Mestizos Practica Playlist,Nov 5, 2017

My first turn DJing a popular Sunday matinee practica at Mestizos Coffeehouse, an oasis of community and alt-culture on the struggling West Side. Many locals are gone for the weekend to a workshop in Boise, and it's my turn to fill in. I show up at un-tango-ishly early 10:45 am, fearing that with so many absentees, we may never get traction. But just a couple tandas later, the floor starts to come alive...
01. Quinteto Don Pancho - Instrumental "El garron" 1938 2:27
02. Quinteto Don Pancho - Instrumental "Alma en pena" 1938 2:46
03. Quinteto Don Pancho - Instrumental "Champagne tango" 1938 2:30
04. Maya Kristalinskaya  "A za oknom"  0:16
05. Osvaldo Fresedo - Instrumental  "Pimienta" 1939 2:52
06. Osvaldo Fresedo - Instrumental  "Derecho viejo" 1941 2:31
07. Osvaldo Fresedo - Instrumental  "Arrabalero" 1939 2:32
08. Soda Stereo  "En la ciudad de furia"  0:24
Adolfo Carabelli is one of my favorite "tango underdogs", underappreciated yet truly wonderful orchestra leaders - except he lead not just one orchestra but two, at essentially the same time. A classical and jazz pianist and composer with extensive European education, Carabelli ended up stuck in his birth country, Argentina, when WWI broke out. At the age of 32, the jazz musician was thrust into the world of tango almost by chance. An ascendant recording label, Victor, hired Carabelli as an artistic director in 1925, with an assignment to best the rival networks' house-brand orchestras in jazz - and also in tango. And Adolfo Carabelli achieved a truly spectacular success with Orquesta Tipica Victor (OTV), attracting top talent to the label - and to his own jazz band, which also started recording excellent tangos from 1931 on (for the tango records, they would call themselves an Orquesta Tipica rather than a Jazz Band, just like many other Argentine orchestras did in the hardscrabble post-Great Depression years). 

Adolfo Carabelli
September 8, 1893 - January 25, 1947

A great innovator and bandleader of the difficult years which preceded Tango's Golden Age, Carabelli ended up excluded from the world of tango music just as it took off again. Carabelli's own success at Victor was partly to blame, as the label sought to replicate his success and formed many additional house bands in the 1930s, undercutting its flagship OTV. Intrigue and romantic suffering took its toll on the musician. In 1936, Carabelli lost the helm of OTV to his star bandoneonist,  Federico Scorticati. Later on, as the best musicians found a real explosion of opportunities in the newly-formed tango orchestras of the late 1930s, and Carabelli's depression deepened, his own orchestra folded too, recording its last piece in 1940. Carabelli died in 1947 in complete obscurity. 
09. Adolfo Carabelli - Alberto Gómez "Alma" 1932 2:56
10. Adolfo Carabelli - Alberto Gómez "Inspiración" 1932 3:23
11. Orquesta Tipica Victor (dir. A. Carabelli) - Luis Diaz "Secreto" 1932 2:45
12.  "Hagedel Sheli"  0:28
It's just a few weeks past Pedro Laurenz's 115th anniversary, and I'm going to celebrate it by generously sprinkling tandas of the great bandoneonist and bandleader. First, the intensely rhythmic tangos of Laurenz's eary orchestra period:
13. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Vieja amiga" 1938 3:13
14. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Desconsuelo" 1940 2:29
15. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "No me extrana" 1940 2:44
16. Marek Jackowski   "Oprócz blekitnego nieba"  0:23
17. Haris Alexiou  "To Tango Tis Nefelis" 1998 4:07
18. Jem  "Come On Closer"  2004 3:47
19. Fool's Garden "Lemon Tree" 1999 3:09
20. Lyube  "Bat'ka Makhno cortina 1"  0:18
Miguel Caló's 110th anniversary was also just a few days ago, on October 28th. Let me start celebrating Calo with a milonga tanda I seldom play:
21. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón "Milonga que peina canas" 1942 2:20
22. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón "Milonga Antigua" 1942 2:25
23. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón "Azabache" 1942 3:03
A cortina which begs dancing to? I need to take a closer look at Viktor Tsoy's dark classic ... it's nearly 7 minutes long, but perhaps a reasonable-length track can be cut?

