1869  re Troilo recordings

Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 16:41:13 EDT
From: Crrtango@AOL.COM
Subject: re Troilo recordings

My posting about the Troilo recordings was a little misleading. The two boxes
mentioned are not everything he recorded, just everything up to 1950. There
are more recordings after 1950 but these two boxes, vols. 1 and 2. only cover
up to that date, but the first box has the most important recordings by him, in
any case.

Charles

Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:57:11 -0800
From: Dan Boccia <redfox@ALASKA.NET>
Subject: Re: re Troilo recordings

About Troilo -

The El Bandoneon collection sounds interesting and it's good to know
it's out there.

Between 1941 - 1949, Troilo recorded exclusively for Victor. In 1938,
he recorded 2 tangos for Odeon. In 1950, he recorded 2 tangos for T.K.
RCA-Victor has a complete set of the songs he recorded for them, which
has been available for several months if not longer, and includes nice
photos, complete discographies, and nice written notes about the
orchestra in Spanish. Given that he was recording for Victor for all
but 4 songs between 1938 - 1941, I would imagine the sound quality on
the RCA-Victor collection would be the best although I'm not sure as the
masters of this period were burned in a fire and thus everything is from
second-generation 78's at this point. I would say that the sound
quality on the RCA-Victor collection is good enough that I haven't been
inclined to look elsewhere, especially since my experience with El
Bandoneon's sound quality has been inconsistent at best.

If one is in a quest for the best possible sound quality, THE Troilo
disc to have is the Solo Tango CD, volume 1, with Fiorentino singing -
the RCA engineers did an outstanding job re-mastering this disc and as a
result the sound quality is spectacular.

Although he continued recording until 1971, certainly his best years for
dancers were 1941 - 1943. This is when his orchestra included 3
bonafide virtuoso musicians other than himself: pianist Orlando Goni,
bassist Kicho Diaz, and bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla, plus one of the
very best singers, Fiorentino, at his finest in this period. Goni had
one of the most recognizable "hands" of any pianist in tango, easily on
par with Di Sarli, Salamanca, and Biagi, and very important to the sound
of Troilo in these years.

Dan