Berlingieri joined Troilo’s orchestra on 24th September 1957, re­
maining until May 1968. The participation of Berlingieri marks a
decisive change in the style of the orchestra, wiiich breaks defini­
tively with the style of Goni.

294 24.09.57 Lo que vendrä AP

295 24.09.57 Pa1 lo que te va a durar Goyeneche
296 25.09.57 La ijltlma IS Cardenas
297 06.05.58 La bordona EB
298 06.05.58 La calesita Goyeneche -
Cärdenas
299 15.12.58 Danzarin JP
300 15.12.58 Yo tengo un pecado nuevo ER Cärdenas
301 15.12.58 Un boliche Goyeneche
302 15.12.58 La vuelta del montonero Cärdenas milonga
(Gloria a Entre Rios)
303 16.12.58 El metejon Goyeneche
304 16.12.58 Que me Importa tu pasado ER Cärdenas
305 16.12.58 Malon de ausencia JP Goyeneche - malambo
Cardenas
306 16.12.58 Quejas de bandoneön AP
307 23.12.58 Barrio pobre Goyeneche
308 23.12.58 Aquel tapado de armlfio AG Cärdenas
309 23.12.58 Ni mäs, nl menos Cardenas milonga
310 23.12.58 Aguantate, Casimlro JP Goyeneche
311 04.06.59 San Pedro y San Pablo IS Goyeneche
312 04.06.59 Marinera Cärdenas
Troilo returned to RCA-Victor in 1960, remaining with them for the
rest o f his life.

313 18.08.61 Melancolico JP

314 18.08.61 Nocturna JP
315 18.08.61 A Homero JP Goyeneche
316 18.08.61 El motive Goyeneche
317 18.08.61 Mi luna Goyeneche
318 22.08.61 Tlerrlta AC
319 09.01.62 Gama Goyeneche
320 09.01.62 Y a m ique JP Elba Berön
321 09.01.62 Desencuentro JP Elba Beron
322 09.01.62 Cachirliando Elba Berön milonga
323 09.01.62 Coplas Goyeneche/
Elba Berön
324 09.01.62 La bordona EB

Cuarteto Troilo - Grela 1962

325 21.08.62 Madame Ivonne

326 21.08.62 La trampera milonga
327 21.08.62 Mi noche triste
328 21.08.62 La tablada
329 27.08.62 Silbando
330 27.08.62 La maleva
331 27.08.62 Ivette
332 13.09.62 Pa' que ballen los muchachos
333 13.09.62 Maipo
334 03.12.62 Nunca tuvo novio

Orchestra (piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri)

