Royce's Tango Thoughts

D’Arienzo – Orchestra’s Members

Royce — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:05:02 +0000

Above is a simple table, originally included in a LP produced by few Japanese tango fans and collectors in 1983. This table lists out all the key orchestra members of D’Arienzo in different periods. Then I also have a class note (Japan Tango Academy, September 2007) written by Mr. Yasuhiko Fukukawa on D’Arienzo’s orchestra, which contains detail chronological information on the orchestra members. Since I have never seen something as detailed and as organized before, I would like to share them with all D’Arienzo fans. I compiled these two materials into one (very) long and colorful table. I tried to be as accurate and detailed as possible, so I also took reference from Johan’s D’Arienzo discography and Todotango. Still, given that certain members’ information is not available, this table will never be perfect. In the file, I included the original simple table for you to use. Just in case if you’re not happy with mine, you can still work on your own. Feel free to leave me a message if you find any error, I would love this table to be as accurate as possible.

Click here to download: OpenOffice version or Excel version

A Little More from Mr. Fukukawa’s Note

Besides chronological information on the orchestra, Mr. Fukukawa also suggested a framework (see below) of listening D’Arienzo’s music. Mr. Fukukawa is a D’Arienzo aficionado, he collected and listened to D’Arienzo since his university time. He is also the producer of Epoca de Tango – D’Arienzo set. His listening framework is nicely compiled with suggested tracks, I hope everybody can benefit from it. If you don’t understand how he divides the periods, then please study the table at the top of this post.

(I) Period of Electra Record (1928)

(II) Period of Rodolfo Biagi-Juan Polito (1935-1940)

(III) Period of Fulvio Salamanca-Hector Varela-Cayetano Puglisi (1940-1950)

(IV) Period of Fulvio Salamanca-Enrique Alessio-Cayetano Puglisi (1950-1957)

(V) Period of Juan Polito-Carlos Lazzari (from 1957)

According to Mr. Fukukawa, 1944-1947 is the first golden period of D’Arienzo. He said D’Arienzo’s music is full of emotion during this period (Absolutely agree!). Then 1951-1955 is the second golden period of D’Arienzo, because the orchestra members’ combination was perfect! He selected 5 tracks from these two periods, they are indeed “creme de la creme”!

His Best Five:

Tango Music in Japan – Part 7

Royce — Sat, 29 May 2010 08:49:31 +0000

Lately, I have been told from different sources that we can buy Japanese tango labels in Buenos Aires (mainly Akihito Baba’s collection, CTA), at a rather cheap price compared to the original listed price in Japan. Unfortunately I never had a chance to verify the actual CDs of these said sources, and I don’t feel like spending money on it just to know it’s a bootleg or real stuff. CTA’s bootlegs available in Bs.As. is not something new, even Mr. Akihito Baba knows that and says it on his website. Before I got the chance buying the original, I was living on them for quite some years and I’m still living on few of them. I always have complex feeling to these bootlegs – on one hand I’m happy we have this easier and cheaper way to get these gems; on the other hand I hate its poor quality. These bootlegs depreciate quickly after few years, like any computer burned CDs. But still in Hong Kong we said “一分錢、一分貨” (means you paid one cent for a goods, you got the quality that worth one cent), as long as we got the music with a cheap price, we shouldn’t complain.

Here I just want to clarify what “is” the original CTA CD. For me, maybe it’s fair (but not legal) to sell the bootlegs, but it’s definitely not fair to say a bootleg is an original. In the old days, a bootleg really looks like a bootleg – poor printing cover and CD stickers. With technology and people paying attention to marketing, even the bootlegs look pretty good and professional. CD cover is easy to duplicate, we just need a perfect printer and good quality paper. But the CD stickers, hmm… a little harder, but still we can make them look good. However, the original Japanese tango CDs, no matter it’s CTA, AMP or Audio Park, they are commercial pressed CDs and not using any CD stickers! (see the photo) Yes, there’s no barcode; but all of them are registered under the JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers), just like any formally released CDs in Japan. Japanese collectors have resources to release their gems with professional production. Unfortunately most of the Argentinian ones can only afford to do “homemade”, computer-burnt collections. If people thought CTA (or AMP, Audio Park) is just another “homemade” collection, then they are totally wrong!

Summary – Online Discography

Royce — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:28:09 +0000

Years ago, to track the recording year of a tango recorded by an orchestra, we had to rely on the printed copies of discographies written by Nicolas Lefcovich. Many of us would still remember the time of paying “not a small” amount of money to buy those copies in Buenos Aires, and the big copies of Francisco Canaro and Roberto Firpo. Nowadays, thank to many people’s effort, everything can be found online, and discography is no exception. Below is a directory of orchestras’ and singers’ discographies. It will also be useful to those who are new in the field of tango music research.

