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.

At a glance

  • Born on 22 June 1909 in Tucumán, according to the Club de Tango calendar; a 2018 Radio Nacional review gives a birthplace in Spain
  • Tango singer with José Tinelli (Radio Stentor, 1935) and Pedro Laurenz; left Tinelli in 1938
  • Formed the folk duo Martínez-Ledesma with Víctor Ledesma in Montevideo in 1932; appeared in the film La virgencita de madera (1937)

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

Rodolfo Martínez belongs to a small group of singers who moved easily between tango and Argentine folk music. In the 1930s he was the male voice of José Tinelli’s orchestra and also sang with Pedro Laurenz. At the same time, and for far longer, he was one half of the Martínez-Ledesma duo, which toured Argentina and the Americas for decades. The old Club de Tango anniversary calendar, Efemérides tangueras, gives him one line under 22 June. This page sets that line next to what other sources say about him and about the duo, and marks where they disagree.

What the calendar records

Under 22 June 1909 the calendar notes the birth in Tucumán of Rodolfo Martínez. It describes him as a tango singer at first, with the orchestras of José Tinelli and Pedro Laurenz, who later turned to folk music (folklore) as a member of the “famous” Martínez-Ledesma duo. That is the whole entry. Like most of the calendar, it gives no source and no date of death.

A short review published by Radio Nacional in 2018 gives a different origin. Based on a text by Felipe Pinto for Reliquias del Folklore, it calls Martínez a well-known tango singer born in Spain, in a small town in the region of Valencia, and says he learned the guitar as a teenager in Salta from Payo Solá. The newspaper Río Negro, in its 2009 report on Víctor Ledesma’s death, calls Martínez tucumano, a man from Tucumán. We have found no document that settles the question, so both versions are given here.

A tango singer of the 1930s

The tango historian Abel Palermo places Martínez in José Tinelli’s orchestra. In his biography of Tinelli on Todotango he lists Rodolfo Martínez as the singer when the orchestra played on Radio Stentor in 1935. In his biography of the singer Chola Bosch, Tinelli’s wife, Palermo writes that Martínez was the male vocalist of the orchestra while she sang with it. Anamaría Blasetti, writing about the bandoneon player Luciano Leocata, quotes his memory of Tinelli’s shows on Radio Stentor in the mid-1930s, with Rodolfo Martínez and Chola Bosch as the singers.

Martínez left Tinelli in 1938. According to Palermo’s biography of Luis Mendoza, Tinelli called Mendoza that year because his singer Rodolfo Martínez had just quit.

The period with Tinelli also brought Martínez to the cinema. The film database cinenacional.com lists him in the cast of La virgencita de madera (1937), directed by Sebastián M. Naón, with Chola Bosch and the Ratti brothers. Palermo adds that Tinelli wrote the music for the film. For the second orchestra named in the calendar, that of the bandoneon player Pedro Laurenz, we have found no independent detail. The calendar is the source for that link.

The Martínez-Ledesma duo

The partnership that defined his career began in Montevideo. Radio Nacional and Río Negro agree that Rodolfo Martínez and Víctor Manuel Ledesma formed the duo in 1932. Ledesma, according to the Radio Nacional review, was born in 1909 in Loreto, in the province of Santiago del Estero. He learned with Andrés Chazarreta, a central figure of Argentine folk music, and wrote the chacarera Chakay Manta with the Hermanos Ábalos. (A chacarera is a lively folk dance in 6/8 from the north-west of Argentina.)

On one of their returns to Buenos Aires, in 1935, the duo took part in the opening of LR1 Radio El Mundo on Calle Maipú. After that they were a regular act on the station for nine years, according to the same review. It also says the two men toured much of Argentina and the Americas together for almost 45 years. Río Negro describes the career as long and spread across Latin America, and notes that Ledesma, Martínez and Carlos García performed together several times.

For tango dancers, the interest of Martínez lies in that double life. In the mid-1930s the same singer could be heard in a tango orchestra on Radio Stentor and in a folk duo on Radio El Mundo. The calendar puts it in a single sentence: first tango, then folklore.

What is not covered here

Other accounts of Martínez’s life give a start at Radio Carve in Montevideo, a date of death and further films and recordings. We could not confirm these in an independent source and have left them out. Readers who know of a reliable document, such as an obituary or a dated programme, are welcome to tell us.

Rodolfo Martínez is one of many tango artists known today mostly through short entries like this one.

Sources