335 04.63 Lo que vendra AP

336 04.63 Recordando a Dlscöpolo JP
337 04.63 Responso AP
338 04.63 Tierrlta AC
339 04.63 La cumparsita AP
340 04.63 A mis viejos JP
341 04.63 Melancolico JP
342 04.63 Nocturna JP
343 04.63 La bordona EB
344 04.63 B.B. RP
345 04.63 Nostalgico JP
346 04.63 Danzarin JP
347 23.04.63 Frente al mar JP Rufino
 348 23.04.63 A mi no hablen de tango Goyeneche
349 24.04.63 Ninguna JP Rufino
350 24.04.63 C6m o se pianta la vida JP Goyeneche
351 07.05.63 La ultima curda AG Goyeneche
352 07.05.63 Maria Rufino
353 14.05.63 Quien Io habria de pensar Rufino
354 14.05.63 Quiero huir de mi Goyeneche/ vals
Rufino
355 05.06.63 Tam ar (Marta) Goyeneche
356 05.06.63 Porqu£ la qulse tanto Rufino
357 05.06.63 El metejon Goyeneche
358 05.06.63 Desencuentro JP Rufino
359 11.06.63 Mi viejo reloj AP
359/1 11.06.63 Mi viejo reloj AP
360 11.06.63 San Pedro y San Pablo IS Goyeneche
361 18.06.63 Am ores de estudiante Rufino vals
362 18.06.63 Pa* que ballen los mucha- HS Goyeneche
chos
363 03.02.64 Barrio de tango JP Nelly Vazquez
364 03.02.64 Madreselva JP Nelly Vbzquez
365 03.02.64 Mi vieja viola Tito Reyes
366 03.02.64 Las carretas Tito Reyes
367 22.12.64 Yo soy del 30 JP Tito Reyes
368 22.12.64 Q ue falta que me hac£s Roberto Rufino
369 04.01.65 Patio mio AP Nelly Väzquez
370 07.01.65 Dicha pasada Tito Reyes
371 04.01.65 Mensa je AP Roberto Rufino
372 07.01.65 Mi viejo reloj AP
373 07.01.65 Q ued& nonos aqui Nelly Väzquez
374 13.01.65 Siga el corso Roberto Rufino
375 13.01.65 Los cosas de al lao Tito Reyes
376 13.01.65 Milonguita HS Nelly Vazquez
377 13.01.65 Morena JP milonga
378 19.01.65 Milonguero triste JP
379 19.01.65 Orlando Goni JP
380 24.09.65 Canciön de Ave Maria IS Nelly Väzquez candon
381 24.09.65 Ventanita de arrabal Tito Reyes
382 01.10.65 Golondrlnas Nelly Vazquez
383 01.10.65 Decime adios... donde estas Tito Reyes
384 01.10.65 Tu vuetta Nelly Vazquez milonga
385 01.10.65 Te llaman malevo JP Tito Reyes
386 12.11.65 Ml viejo el remendbn Tito Reyes
387 12.11.65 El conventillo Tito Reyes milonga
388 12.11.65 Slempre no Nelly Väzquez
389 12.11.65 Transnoche de ilusion Nelly Väzquez
390 25.11.65 Racconto CG Nelly Väzquez
 391 25.11.65 Che bandoneon Tito Reyes
392 10.12.65 Alma de bohemio Nelly Väzquez
393 10.12.65 Las arrugas de mi frente Tito Reyes
394 16.12.65 Aqui nomäs Tito Reyes
395 16.12.65 El motivo Tito Reyes
396 23.12.65 Un tango para el recuerdo Tito Reyes
397 23.12.65 Galleguita Nelly Väzquez
398 30.12.65 Buenos Aires Tito Reyes
399 30.12.65 Vais del jamas Nelly Väzquez vals
400 01.04.66 Chumbicha EB
401 01.04.66 Sombras nada mas Nelly Väzquez
402 13.04.66 El ultimo guapo Tito Reyes
403 13.04.66 Yo no merezco este castlgo Nelly Väzquez
404 13.04.66 Compadrita mia milonga
405 13.04.66 Pichuqueando JP
406 18.04.66 Payadora JP milonga
407 18.04.66 Buenos Aires - Tokio JP
408 18.04.66 Dale tango Tito Reyes
409 06.12.66 Bailarin compadrito Tito Reyes
410 06.12.66 Adios non 1no AP
411 06.12.66 Selection de tangos de AG
Julio de Caro
412 10.08.67 Recuerdo JP
413 10.08.67 Los mareados RG
414 10.08.67 Verano porteho AP
415 10.08.67 Mas alia bandoneon RG
416 20.09.67 Tema otonal
417 20.09.67 Color tango JP
418 18.10.67 Don Juan
419 18.10.67 El africano AP
420 29.11.67 De puro guapo
421 29.11.67 El Marne AP
422 06.12.67 El irresistible RP
423 06.12.67 Selection de tangos de AG
Arolas

Alm a id e b oh em io (#392) and Las arrugas d e m ifr en te (#393) were

recorded as instrumental playbacks. The vocal parts were laid down on
16/12/65.
Colangelo, Troilo’s last pianist, entered the orchestra in November
1968. He was thus also part of the Cuarteto Anibal Troilo for its
final recording session on 30th July 1969, but not for its earlier
tracks.

Also in this period we find two bandoneon duos with Piazzolla.

424 28.11.68 Apenas Marielena APo Goyeneche

425 28.11.68 Palermo en octubre APo Goyeneche
426 28.11.68 Nuestro Buenos Aires APo Goyeneche
427 28.11.68 Cielo de cometas APo Goyeneche
428 04.12.68 Senorita Maria APo Goyeneche
429 04.12.68 Tanguihlstoria APo Goyeneche
430 04.12.68 Romance de la ciudad APo Goyeneche
431 04.12.68 Otra vez Esthercita APo Goyeneche
432 04.12.68 Tango del colectivo APo Goyeneche
433 04.12.68 La esquina cualqulera APo Goyeneche milonga
434 06.12.68 Para poder volver APo Goyeneche
435 06.12.68 Am anece APo Goyeneche
436 30.07.69 Milonga de la parda RG Tito Reyes milonga
437 30.07.69 El ultimo farol RG
438 12.08.69 Che Buenos Aires RG
439 12.08.69 La trilla RG
440 12.09.69 El baqueano RG
441 12.09.69 Pico bianco RG
442 10.10.69 Tallador RG
443 10.10.69 La milonga y yo Tito Reyes milonga
444 14.04.70 Mananitas de Montmartre RG
445 14.04.70 Entre suenos RG
446 14.04.70 Naipe marcado RG
447 14.04.70 Milonga del corralön RG Tito Reyes milonga

