Artists
The people who made tango are at the heart of Club de Tango. The original website, online since 1998, published interviews, portraits and a day-by-day calendar of tango anniversaries, the Efemérides tangueras; many of its articles had first appeared in the Revista Club de Tango. The pages in this section bring those people back in English. Each one starts from such an original text and adds what independent sources confirm, and each names its sources and links the archived Spanish original.
Some names need no introduction. Tita Merello told a radio interviewer in 1934 that she would become the great actress of Buenos Aires, and did. Charlo was the singer of a thousand sweethearts. Others are known mainly to collectors and dancers: the voices behind the refrains of the dance orchestras, the guitarists who accompanied the great singers, the composers known for one tango. Francisco Rotundo built his orchestra around its singers; Rosita Melo is remembered for a single waltz, Desde el alma.
The articles are grouped below by what the artists did, with one sentence on each. Where a recording exists, the article lets you listen to it.
Singers and actresses
- Tita Merello in 1934: The Interview That Predicted a Career
In December 1934 Tita Merello told the radio journalist Héctor Bates how a girl from San Telmo who learned to read at twenty became a tango star, and that she would one day be Argentina's great actress.
- Charlo on the Radio: "Old Tango for Dancing, New Tango for Singing"
Interviewed on Radio Belgrano by Héctor Bates, Charlo told how a bank clerk who kept arriving late became the singer of a thousand sweethearts, and why he preferred old tangos for dancing.
- Osvaldo Ribó: Tanturi's Singer and His Late Album Papel picado
In 1999 Osvaldo Ribó, once a singer with Ricardo Tanturi's orchestra, recorded an album for a group of Buenos Aires collectors and named it after the tango that had given him most joy, Papel picado.
- Jorge Durán: From Folk Songs to Carlos Di Sarli's Baritone
Jorge Durán came from the vineyards of San Juan, sang folk songs before tango, made his first tango records with Emilio Balcarce and found his best years with Carlos Di Sarli.
- Olga Lamas: The Mischievous Voice of Tango
Olga Lamas, born in Rosario in 1924, built a career on humorous tangos and milongas and earned the nickname La voz traviesa del tango, the mischievous voice of tango.
- Anita Palmero: The Andalusian Who Became a Tango Star
Born in Ronda in 1902, Anita Palmero sang cuplés in North Africa, arrived in Buenos Aires as a Spanish tonadillera and, guided by José Razzano, became one of the tango singers of the 1920s and 1930s.
- Amanda Las Heras: Actress and Singer of Canaro's Revues
Amanda Las Heras was an actress and cancionista of the revue stage who sang with Francisco Canaro and Roberto Firpo and shared the bill with Tita Merello in the 1932 hit La muchachada del centro.
- Maruja Pais: Tango Singer and Actress of Buenos Aires Radio
Maruja Pais sang tango on Radio Nacional and Radio El Mundo while working as an actress in radio drama, and in the late 1940s she appeared in two Argentine films.
- Teresita Asprella: A Tango Singer in 1920s Paris
Teresita Asprella, known as La Goyita, sang tango in Paris in the mid-1920s with Eduardo Bianco, Bachicha and Francisco Canaro, then left the stage and was almost forgotten.
- Norma Galán: A 1930s Tango Voice on Radio Cultura
Norma Galán was a Buenos Aires tango singer born in 1917 who made her radio debut on Radio Cultura in 1935; almost everything else about her career is undocumented.
- Rodolfo Martínez: From Tinelli's Orchestra to the Martínez-Ledesma Duo
Rodolfo Martínez began as a tango singer with the orchestras of José Tinelli and Pedro Laurenz and later became one half of the Martínez-Ledesma duo, one of the long-lived acts of Argentine folk music.
- Juan Darthés: The Tango Singer's Son Behind the Stage Name
Juan Darthés grew up with the tangos his father, the singer Oscar Fuentes, sang on tour; he recorded tango before television made him famous.
- Susana Naidich: The Voice Teacher Behind a Tango Singer
Club de Tango's tango calendar names Susana Naidich only once, as one of the teachers who trained the voice of the tango singer Gloria Marcó.
Orchestras and musicians
- Francisco Rotundo: An Orchestra Built for Its Singers
In 1998, forty years after disbanding his orchestra, Francisco Rotundo told Revista Club de Tango how a neighbourhood band became the orchestra of Floreal Ruiz, Enrique Campos and Julio Sosa.
