Tanda of the Week 25 / 2014 - Miguel Caló and Alberto Podestá 1954-1969

DJ's Birger Haugdal, Jens-Ingo Brodesser, Antti Suniala, Andrés Molina & Michael Lavocah

1. Miguel Caló / Alberto Podestá - "Qué falta que me hacés!" 1963
2. Miguel Caló / Alberto Podestá - "Noche de locura" 1954
3. Miguel Caló / Alberto Podestá - "Un infierno" 1954
4. Miguel Caló - "En fa menor" 1969

DJ Stefan Ok (who has contributed a few of his tandas to TOTW) shared Miguel Caló's "Un infierno" on the increasingly popular "The Tango Now Playing In My Head Is..." group on Facebook and suggested that I should do a tanda with the song. Challenge accepted!

"Un infierno" was recorded in 1954 with the singer Alberto Podestá and it is a bitter song of love that made a poor man's life hell. Like always, Miguel Caló's orchestra is on fire and the musicians get to show their talent; listen to the short violin solo by Enrique Francini (if I'm not wrong - I don't have my Encyclopedia of Tango with me right now) at 0:51-0:59 for an example.

The process of creating this tanda around the song went a little something like this - First I naturally want to look for songs by Podestá and Caló from the same time period. They recorded six tangos in 1954 of which the most famous one is probably "La cantina" and others include "El Bazar de los Juguetes" and "Oracion Rante". I found that "Noche de Locura" fit the love theme better though with an invitation to the night of madness: 

¡No, no bebas! ¡Ven y bésame! ¿Que esperas...?
Emborráchate de amor igual que yo.

While I like all of these songs I'm left with a feeling that making a tanda of only the songs from 1954 would not satisfy me as a dancer. Another thing to take into consideration is that depending on the amount of 1950's (or beyond) tandas you want to play in the milonga - this tanda has to compete with the kings of 1950's tango Di Sarli, Pugliese and D'Arienzo... so you have to make it a good one. The songs have a fairly good structure and clarity for dancing with a balanced amount of orchestral parts and vocal parts but still... I'm assuming these are all compositions from the 50's and already that makes a big difference in comparing to early 40's compositions.  To understand better what I'm getting at listen to the radio recording from 1960's of Caló and Podestá performing "Mañana Ire Temprano", which was composed by Enrique Francini and recorded by Caló with Raúl Iriarte in 1943. The arrangement for the 60's version is very true to the original recording and you can hear how the early 40's compositions were just perfect for dancing. Unfortunately Podestá never recorded the song with Miguel Caló.

So I have to look a bit further to spice up the tanda and I think there's no better option than to open with the amazing "Que falta que me haces" from 1963. Fortunately the 1954 recordings are in excellent quality (a part for some small issues of low digital quality in the high end sounds) and they follow the opening song perfectly and the the almost 10 year gap is not noticeable.

Sometimes with vocal tango tandas that are a bit of a challenge for the dancers I like to try to make the tanda a little easier mixing one instrumental song in there. And especially in this case I like to also showcase the great quality of the orchestra itself. The last track of the tanda "En Fa Menor" is an instrumental from 1969 was also recorded by Caló in 1954 and although I like that version a lot I find that with the passing years the arrangement for 1969 was simplified a little and it is better for dancing and the sound of the orchestra and recording go well with the opening track and the rest of the tanda. You have to be aware that the 1969 version is in stereo and there's quite a lot of panning of the instruments going on, so when playing such songs I recommend either editing a mono version of the song or making sure your mixer is on a mono output setting to get a more balanced playback for your milonga. For the curios ones - there's also a version of "En Fa Menor" by Roberto Calo, the brother of Miguel Caló.

Thank you Stefan for your suggestion! I think the more I listen to this tanda the more I like it and I will definitely play it sometimes in the future milongas. Enjoy!

PS. I'm in Finland now after the TangoSauna Marathon (look picture above) and playing finnish tango and other old old dance music in the great We Love Helsinki Mid Summer's Ball for these two nights... therefore I'd like to leave you with a cortina you might recognize.

Calo, Miguel - TOTW - Todo Tango - tango.info - iTunes Store
Podestá, Alberto - TOTW - Todo Tango - tango.info - iTunes Store