448 13.08.70 El motlvo duo Troilo - Piazzolla

449 13.08.70 Volver duo Troilo - Piazzolla

450 14.09.70 Nobleza de arrabal RG

451 14.09.70 Fechoria RG milonga
452 14.09.70 La racha RG
453 14.09.70 Bandola triste RG
454 28.09.70 Adiös Bardi RG
455 28.09.70 Plropos RG
456 23.11.70 Mllon tango JP milonga
 457 23.11.70 Tinta verde RG
458 21.11.70 Pa' que ballen los muchachos RG*
459 21.11.70 Ojos negros RG*
460 28.12.70 Ml refuglo RG
461 28.12.70 Tomando color RP
462 26.04.71 Tinta roja RG Goyeneche
463 26.04.71 Sur AG Goyeneche
464 24.04.71 El bulin de la calle Ayacucho RG Goyeneche
465 24.04.71 Toda mi vida RG Goyeneche
466 06.05.71 Fueye RG Goyeneche
467 06.05.71 Barrio de tango RG Goyeneche
468 06.05.71 En esta tarde gris RG Goyeneche
469 06.05.71 Una cancion AP Goyeneche
470 24.06.71 Trenzas RG Goyeneche
471 24.06.71 Fogon de huella Goyeneche
472 24.06.71 La violeta AP Goyeneche
473 24.06.71 Corazon de papel Goyeneche

+For these two works, Garello retouched earlier arrangements.

Cuarteto Anibal Troilo

474 05.06.68 Toda ml vida

475 05.06.68 Pablo
476 05.06.68 Del barrio de la latas
477 05.06.68 La tablada
478 30.08.68 Nocturno a mi barrio Troilo
479 11.09.68 La cumparsita
480 11.09.68 Los mareados
481 11.09.68 A Pedro Maffia
482 11.09.68 Sobre el pucho
483 30.07.69 La ultima curda
484 30.07.69 Milonguero triste
485 30.07.69 La trampera milonga

The guitarist in the Cuarteto Anibal Troilo was Ubaldo De Lio, with
Rafael Del Bagno on double bass. This quartet also had singers for
its live performances (there’s a video with Goveneche singing E l
m o tiv o ) but none of the vocal numbers were recorded.
Appendix C: Orchestra formations

1937
Piano: Orlando Goiii
Bass: Juan Fassio
Bandoneons (3): Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Roberto Gianatelli
Violins (3): Reynaldo Nichele,Jose Stilman, Pedro Sapochnik
Singer: Fiorentino

In the bandoneons, Gianatelli was replaced by Eduardo Marino, and

Nichele (who would later return to the orchestra) by Hugo Baralis,
with Stilman becoming first violin.

1938
Piano: Orlando Goni
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons (3) Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino
Violins (3): David Diaz, Hugo Baralis, Pedro Sapochnik
Singer: Fiorentino

1939
Piano: Orlando Goni
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons (3): Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino
Violins (3): David Diaz, HugoBaralis, Pedro Sapochnik
Singer: Fiorentino
1940-1942
Piano: Orlando Goni
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons (5): Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino, Astor
Piazzolla, Marcos Troilo
Violins (4): David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Hugo Baralis, Pe­
dro Sapochnik
Singers: Fiorendno, Amadeo Mandarino (40-41)

Piazzolla joined in December 1939 and stayed until July 1944.

For a few months in early 1940, possibly because of illness, Fioren-
tino was replaced by Alfredo Palacios.

1943
Piano: Orlando Goni (replaced by Jose Basso in Septem­
ber)
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons (5): Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino, Astor
Piazzolla, Marcos Troilo
Violins (4): David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Hugo Baralis (re­
placed by Juan Alzina), Pedro Sapochnik
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Singers: Fiorendno, Alberto Marino

A cellist, Alfredo Citro, was incorporated into the band in December

1942. Marino’s debut was on 5th April 1943. The last recording
session of Orlando Goni (and Hugo Baralis) was 4th August 1943.
1944
Piano: Jose Basso
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino, Astor
Piazzoila (replaced by Alberto Garcia), Marcos Troilo
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Juan Alzina, Pedro
Sapochnik
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Singers: Fiorentino (until May - replaced by Floreal Ruiz in
September), Alberto Marino

Piazzolla’s replacement, Alberto “Pajarito” Garcia, stayed with

Troilo until 1963. He was an important figure in the orchestra, as he
so assimilated Troilo’s style that he could substitute for him when he
was unable to play: one source suggests that he is playing on the
1958 recording of La b o r d o n a u l . After he left, this role was ful­
filled by Ernesto Baffa.

1945 -1 9 4 6
Piano: Jose Basso
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Toto Rodriguez, Eduardo Marino, Alberto
Garcia, Marcos Troilo
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Juan Alzina, Nicolas
Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Singers: Alberto Marino, Floreal Ruiz

In 1945, Pedro Sapochnik, one of the original lineup of 1945, was

replaced by Nicolas Albero who stayed with Troilo for 13 years.17

117 Notes in the booklet o f EBCD-305. I've not been able to co rro b o rate this.
1947
Piano: Jose Basso (replaced by Carlos Figari)
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Toto Rodriguez (replaced by Domingo Mat-
tio), Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Marcos Troilo
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Simon Zlotnik
Singers: Alberto Marino (replaced by Edmundo Rivero in
April), Floreal Ruiz

Apart from the change in the singers, there were some important
changes in the lineup of the orchestra 1947. As well as the addition
of the viola, the departure of Toto Rodriguez is significant, because
it meant that, apart naturally from Troilo himself, none of the origi­
nal 1937 lineup now remained in the orchestra.

