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.

At a glance

  • Born in Buenos Aires on 1 February 1898, died on 5 October 1945; nicknamed El Lecherito after his father's dairy
  • Learned the bandoneon from Arturo Severino and played with Vicente Greco and for several seasons in Roberto Firpo's orchestra
  • Led the Orquesta Típica J. Guido on Victor records from 1927 or 1928; Carlos Gardel recorded his tangos Coquetita, Muñeca de carne and Tarde gris

Fuente original: «Las entrevistas con Bates: Juan B. Guido» (Antena, 1935) · Resumen en español ↓

Juan Bautista Guido belonged to the generation that carried tango from the cafés of the old suburbs to the radio studios and recording rooms of the 1920s. He was a bandoneonist first and foremost, a sought-after sideman and then a bandleader with his own records, and he wrote a long list of tangos. In January 1935 he talked about his life on Radio Belgrano with the journalist Héctor Bates, in the programme Tangos y Autores, and the magazine Antena printed a summary on 26 January 1935. Revista Club de Tango reprinted it in 1995. This page retells the interview in our own words and adds what independent sources record about this tango artist.

The milkman’s son

Guido was born in Buenos Aires on 1 February 1898 and died on 5 October 1945, according to the Todotango biography by Raúl Lafuente, first published in 1974 by the Ateneo de Estudios Históricos Parque de los Patricios. Lafuente places his childhood in Parque de los Patricios.

In the interview Guido said he left school after the sixth grade because he wanted to be a carpenter, a trade he only half learned. His father owned a profitable dairy and urged him to study like his school friends; tired of insisting, he finally told the boy to become a milkman at least, but to be something. Hence the nickname by which his friends knew him: El Lecherito, the little milkman.

From the accordion to the bandoneon

At six, Guido told Bates, he was already playing the accordion by ear, and at twelve he began to learn music with friends from the neighbourhood. In 1912 he took lessons from Arturo Severino, known as La Vieja, who taught him the bandoneon. Lafuente has him playing with Severino from the age of thirteen. A few months later Severino invited him into a large group for a festival, three bandoneons, three violins, three guitars and a flute, which Guido counted among the first ensembles of its kind.

Cafés, cabarets and Firpo

Guido then formed a trio of violin, guitar and bandoneon for the Café 43 at Caseros and Manuel García. Lafuente dates that debut to 1913, when Guido was fifteen. He went on to play with the pianist Samuel Castriota at the Olimpo and with the group of Vicente Greco at the dance house of Laura; Lafuente says Greco helped him deepen his technique.

Around 1916 he formed a quintet with the pianist José María Rizzutti, two violins and the flautist José Galarza. It played at the café La Morocha, at the bar Los Leones in Barracas and for about a year at the Tabarís (Tabarín in the interview). Next came a quartet at the Parisién on Alvear avenue with the violinists Tito Roccatagliata and José Rosito and the pianist Eduardo Pereyra. Then, Guido said, he spent several years in the orchestra of Roberto Firpo. Lafuente names Cayetano Puglisi, Elvino Vardaro and José Servidio as his colleagues there and says Guido was by then regarded as a star. Afterwards he led groups with the pianist Carlos Vicente Geroni Flores (“el negro Flores” in the interview) and again with Severino, at a café in Parque de los Patricios.

Records and radio

Guido told Bates that after recording some discs he played at the inauguration of the radio station LR5, worked in 1923 at the Casino Pigall with Rossano, and was now a member of Ángel Greco’s old-guard ensemble. Lafuente confirms the opening broadcast of LR5 Radio Excelsior and dates his joining Greco’s Guardia Vieja orchestra to 1935.

His recordings were made for Victor. Lafuente counts around 80 pieces between 1928 and 1930, with Vardaro and Alcides Palavecino among the violins, Pedro Vergez at the piano and, on some sides, the singer Juan Lauga. The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) lists the Orquesta Típica J. Guido under Juan Bautista Guido as leader; its entry for the tango Dejá de atorrar (Victor 79941) dates the session to late 1927 (“fall 1927”) in Buenos Aires, while noting that the Victor ledgers are lost and that the master reached the plant on 30 December 1927.

Lafuente also recalls a programme of July 1929 at the Cine Teatro Suipacha that billed the “Típica Criolla Juan B. Guido” alongside Carlos Gardel, and he writes that Gardel recorded three of Guido’s tangos: Coquetita, Muñeca de carne and Tarde gris.

A player, not a composer

The most striking part of the interview is Guido’s view of tango in 1935. The old tango, he said, was better as tango; the new one, with few exceptions, was really song. He admired the younger bandoneonists, whose skill went beyond anything he had imagined, but wished they would raise the instrument’s standing by also playing more ambitious music. Any orchestra, even a large symphony orchestra, could play tango, he argued, if someone arranged it without losing its flavour and rhythm; the great masters who had tried did not feel tango and turned it into opera. He ended by saying he had complete faith in a revival of tango.

He listed his own tangos, among them Mi piba, Pa’ que veas, Dempsey, Mucho corazón and Alma triste, as well as Tarde gris and Muñeca de carne. None of them, he said, had been a hit, so despite their number he saw himself as a performer rather than a composer. Lafuente adds the waltz Mi hechicera and notes that Guido was one of the bandoneonists who specialised in the vals criollo.

Bates interviewed other artists on Radio Belgrano as well; the singer Domingo Conte was one of them. Guido’s last years, according to Lafuente, were marked by illness. In 1945 he still joined the orchestra of the radio show De Villoldo a Gardel and toured the interior, and he died that October.

Sources