Orchestras:

Jose Basso
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=435&c=Jos%E9%20Basso

Rodolfo Biagi
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=104&c=Rodolfo%20Biagi

Miguel Calo
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=8&c=Orquesta%20Miguel%20Cal%F3

Francisco Canaro
http://sites.google.com/site/franciscocanarodiscography/
http://www.tangodj.org/canaro.html

Angel D’Agostino
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=12&c=%C1ngel%20DAgostino

Juan D’Arienzo
http://users.telenet.be/tangoteca/darienzo/index.html

Alfredo De Angelis
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=14&c=Orquesta%20Alfredo%20De%20Angelis

Julio De Caro
http://www.tangodj.org/decaro.html

Lucio Demare
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=127&c=Lucio%20Demare

Carlos Di Sarli
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=17&c=Carlos%20Di%20Sarli

Edgardo Donato
http://www.tangodj.org/donato.html

Roberto Firpo
http://www.tangodj.org/firpo.html

Osvaldo Fresedo
http://www.tangodj.org/fresedo.html

Jose Garcia
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=740&c=Jos%E9%20Garc%EDa%20y%20sus%20Zorros%20Grises

Alfredo Gobbi
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=21&c=Alfredo%20Gobbi

Pedro Laurenz
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=22&c=Pedro%20Laurenz

Francisco Lomuto
http://www.tangodj.org/lomuto.html

Osmar Maderna
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=23&c=Osmar%20Maderna

Ricardo Malerba
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=741&c=Orquesta%20Ricardo%20Malerba

Astor Piazzolla
http://www.piazzolla.org/works2/viewlist.html
http://homepage2.nifty.com/mitsu-sa/discografia_p45.htm

Osvaldo Pugliese
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=28&c=Orquesta%20Osvaldo%20Pugliese

Enrique Rodriguez
http://www.tangodj.org/rodriguez.html

Ricardo Tanturi
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=31&c=Orquesta%20Ricardo%20Tanturi

Anibal Troilo
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=32&c=An%EDbal%20Troilo

Orquesta Tipica Victor
http://www.tangodj.org/otv.html

Singers:

Roberto Chanel
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=702&c=Roberto%20Chanel

Charlo
http://ar.groups.yahoo.com/group/perfilesdeltango/message/7345

Alberto Echague (only with Juan D’Arienzo)
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/jdarienzo1.html

Ada Falcon
http://www.elblogdenits.com.ar/foro/index.php?topic=35840.0

Ernesto Fama
http://users.telenet.be/tangoteca/ernesto_fama/index.html

Roberto Rufino
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=172&c=Roberto%20Rufino

Angel Vargas
http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/discografias/grabaciones_autor.asp?id=175&c=%C1ngel%20Vargas

A CD cover… something is wrong

Royce — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:42:02 +0000

While creating a new tango music library on itunes, my computer busy importing my D’Arienzo CDs, I had a look at those CD covers again. I listen to my CDs from time to time, but it’s true I never paid attention to the covers. That’s why only until today, I notice this funny “error” of a CD I bought only for the song “Este Es El Rey”. The cover has a typical picture of Avenida Corrientes, but wait, something is wrong…… Read EVERYTHING on the picture and you will find it out!

Another Version of La Tupungatina

Royce — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:39:06 +0000

Since I read Johan’s aritcle on Pugliese’s 8 controversial recordings, I had been looking for the other version of La Tupungatina. I asked around, it seemed nobody has it. Then few days ago, while I was tidying up my tango CDs, I found a bootleg CD of Pugliese. It was given by a French tango friend, and as far as I remember, he got it from a collector in Amsterdam. I had a look at the index, and then these few words caught my eyes – La Tupungatina Cueca arr en tango C Tapia (inedito). While I was looking around for this song, this CD was already lying in my collection for years!! How stupid I am!

So, this track I found among my collection is indeed the other version of La Tupungatina, just that unfortunately there are defects at the beginning. It is shorter than the one we usually hear from the Reliquias series, so here let’s call it the short version. Besides the sound quality matter, here are some obvious differences I recognized of the two versions, all the time indication below is of the Reliquias version:

At the very beginning, the introduction is shorter. The first few bars of the Reliquias version goes like this: A, A, A1, A1; while in the shorter version, it goes like this: A, A1.
The bass and piano interval at around 0:45 is shorten in the short version.
The interval between 1:47 to 1:54 is missing in the short version.
The violin variation between 2:27 to 2:41 is missing in the short version.
In between the 2:58 to 3:26 piano solo, there’re whistling sound imitated by the violin in the short version.

And if you listen carefully, even though the arrangements are pretty much the same, interpretation of the violin and piano are different in two versions. These are subtle, the more you listen and compare the two versions, the more you will figure them out.

Ok ok…… I know I’m talking too much. Here’s the song. Enjoy!