1948
Piano: Carlos Figari
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Marcos
Troilo
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Simon Zlotnik
Singers: Floreal Ruiz, Edmundo Rivero

1949
Piano: Carlos Figari
Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Marcos
Troilo (replaced by Fernando Tell).
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Simon Zlotnik
Singers: Edmundo Rivero, Aldo Calderon
1950

Piano: Carlos Figari

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Simon Zlotnik
Singers: Edmundo Rivero (replaced by Jorge Casal), Aldo
Calderon

1951

Piano: Carlos Figari

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Simon Zlotnik (replaced by Cayetano Gianna)
Singers: J orge Casal, Aldo Calderon (replaced by Radi Beron)

1952-53

Piano: Carlos Figari

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Jorge Casal and Raul Beron
1954

Piano: Carlos Figari (replaced by Osvaldo Manzi)

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Teil.
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele, Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Jorge Casal and Raul Beron

1955

Piano: Osvaldo Manzi

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Reynaldo Nichele (replaced by Carmelo
Cavallaro), Alzina, Albero
Cello: Alfredo Citro (replaced upon his death by Adriano
Fanelli)
Viola: Cayetano Gianna
Singers: Raul Beron and Carlos Olmedo

1956

Piano: Osvaldo Manzi

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Albero, Cavallaro
Cello: Fanelli
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Raul Beron and Pablo Lozano (replaced by Roberto
Goyeneche and Angel Cardenas)
1957

Piano: Osvaldo Manzi (replaced by Osvaldo Berlingieri)

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Teil.
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Albero (replaced by Jose Votti),
Cavallaro
Cello: Fanelü
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Angel Cardenas

1958

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Kicho Diaz
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell.
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Cavallaro (replaced by
Carlos Piccone)
Cello: Fanelli
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Angel Cardenas

1959

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Kicho Diaz (replaced by Alcides Rossi)
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Tell (re­
placed by Ernesto Baffa)
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Piccone
Cello: Fanelli (replaced by Jose Bragato)
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Angel Cardenas
1960

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Alcides Rossi
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Baffa
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Piccone
Cello: Bragato (replaced by Fanelli)
Viola: Sammartino (replaced by Gianna)
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Angel Cardenas (replaced
briefly by Jorge Casal and then by Elba Beron)

1961

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Alcides Rossi (replaced by Eugenio Pro)
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Garcia, Baffa
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Piccone
Cello: Fanelli
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Elba Beron

Alcides Rossi was in the orchestra for only one year. He left Troilo
to replace his father, upon his death, in the orchestra of Osvaldo
Pugliese.

1962

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Rafael Del Bagno
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Baffa
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Piccone
Cello: Fanelli
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Elba Beron

With the departure of Alfredo “Pajarito” Garcia, Ernesto Baffa

becomes the man who substitutes for Troilo, something that hap­
pens much more now than in former times. For instance, he plays
first bandoneon on the entire “Troilo for Export” album. When he
leaves in 1968, Fernando Tell assumes this role.

1963

Piano: Osvaldo Berlingieri

Bass: Rafael Del Bagno
Bandoneons: Troilo, Mattio, Eduardo Marino, Baffa, Raul Garello
Violins: David Diaz, Alzina, Votti, Piccone
Cello: Fanelli
Viola: Gianna
Singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Roberto Rufino

Federico Silva comments that, after 1963, we can’t really speak of

the regular formation of the orchestra as it met mosdy for recordings.
Those wishing to know more about the makeup of the orchestra in
its final years can consult the works of Silva or Oscar del Priore.
There’s an extract from his work on todotango.118

118 http://www.todotango.com /Historias/Historia.aspx?id=444

 Bibliography
There is an extensive quantity of books and articles about Troilo in
Spanish - all of it published in Argentina, and most of it out of print.