24. Viktor Tsoy  "Kukushka cortina long 2"  0:37
As tango grows more melodic and dramatic in the 1940s, Laurenz records these timeless masterpieces:
25. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podesta "Alma de bohemio" 1943 2:43
26. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podesta "Todo" 1943 2:37
27. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podesta "Recien" 1943 2:43
28. Viktor Tsoy  "Konchitsya leto (summers end) cortina long 2"  0:40
Recently, we were excited to redicsover the only LP of Argentine tango ever recorded in Russia, by Cuarteto Buenos Aires of Alberto Besprosvan a.k.a. Tito Bespros. Someone already dared to play a selection from the album at a milonga. I couldn't resist too. I think it may actually work sometimes; my biggest gripe is that the volume of the music gets impossibly law when the vocalist sings...
29. Tito Bespros - Siro San Roman "Media Luz" 1968 2:32
30. Tito Bespros - Siro San Roman "Al Compas Del Corazon" 1968 2:40
31. Tito Bespros - Siro San Roman "El Choclo" 1968 2:17
Calo's classic valses:
32. Miguel Caló - Raul Berón "El Vals Soñador" 1942 3:29
33. Miguel Caló - Alberto Podestá  "Bajo un cielo de estrellas (vals)" 1941 2:37
34. Miguel Caló - Alberto Podestá  "Pedacito de cielo (vals)" 1942 2:21
35. Vitas  "7, the element cortina" 2012, 2012 0:23
36. Damour Vocal Band  "Sway"  3:49
37. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole  "Over The Rainbow" 2001 3:32
38. Souad Massi  "Ghir Enta" 2008 5:06
39. Pink Floyd  "Goodbye Blue Sky cortina long 2"  0:29
Some of my favorite and oft-played tangos of Calo's - but I will play his unusuals later, too.
41. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón  "Corazón no le hagas caso" 1942 3:00
42. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón  "Jamás retornarás" 1942 2:28
43. Miguel Calo - Raul Beron  "Tristezas de la calle Corrientes" 1942 2:46
44. Endless Boogie  "High Drag cortina" 2016 0:22
I was exploring D'Arienzo's tangos with the voice of Hector Maure recently, enjoying their bitter tinge. These are the most brooding pieces of D'Arienzo than I ever played. Beautiful and sad. Especially the opening track... 
45. Juan D'Arienzo - Héctor Mauré "Uno" 1943 3:17
46. Juan D'Arienzo - Héctor Mauré "Enamorado (Metido)" 1943 2:33
47. Juan D'Arienzo - Alberto Echagüe "No Nos Veremos Nunca" 1944 3:33
48. Johnny Cash  "I walk the line cortina long" 2000 0:40
People sometimes complain that Laurenz's trio of valses, Mendocina / Mascarita / Paisaje, is overplayed?
49. Pedro Láurenz - Alberto Podestá  "Paisaje" 1943 2:51
50. Pedro Láurenz - Carlos Bermudez y Jorge Linares "Mendocina" 1944 2:35
51. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "Corazon De Artista" 1936 2:18
52. Stas Borsov  "Anyuta cortina" 2000 0:21
Turn for interesting Calo records which I haven't played before ... and I was so excited about the closing track that I didn't realize that I played the same theme by a different orchestra in the beginning of the practica...
53. Miguel Calo - Instrumental "La guinada" 1948 2:47
54. Miguel Calo - Instrumental "Saludos" 1944 2:23
55. Miguel Calo - Instrumental "Inspiracion" 1943 2:47
56. Leonid Bykov  "Smuglyanka cortina long"  0:33
57. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "Decile Que Vuelva" 1942 2:33
58. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo  "Así Se Baila El Tango" 1942 2:36
59. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo  "La vida es corta" 1941 2:25
60. Alexey Kudryavtsev  "The heart breaks cortina 1"  0:22
Less than a week from now, we are going to accompany Tango West Orchestra on stage, and I get a request to play some of the temas of the planned performance (Silueta porteña, Desde el alma, Romance the barrio) for the practice. And since the remaining vals and milonga tandas were planned as non-traditional, I am incorporating non-traditional versions of these venerable titles into the list:
61. Trio Garufa  "Silueta Porteña (Electro Milonga)" 2008 2:35
62. The Alex Krebs Tango Sextet  "Negrito" 2011 1:53
63. Otros Aires  "Perro Viejo" 2016 3:21
64. Alla Pugacheva  "Million Scarlet Roses (cortina long)"  0:39
65. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Ahora No Me Conocés" 1941 2:35
66. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Solo compasion" 1941 2:58
67. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Ninguna" 1942 2:59
68. Sandro de America  "Yo te amo cortina long"  0:44
69. Miguel Calo - Raul Iriarte  "La vi llegar" 1944 3:24
70. Miguel Calo - Raul Iriarte  "Lluvia de abril" 1945 2:42
71. Miguel Calo - Raul Iriarte  "Cada dia te extrano mas" 1943 2:35
72. Jennifer Gasoi  "Happy happy me (cortina 1)" 2012, 2012 0:21
73. Los Cosos De Al Lao  "Romance De Barrio" 2003 2:48
74. Los Tubatango  "Francia (Vals)" 1994 3:03
75. Osvaldo Pugliese - Instrumental "Desde El Alma" 2:58
76. Beatles The Beatles "All you Need is Love cortina" 2006, 2006 0:19
77. Lhasa De Sela Blue Suenos "La Cara de la Pared" 2005 4:23
78. Carlos Libedinsky  "Vi Luz y Subí" 2005 3:18
79. Cirque du Soleil Cirque Du Soleil "Querer" 1994 4:34
and finally a gulp of drama with the parting tanda of Calo...
80. Miguel Calo - Lucho Gatica  "Percal" 1965 2:58
81. Miguel Calo - Lucho Gatica  "Cada dia te extrano mas" 1965 2:32
82. Miguel Calo - Lucho Gatica  "La copa del olvido" 1965 2:47