- Orlando Goñi: The Pianist Who Drove Troilo's First Orchestra
Orlando Goñi lived only thirty years, but his left hand shaped the sound of Aníbal Troilo's first orchestra, and the orchestra he led himself survives on just four private acetates.
- Emilio Balcarce: The Arranger Who Wrote La bordona
Emilio Balcarce led orchestras for Alberto Castillo and Alberto Marino, shaped the sound of Osvaldo Pugliese's orchestra for twenty years and wrote La bordona.
- Carlos Brunelli: A Son in the Shadow of the Mago del Acordeón
Carlos Brunelli is known almost only through his father, the accordionist Feliciano Brunelli, whose 1964 Nuevo Cuarteto he joined.
- Agustín Carlevaro: The Architect Who Played Tango on Solo Guitar
Agustín Carlevaro spent his working life as an architect in Montevideo and became, late in life, one of the most admired interpreters of tango on the solo guitar.
- Juan Carlos Gorrías: A Guitarist Behind the Tango Singers
Juan Carlos Gorrías spent his career in the guitar groups that accompanied tango singers, from Jorge Vidal to Jorge Durán, and in the trio he formed with Roberto Grela and Domingo Laine.
- Ricardo Francia: The Musician Who Brought Fernando Tell to Japan
Ricardo Francia appears in the Club de Tango archive in a single paragraph: the musician in Japan who invited the bandoneonist Fernando Tell there in 1961.
Composers and lyricists
- Rosita Melo and Desde el alma: The Waltz a Teenager Wrote
Rosita Melo is known for a single piece: the waltz Desde el alma, written in her teens, recorded by Roberto Firpo and given its lasting lyrics by Homero Manzi in 1948.
- Francisco Gorrindo: The Quilmes Poet Behind Las cuarenta and Paciencia
Francisco Gorrindo never left his native Quilmes, yet in the late 1930s his hard, unsentimental lyrics, from Las cuarenta to Paciencia, were sung all over Buenos Aires.
- Manuel Posadas: The Afro-Argentine Violinist Behind a Tango Family
Manuel Posadas, an Afro-Argentine violinist trained in Europe, played first violin at the Teatro Colón and taught both the composer Juan José Castro and his own brother, the tango composer Carlos Posadas.
More
- Domingo Conte: From the Cardboard Factory to Canaro's Stage
Domingo Conte left school at eleven to work in a cardboard factory and, within a few years, was singing Canaro's tangos at the Teatro Nacional and starring in the most popular radio serial of Buenos Aires.
- Eladia Blázquez: The Songwriter Who Brought Tango Up to Date
Eladia Blázquez sang Spanish and folk songs as a child, wrote boleros, and from around 1960 became one of the few new voices to write lasting tangos about Buenos Aires.
- Carlos Gardel: His Films, His Last Letter and Two Debates
A checked list of Carlos Gardel's films, a note he wrote in Bogotá three days before his death, and two contributions to the long argument over where he went to school and where he was born.
- Gardel and Razzano in Azul, 1922: A Tour Told in Letters
Four letters kept by a provincial theatre in Azul show the Gardel–Razzano duo's manager haggling over dates, posters and tickets for two nights in April 1922.
- The Spaniards in Gardel's Songbook: Authors and Recordings
From Manuel Jovés and Antonio Viergol in Buenos Aires to the Barcelona sessions of 1927 and 1928, a surprising share of Carlos Gardel's songs came from Spanish-born authors.
- Gardel in Venezuela, 1935: Crowds, a Dictator and a Burning Circus
Two months before he died in Medellín, Carlos Gardel landed at La Guaira and spent four weeks singing in Caracas, Maracay, Valencia, Maracaibo and the oil town of Cabimas.
- Juan B. Guido: The Bandoneonist Called El Lecherito
Juan Bautista Guido, the milkman's son nicknamed El Lecherito, played bandoneon with Firpo and Greco, led his own orchestra on Victor records, and still insisted he was a player, not a composer.
- Osvaldo Montes: An Afternoon with the Marinero of the Bandoneon
In a conversation with Jorge Fernández, the Rosario bandoneonist Osvaldo Montes explained the stories behind his own tangos, his nickname el Marinero and forty years spent with the bandoneon.