• Luis Alposta: Todo Rivero, 2nd ed, Corregidor 2010, paperback,

144pp. ISBN: 978-950-05-1912-0
• Maria Susana Azzi & Simon Collier: Le Grand Tango: The Life
and Music of AstorPiasgolla, OUP USA 18 May 2000, hardback,
344pp. ISBN: 978-0195127775
• Hector Angel Benedetti, “Las mejores letras de tango”, 5th edi­
tion, Booket, 2012, 614pp. ISBN: 978-9875805149
• Pedro Colombo & Perla Lorenzo de Rufino: Roberto Rufino,
Corregidor 2010, paperback, 320pp. ISBN: 978-950-05-1860-4
• Arturo Dorner Linne, A nibal Troilo: Perfilj discografia, Ediciones
El Tranvia, Montevideo, 2004, 121pp.
• Horacio Ferrer: LI libro del tango, Galerma, 1977, 3 volumes.
• Horacio Ferrer, LI gran Troilo, paperback 414pp with 2 CDs.
Reprint edition, JVE Ediciones, 1st July 2014. ISBN: 978-987-
9203-80-4
This book is a transcription of Horacio Ferrer’s radio shows
about Troilo, which explains its format of 100 short chapters. It
contains an album of 120 photographs, many from Ferrer’s
personal collection. The CDs contain some rarities, such as a
live recording of Ε ΙΙΙοτόη from around 1941 and the Vardaro-
Pugliese T igre v ie jo on CD1 (‘Pichuco Vive’). Ferrer’s analysis
of some of the bands arrangements on CD2 (‘Antologia Troil-
iana’) is intelligent and stimulating.
This book was originally published privately with the ISBN:
978-987-23572-1-4. The content of the two editions is the same.
• Jorge Finkielman : The Film Industry in Argentina, McFarland
2003, 278pp. ISBN: 978-078641628-8
• Rafael Flores Montenegro, Amor en el Tango: Gricel-Jose Maria
Conturri, Ediciones Deldragon 2005, 82pp. ISBN: 950-915-19-9
• Francisco Garcia Jimenez, A si nacieron los tangos, 2nd ed,
Corregidor 2011, 272pp. ISBN: 978-950-05-1055-4
• Maria Esther Gilio: A ntbal Troilo - Pichuco: Comvrsaciones, Perfil
1998, paperback, 153pp. ISBN: 978-950-6391638
In 1967, the journalist Maria Esther Gilio was granted a series
of three meetings with Troilo. In the first, Troilo barely regis­
tered her presence, and in the second, although she found her­
self at a table surrounded by tango legends such as Pedro Maf­
fia, Horacio Salgan and Hector Stamponi, she shared just a few
words. But in the third, Troilo sat down and spoke candidly
about his life and values. A charming and valuable interview.
• Natalio Gorin & Fernando Gonzalez: A stor Pia^olla: A Memoir,
Amadeus 2001, paperback, 260pp. ISBN-13: 978-1574670677
• La Historia del Tango, 23 volumes, Corregidor
Volumen 15: Di Sarli - Vardaro - Gobbi - Goni, Corregidor
1994, paperback, 252pp. ISBN: 950-05-1138-X
Volumen 16: Anibal Troilo, Corregidor 1994, paperback, 248pp
ISBN: 950-05-120-8-4
• Michael Lavocah: Tango Stories: Musical Secrets, 2nd ed, milonga
press 2014, paperback, 256pp. ISBN: 978-0-9573276-4-1
• Carlos Marin: La lida de A ntbal Troilo Pichuco \ Editorial Bonum
1974, paperback, 84pp.
• Jose Maria Otero, ABC Del Tango, Corregidor 2011, paperback,
400pp. ISBN: 978-950-05-1936-6
• Juan Manuel Pena Lopez, E l tango en el teatro colon, Marcelo
Hector Oliveri Editor, 2006, hardback, 235pp. ISBN: 978-
9871282067
• Oscar del Priore: Toda mi iidayJVE Ediciones 2003, paperback,
189pp. ISBN: 978-987-92033-6-1
An accessible book which I would recommend to any Spanish
speaker.
• Oscar del Priore & Irene Amuchastegui:
Cien Tangosfundamentales, 2nd ed, Aguilar 2008, paperback,
288pp. ISBN: 978-987-04-1123-9
Osvaldo Sanguiao: Troiloy Libreria General Tomäs Pardo, 1995,
paperback, 21 lpp
Federico Silva, Informe sobre Twilo, Plus-Ultra 1978, reprinted
with corrections 1999, ISBN: 950-2104293
This small book is written with evident love and respect by
Silva, who knew Troilo personally.
Oscar Zucchi: El Tango, el Bandoneony sus Interprets volumen /K,
paperback, Corregidor, 2008, ISBN: 978-950-05-1739-3.
Principal CDs consulted:

• Anibal Troilo: Obra Completa en RCA, 16 CDs, 1997-2000

• Anibal Troilo: Troilo en RCA Victor Argentina, 26 CDs, 2004
• Anibal Troilo, Obra Completa 1938-1950, Volumen 1,4 CD
box set, 2003 [el bandoneon EBCD-305].
• Anibal Troilo: Archivo TK, 5 CDs, Euro Records, 2006
• Anibal Troilo: ‘Ni mas, ni menos’, EMI 837425, 1996
• Anibal Troilo: From Argentina to the World, EMI 94432, 1999
• Great Bands of Tango’s Golden Age, Harlequin, 1997
• Anibal Troilo: La fonola ineditos vol.l, Fogon 2006

On mp3/FLAC: the collections of TangoTunes.

 Glossary

a la parilla (literally: on the grill): playing without a written arrange­

ment, but having agreed how to handle the piece during rehearsal.

arrabal: the area at the outskirts or margins of the city. Authentically

tanguero.

bandonedn: the dark toned bisonic button accordion originating in

Germany that gives tango music its characteristic sonority.

bandoneonista: a player of the bandoneön.

bordonas: the bass strings on the guitar

bordoneo/bordonear: bass strumming

candombe: the major dance and music of the black communities in

Argentina and especially Uruguay. Traditionally the music was just
drums and the genre has obvious African roots.

canta (plural cantan): literally, sings. The Argentine way of saying,

“vocals by”.

cantor de orquesta: orchestra singer - the name given to the singer

of a dance orchestra who is singing the full lyric, as opposed to an
estnbillista. He (and it’s always a man) is identified with the 1940s.

chicharra: playing on the string wrrappers on the violin to make a

percussive, scratching sound. Also called lija (sandpaper).

compäs: the musical beat or pulse, often compared to a heartbeat.

