Tango Archive

Here’s the man of a revolutionary rhythm together with one of the most famous ”softer”, higher male voices of the tango world, Hector Mauré (left). In the early 40s, Mauré gave a quite unique, lyrical character to D’Arienzo’s music compared to other singers in this orchestra who had a more usual tough-guy voice. In one way or another, the combination of D’Arienzo’s tough music and Mauré’s voice is quite odd, but as a tango DJ, I am glad such particularities exist, because it provides us with a certain diversity.

I am proud to present what is probably the first available clear picture of Osvaldo Fresedo and his champion singer Roberto Ray together. These two men are some of my greatest heroes in tango music and whenever I am DJ-ing somewhere, it’s not easy to avoid playing their superb, exquisite, highly creative dance music (right from the heart of the Golden Age of tango), which is an almost guaranteed floor-filler in our European milongas.

Francisco Canaro, one of the most famous and in any case most financially succesful orchestra leaders, was only one out of several brothers who were tango musicians themselves too: Rafael, Mario and Juan. Juan is definitely an example of the more ‘hidden’ tango musicians eclipsed by oblivion because of their lack of substantial tango dance recordings. In any case, and like his brothers, Juan was a very active musician touring both Europe and Latin America with his orchestra.

Tango music wasn’t just hard work, fierce competition and posing with inescapable female fans. Sometimes, you also had to pour drinks, cut some ham into slices for a sandwich, or receive a phone call by someone ordering his lunch. At least, that’s what this image of Roberto Firpo (left), Francisco Lomuto (center) and Francisco Canaro (right) is trying to make us believe.

Oh, it seems it wasn’t just D’Arienzo who was popular on the dance floor. Here we can see Edgardo Donato dancing in a reasonably close embrace with a movie star. He looks very confident as a ‘milonguero style dancer’, many decades before anyone ever coined that term. With an additional bit of imagination, and judging from her appearance, the other lady on this picture might be Lita Morales, one of his singers.

Apparently, not only famous singers-movie stars like Carlos Gardel have been posing as admiration material for hordes of female fans. Here, we can see orchestra leader and pianist Lucio Demare just standing there like a sex symbol, and indeed in one way or another he is, when I think of all those tangueras running towards the floor when a hit like ”No te apures Carablanca” is playing.

The following picture shows us Miguel Caló, a young Alberto Podestá (who was initially using another stage name, Juan Carlos Morel, mentioned below), and several other big names from this Orchestra of the Stars, an outburst of talented musicians in the early 40s, among whom we will identify three major names.

Caló himself can be seen in the center of the group, as the man with the dark suit and the dark tie. Next to him, in the only other dark suit, is Podestá, and subsequently, the man right next to Podestá is violinist Enrique Francini. Somewhere more to the left, we discern pianist Osmar Maderna, touching someone’s arm with his right hand. Armando Pontier, a bandoneonist, can be identified as the last face on the left side, sadly neither fully nor clearly shown on this picture.

Another famous name in this orchestra, who also eventually left to form his own band, was Domingo Federico, on this photo most likely the person immediately to the left of Caló.

Here’s another new picture of Smiling Di Sarli’s winning team in the early 40s, including singer Roberto Rufino who, this time, looks as if he is only 14 years old, which is actually relatively quite mature compared to some other pictures I found.

Pedro Laurenz, one of the greatest bandoneon players ever, is shown here playing on his instrument, joined by singer Martin Podestá, who seems busy trying to remember the text he should be singing while the boss rehearses some of those marvellous melodies… or perhaps it’s just a posed picture for the fan crowd, but a nice one nontheless!

Here’s another picture of rhythm warlord Juan D’Arienzo together with his early 1940s champion Hector Mauré (right) and the lesser-known yet quite productive Alberto Reynal (left). The singers are shown looking each other in the eyes: what are their faces trying to tell us? Usually singers are portrayed all smiling and brotherly, but the reality was sometimes different. Legend has it Roberto Maida quit Canaro’s orchestra in 1939 out of pure jealousy when the latter suddenly admitted both Ernesto Famá and Francisco Amor to his team. Who knows?