Tanda of the Week: Rodríguez - Flores (vals/waltz). Tango lyrics translated. Plus a short tutorial!

Tanda of the Week: Rodríguez-Flores (vals) Tutorial, historical pictures and lyrics translated!

++Timeslots++
Start 00:00
Tutorial 00:25
Tengo mil novias 05:44
Las espigadoras 08:15
Clavelito en flor 10:47
Los piconeros 13:05

This week’s tanda features waltzes by Enrique Rodríguez. The orchestra of Rodríguez is one of the popular orchestras from Argentina, but it’s not your typical tango orchestra. In fact, it’s not an ‘orquesta típica’, but a dance orchestra that played all kinds of dance music that were popular at the time, or as Rodríguez himself put it: an ‘orquesta de todos los ritmos’.

Rodríguez plays upbeat tangos with a light touch, fun waltzes, not so many milongas, but lots of foxtrots, and there’s also pasodobles, corridos, polcas, rancheras… Rodríguez plays it all.

His most succesful years were from 1937 till early 1944, together with singers Roberto Flores in the 1930s and Armando Moreno in the 1940s. And for this tanda we focus on the waltzes with Roberto Flores.

Roberto “El Chato” Flores was a singer, actor and composer. He had his debut as an actor in the Pisano theater company in 1923. As a composer, Flores wrote a number of tangos, most notably ‘Tristeza Marina’, for which he wrote the music together with José Dames – a tango that was recorded by Carlos Di Sarli with Roberto Rufino, and by José García for instance.

In 1937, when Enrique Rodríguez had just formed his first orchestra, Rodríguez hired him and Flores made his debut at the Carnival dances of Club Atlético River Plate. Rodríguez and Flores were very successful together in the late 1930s, and in ‘39 they recorded the best selling song by Rodriguez, which was also awarded ‘Theme of the year’: the waltz ‘Tengo mil novias’ which is the opening song of our tanda of the week.


So 'Tengo mil novias', music by Enrique Rodríguez himself and lyrics by Enrique Cadícamo.
Cadícamo wrote the lyrics for hundreds of tangos, valses and milongas – the list is quite impressive – including tangos like ‘Nunca tuvo novio’ (ironically), ‘Garua’, ‘Nostalgias’, and ‘Niebla del Riachuelo’, and the milonga ‘No hay tierra como la mía’. To name but a few. Rodríguez and Cadícamo also wrote some 20 songs together, including another waltz, ‘Lagrimitas de mi corazón’, best known from the recording by Aníbal Troilo.

In Tengo mil novias - I have a thousand girlfriends - Roberto Flores is boasting about all his girlfriends, in all shapes and colours, blondes, brunettes… – “in his imagination” the chorus adds…

The second waltz is ‘Las espigadoras’, written by Jacinto Guerrero Torres, from the Zarzuela “La Rosa Del Azafrán”. Jacinto Guerrero Torres grew up in Toledo, Spain, and “La Rosa Del Azafrán” premiered in Madrid in 1930. So ‘Las espigadoras’ actually isn’t a tango vals originally, but the recording by Rodríguez and Flores is pretty effective.

The third waltz in this tanda is ‘Clavelito en flor’ from 1937. The intro of this waltz has an emphasis on the 4th beat as well as the 1st, unlike the other waltzes in this tanda. So it has a bit of a different feel, which is one of the reasons why I like to include it as the 3rd song in a 4-waltz tanda.

The music is again by Enrique Rodríguez himself, lyrics by José María Casais. Rodríguez and Flores recorded quite a number of waltzes together to choose from, more than fit in one tanda. Other examples are ‘Salud, dinero y amor’, or ‘Que lejos estoy’, but the final waltz in our tanda is ‘Los piconeros’.

'Los piconeros' is again a Spanish waltz, written by Juan Mostazo and Ramón Perelló Rodenas. It’s from the musical film “Carmen, la de Triana” (roughly based on the opera 'Carmen' by Bizet).

So that’s the tanda of this week by Enrique Rodríguez and Roberto Flores:
1. Tengo mil novias
2. Las espigadoras
3. Clavelito en flor
4. Los piconeros

Enjoy!
Please note: We do not own the music in this video. Songs are included for educational purposes only. All songs have been edited/cut to prevent downloading of the complete songs. You can buy them from various providers (like iTunes) or stream them on Spotify.