Not the same thing as rhythm, which may be more complex.

contra canto (‘singing against7): counterpoint, i.e. a second melody

played against the first, not a simple harmony.

estribillista: a singer of the estribillo (q.v.) or refrain singer for short.

estribillo: the refrain or chorus.

fraseo (music): phrasing, to play the notes in a musical phrase not

with the strict time values written on the sheet music, but more
freely

lätigo (music): “whip” - a sharp rising glissando (slide) on the violin.

legato (music): smooth, with the adjacent notes connected together,

Tango musicians tend to say ligado: linked. The opposite of staccato.

letra: the lyrics

lunfardo: the porteno argot with many words from European dialects.

marcato: “marked”: the way of marking out the beats - for instance,
in 2 (marcato en dos), in 4 (marcato en cuatro).

milonga: originally: the milonga campera (q.v.) and also a place where
you went to dance. Only later did this come to mean a separate
dance style.

milonga campera: a folk music from Argentina with a rhythm

closely related to the Cuban habanera. The milonga campera was never
danced, but was an important ingredient in the early tango.

milonguero/milonguera: a man (milonguero) or woman (milon-

guera) whose life is formed around being at the milonga, someone
with tango en las venas — in the blood.

obbligato (music): a variation or counter melody that is so essential

to the music that one is obliged to play it. Usually it’s a simple me­
lodic line that threads its way around the main melody.

payada: a sung verse duel

payador: a singer ofpayadas

piano (music): quiedy. Written in music asp.

pianissimo (musif): as quiedy as possible! Writtenpp.

pizzicato (music): plucking the strings

portamento {music): sliding in pitch from one note to another

portefio: an inhabitant of the port, i.e. Buenos Aires. Feminine form:

porteiia.

sincopa {musu): syncopation, often a shorthand for the classic be-

hind-the-beat syncopation.
staccato (music): choppy, made from short notes that have a space in
between. The opposite of legato.
tango-c andern: a tango meant for singing rather than for dancing.

tango-milonga: originally this simply meant a tango for dancing, as

opposed to tango-canmn. At the time this term was being used, back
in the 1910s and 1920s, tango music was relatively undeveloped and
the rhythm was basically the primitive milonga rhythm. The term has
thus come to refer to tangos with the feeling of this period.

vals: the Spanish word for waltz. Among tango aficionados, it’s a
shorthand for tango-vals, the style of vals performed in the salons of
Buenos Aires.

