Juan Carlos Gorrías: A Guitarist Behind the Tango Singers

Juan Carlos Gorrias

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.

At a glance

  • Born on 15 August 1925 in Buenos Aires, according to the Club de Tango calendar
  • Member of the guitar trio Báez, Peralta and Gorrías, which accompanied Jorge Vidal, and of the Trío Gorrías-Grela-Laine
  • Accompanied Jorge Durán (1971), Néstor Soler (1977), Héctor De Rosas (1978) and others on record

Fuente original: «Efemérides tangueras (agosto)» (Efemérides tangueras, Club de Tango) · Resumen en español ↓

In tango, the guitar has always belonged to the singer. Since Carlos Gardel’s day, a group of two, three or four guitars has been the classic accompaniment for a voice, closer and more flexible than an orchestra. Juan Carlos Gorrías was one of the guitarists who did this work. His name appears again and again in the credits of singers’ records, usually next to those of other guitarists. The old Club de Tango anniversary calendar, Efemérides tangueras, gives him a short entry under 15 August. This page sets it beside the record credits collected by Todotango and by Uruguay’s National Library.

Ángel Cárdenas with the guitars of Peralta, Gorrías and Avilano · Uploaded to YouTube by “Walter Larroquet”, not an official release. The player loads from YouTube only after you click.

What the calendar records

The calendar notes that the guitarist Juan Carlos Gorrías (spelled “Gorria” in the entry) was born in Buenos Aires in 1925. It describes him as a member of the trio Báez, Peralta and Gorrías, which accompanied the singer Jorge Vidal and several other important performers. That is the entire entry. We have found no independent source for his date of birth or of death.

Trios and quartets of guitars

Gorrías worked mainly in small guitar ensembles, and the names of his partners change from record to record. Besides the trio with Báez and Peralta named in the calendar, the Centro de Documentación Musical of Uruguay’s National Library lists a Trío Gorrías-Grela-Laine, made up of Roberto Grela, Juan Carlos Gorrías and Domingo Laine, active in Buenos Aires (no date given). Grela is best known for his duo with the bandoneon player Aníbal Troilo, which the same catalogue dates to 1953.

Domingo Laine is the partner who appears most often. He is named with Gorrías in several of the recordings below.

The singers

The credits that Todotango’s biographers give show how much of Gorrías’s work was with singers:

Carlos Peralta, named with Gorrías in the De Rosas credits, is presumably the Peralta of the trio mentioned in the calendar, though no source we found says so directly.

Why his name matters to dancers

Recordings with guitar accompaniment are rarely played for dancing at a milonga. They are, however, where many tango singers are heard most directly, and where a lot of the repertoire survives in versions from the 1960s and 1970s, when the big orchestras had largely disappeared. Gorrías is one of the tango artists whose work is heard mainly through other people’s names on the record sleeve.

Other accounts of his life give a different year and place of birth, a date of death and a long list of famous singers he accompanied. Apart from the names above, we could not confirm these in an independent source, so they are not repeated here.

Sources