variacion {music): a variation, normally used as the climax of the

piece, much like a cadenza in classical music. This is the chance for
some virtuoso playing in one of the instruments, often the bandoneon.
 Index of titles
A fuego lento: 122, 172 Desvelo | De flor en flor: 111
A los amigos: 26, 113 Discepolin: 127
Abandono: 32 Don Juan:
A1 cornpas del corazon: 63 El bulin de la Calle Ayacucho: 45-46
A1 verla pasar: 24 El carrerito: 7, 35
Arrabal: 30 El cuarteador: 50, 91
Asi me gusta a mi [m]: 80 El disdnguido ciudadano: 80
Atenti pebeta: 113 El entrerriano: 80, 170
Azabache [m]: 79, 80 El irresistible: 27
Bajo el cono azul: 93 El jagiiel: 54
Bajo un cielo de estrellas [v]: 36 El lloron [m]: 55, 188
Bien porteno: 80 El monito: 115, 170
Boedo: 115 El motivo (Pobre paica): 35, 90,
Buen amigo: 115 139-140, 178
C.T.V.: 59, 77 El pafiuelito: 142
Cachirulo: 12 El patio de la morocha: 124
Cada vez que me recuerdes: 65, 71- El tamango: 53-54
72 El taura: 76
Cafe de los Angelitos: 95-96 En esta tarde gris: 48-49, 65, 162,
Cautivo: 52 163
Chique (El elegante): 17, 76, 80, 85 En mi pasado: see Los mareados
Chuzas: 151 Entre suenos: 27
Colorao, colorao: 161, 162 Farol: 83
Comme il faut: 28, 30, 77, 146 Farolito de papel: 69, 72, 80, 91, 146
Como dos extranos: 24 Flor de lino [v]: 108
Confesion: 106-7 Garras: 65, 96-97
Con todo la voz que tengo [m]: 42 Garua: 138
Contrabajeando: 129 Gricel: 64-67, 116
Cordon de oro: 54 Guardia vieja: 115
Corrientes y Esmeralda: 36 Inspiracion: 17, 57, 80
Cotorrita de la suerte: 91, 98-99 La bordona: 12, 77, 181
Cristal: 65 La cachila: 131
Cuando tallan los recuerdos: 69 La cantina: 122,129-130, 146, 153
De barro: 71 La cumparsita: 17, 27, 36, 80, 84,
Del tiempo guapo [m]: 54 142
Despues: 84 La luz de un fosforo: 80
Destellos: 113 La maleva: 12, 63
La mariposa: 2 7 , 114 Palomita blanca [v]: 77, 94, 132
La noche que te fuiste: 65, 98 Pajaro ciego: 44-45, 161, 163
La tablada: 12, 61-62 Para lucirse: 123
La ultima curda: 133-6, 146 Patio mio: 124
La viajera perdida: 115 Percal: 71
Lejos de Buenos Aires: 62 Piropos: 90-91
Lo han visto con otra: 36 Preparense: 123
Lo que vendra: 123 Pobre mi madre querida [v]: 96
Loca: 31 Quejas de bandoneon: 21, 80, 92,
Los dopados: 90 122, 153
Los mareados (En mi pasado): 60- Quiero verte una vez mas: 24, 65
61, 90 Recuerdo: 55
Mala junta: 115 Recuerdos de bohemia: 79, 100-101,
Mala pinta: 115 146
Malena: 58, 59, 126, 146 Responso: 122, 126-7, 146, 170
Manoblanca: 90 Retirao: 54
Mano a mano: 90 Rhapsody in Blue: 32
Mano brava: 40 Romance de barrio: 7 7 , 108, 126
Maragata: 51 Ronda de ases: 80
Maria: 99 Sabado ingles: 151
Marioneta: 95 Seleccion de tangos de Julio De
Media noche: 113 Caro: 7 9 , 114-5
Melodia de arrabal: 55 Seleccion de tangos de Francisco
Mi castigo: 59-60 Canaro: 170
Mi corazon: 134 Sencillo y compadre: 54
Mi noche triste: 64 Siga el corso: 91, 92
Mi regalo [m]: 76 Silencio: 118
Mi tango triste: 66, 101 Sobre el pucho: 7
Milonga de mis amores [m]: 35 Sombras nada mas: 65, 66, 162
Milonga en negro [m]: 104 Sosiego en la noche: 83
Milongueando en el 40: 26, 38, 46, Soy una fiera [m]: 87
77 Sueno de juventud [vj: 35
N.P. (No place): 125 Suerte loca: 59-60
Naranjo en flor: 94 Sur: 25, 72, 77, 9 4 , 110, 126, 134,
No se ni como ni cuando [m]: 27 136, 146
Nocturno a mi barrio: 143-5, 146 Tabaco: 85
Nostalgias: 24, 60, 90 Tabernero: 43
Ojos negros: 122 Tal vez sera su voz | Tal vez sera
Pa’ que seguir: 86 mi alcohol: 71
Pablo: 70 Tango y copas: 70
Tanguango: 128-9 Tu diagnostico [v]: 51
Tanguera: 123 Un momento [v]: 128
Tarde: 113 Un placer [v]: 132
Te aconsejo que me olvides: 42 Un vals [v]: 90
Tierra querida: 115 Una cancion: 124
Tierrita: 35 Una carta: 47
Tigre viejo: 18, 152, 188 Una lagrima tuya: 113
Tinta roja: 26, 34, 52-53 Uno: 80
Tinta verde: 7, 28, 30 Uruguaya: 162
Tormenta: 107 Verdemar: 24
Trenzas: 90 Vieja amiga: 36
Tres amigos: 91 Vuelve la serenata: 124
Triunfal: 123 Y la perdi: 66
Tres amigos: 91 Y no puede ser: 36
Tristezas de la calle Corrientes: 62- Y siempre igual: 76
63 Yira... yira...: 106
Tu diagnostico [v]: 96 Yo soy el tango: 38, 40, 146
Turbion de recuerdos: 90 Yo te bendigo: 109
Toda mi vida: 37, 38, 41, 65, 97 Yuyo verde: 97
Tu: 116

Page numbers in bold refer to listening notes for the song itself,

[m]: milonga; [v]: vals

Acknowledgements

Cover photo

Fred Schiffer (1917—1999) was born in Austria, and was a law stu­
dent at the University of Vienna at the time of the Anschluss.
Shortly before the Second World War he came as a refugee to Eng­
land, where he worked as a photographer. By 1947 he was Fellow of
the Royal Photographic Society. In 1948 he moved to Buenos Aires
with his wife and two small children, enjoying great success; later he
would say that he was the only person Juan Peron ever paid for a
portrait. Schiffer moved to Vancouver in 1958 where his photo­
graphs continued to earn international recognition.

Photo by kind permission of the Schiffer family.

For their help

Many people assisted with the preparation of this book, and I was
often touched by the kindness and willingness of complete strangers
to help me. I’d especially like to thank Francisco Torne and Celeste
Alvero of Centenario Anibal Troilo for their great kindness and
generosity'; also Ricardo Garcia Blaya of todotango.com, and the
investigators Tino Diaz and Juan Alberto Guttlein, for their work,
and for clarifying a number of obscure points.
 By The Same Author
T a n g o S t o r ie s : M u s i c a l S e c r e t s

T h e g u id e to ta n g o d a n c e m u sic

In this unique* hook, M ichael Lavocah

takes you on a com pelling ]ourne\

H
through tango music. He introduces the
key individuals who shaped tango history
and explains how they influenced the
evolution of this m usic, telling their
stories in a series o f lively vignettes.

1Engaging, entertaining and passionate, this is the definitive guide to

tango dance music. Available in tour languages, Tango Stone f: Musica/
Secrets is essential reading for anyone who w ants to understand tango
better.
2nd e d itio n

ISB N : 9 7 8 - 0 - 9 5 7 3 2 7 6 - 4 - 1 ( 1 9 .1 2 .2 0 1 4 )
256pp

Also available in G erm an, Spanish, and fre n c h :

D e u tsc h : l'ango-C eschichten: I f k f die Musik erzählt. 2. A u flag e

ISB N : 9 7 8 - 0 9 5 7 3 2 7 6 - 3 - 4 . (0 8 .0 2 .2 0 1 5 )

E sp an o l: I listonas de tango —\m musica nos //era

• A rg e n tin e editio n: ISB N : 9 7 8 - 9 8 7 - 2 8 6 0 7 - 4 - 5 ( 1 2 .0 4 .2 0 1 5 ;
• In tern a tio n a l editio n: ISB N : 9 7 8 - 0 9 5 7 3 2 7 6 - 6 - 5 (0 1 .0 4 .2 0 1 6 )

F ra n c a is: H/stoires de tango : secrets d'nne mudque (() 1.()2.2() 16)

ISB N : 9 7 8 - 0 9 5 7 3 2 7 6 - 8 - 9
 T a n g o M asters: O svaldo P u g lie se

Osvaldo Pugliese (1905-1995) created

a new st\le of tango music that was
beautiful, warm and powerful — the
most passionate and intense that
tango has ever known. He formed
his orchestra in 1939 from a cell in
Argentina’s most notorious political
prison. Standing firm against decades
of persecution for his communist
beliefs, he eventually led his musi­
cians and his devoted fans alike to a
triumphant night at one of the
world’s grandest opera house.

Tango Masters: Osvaldo Pugliese takes the reader on a journey

through Pugliese’s life and music that is intimately bound up with the
social and political histon of Argentina, listen in g guides to ninety of
Pugliese’s most important recordings help the reader to appreciate,
love and dance to this compelling and intriguing music.

This is the second volume in the series Tango Masters, in which

Michael Lavocah (author of Tango Stories: Musical Secrets) explores the
great orchestras of tango's Golden Age in depth.

IhBN: 978-0-9573276-7-2
296pp
Published: 09.1 1.2016

Also available in German.

M ichael Lavocah w as absorbed by tango m usic from his first en­
counter w ith it. M ore than tw enty years study o f the subject, as a
dancer, teacher, DJ and collector has provided him w ith an in-depth
know ledge o f this unique m usical heritage.

Λ natural raconteur, M ichael is alw ays sharing his know ledge o f the
m usic with anyone w ho will listen. T his led to his popular talks on
tango m usic and then in 2012 to his first book Tango Stones, MusicaJ
Secrets, w hich im m ediately established itself as the book for tango
dancers w anting a general guide to tango m usic. The guide has been
translated into G erm an, Spanish, and French, w ith the Spanish v er­
sion being published in Buenos Aires.

M ichael runs the tango m usic w ebsite m ilonga.co.uk and teaches and
D Js tango internationally. He lives in England.
Ta n g o M a s t e r s : A n i b a l T r o i l o

A nibal Troilo (1 9 1 4 -1 9 7 5 ) played the bandoneön with such

feeling that he becam e revered as the m ost expressive player
of the instrum ent. In 1937 he form ed h is own orchestra,
rapidly establishing it as one of the greatest in the golden
age of tango. The hallm arks of th is orchestra were its vibrant
sound, its ab ility to deliver a lyric, and the colour and shading
in its m usic, som ething w hich Troilo and his m usicians
explored more and more throughout the 1 94 0s.

In th is book, the first in a series ca lled Tango Masters,

M ichael Lavocah (author of Tango Stories , M usical Secrets)
explains Troilo’s m usic to the m odem dancing p u b lic.
H e introduces the m usicians in the orchestra, helping
you to hear them w ithin the m usic, and then takes you
through the dance recordings, paying sp ecial attention to
the relationship between the m usic and the lyrics - a key
factor to understanding th is orchestra. Incorporating an
invaluable discography, Tango M asters: A nibal Troilo allow s
the reader to follow Troilo’s journey a s h is m usic grows in
sophistication, learning how to listen , and th u s to feel, with
more understanding and depth.

m ilonga press
w w w.m ilongapress.com