TANGO-DJ.AT Newsletter 2021/1
Dear {name},

I hope you are holding up well?! It looks like the COVID situation sadly will effect us for quite some time longer. We still have no clue of when we will be able to organize tango events again. However at least there is still tango music! In this newsletter I want give a heads up to some recent tango music activities:

- Family of Alan Gray (UK) donating a 78-RPM record collection to TANGO-DJ.AT
- Acquiring some Brazilian tango LPs
- Tango Time Travel Release featuring Pedro Laurenz
- TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE surpassing 80.000 records


78-RPM record collection donated by the family of Alan Gray to TANGO-DJ.AT

Donald Gray got in touch with me regarding a small 78-RPM record collection from his father Alan Gray. Eventually the family of Alan Gray decided to donate the collection of about 50 records to TANGO-DJ.AT and we organized the shipping of the collection from the UK to Austria. Everything arrived perfectly fine and I started to work through the collection.
In case you know someone with a collection of tango recordings who is looking for a way to put them to good use and professional care, please feel free to mention our work at TANGO-DJ.AT. I'll briefly describe what we can do for collections donated to us and what we did for the collection donated by the family of Alan Gray:

First of all we help with organizing packing and transportation. Once they are in house each record will be fotographed, scanned and thoroughly cleaned on a Loricarft - a professional record cleaner.

Multiple digital transfers will be produced using different stylus and transfer modes. There is always one stereo RAW-transfer without any manipulation and a few additional transfers using appropriate equalization curves. In the light of the recent data center fire it seems worth being mentioned that TANGO-DJ.AT is not using cloud storage, but all of our digital data is saved by following an elaborate backup strategy using multiple backup versions and being distributed over various locations of our own control.

From those archive transfers we produce the audio sound samples for the TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE, post-process the record fotos and label scans, research and add meta data and finally export and upload the recordings, media files and meta data to the online database where our supporting members have full access to this information.

If some of the recordings seem to be interesting for Tango-DJs or collectors, they will be restored, re-mastered and made available to our supporting members as TANGO RECORDS releases.

Of course we also provide the donating party with the professional digital transfers and the foto material. The records itself are commented, categorized and stored in archive grade record sleeves.

Btw. - if you happen to collect 78-RPM records, please note that you are dealing with very fragile material! Besides of breaking easily, there are plenty of other things you may not be aware of. One of the possible issues which I came across with this collection and I want to share with you: Never use any kind of marker anywhere near your records! Take a look of what they can do to your records:

The complete listing of the donated collection of Alan Gray. It contained mainly rare Argentine folclore and not too many tango recordings. Also the quality of the records was not too good overall. I haven't decided yet if it makes sense to release parts of it.

But even without exciting new tango findings, it was very interesting working through this collection and discovering some gems. Listen eg. to the amazing voice of Yma Súmac on Imma Sumack con acomp. de Conjunto Folklorico Peruano Moisés Vivanco. At the date of this recording Imma was in her early 20s and renown for her voice covering up to 5-6 octaves in her early years! Check out the middle part of the sound sample of Virgenes del sol - it gives me the goose-pumps..

And an obviously extremely rare recording by Juan Maglio "Pacho" missing in any discography I am aware of. It is a recording called "Aereo Club" which is a Lanceros (some kind of Quadrille) spanning both sides of a 78-RPM being almost 6 minutes in total! If you have or find additional information (especially recording date) regarding this recording, I'd appreciate your feedback.

Please keep our work in mind in case you come across a collection of 78-RPM or LP records in they need of a new home!


Acquiring some Brazilian tango LPs

Some time ago I came across recordings by Dalva de Oliveira. She recorded some titles together with Francisco Canaro and some with Lyrio Panicalli. After having worked on the LP Tangos - Dalva de Oliveira e Francisco Canaro - FENIX (034 422440M) I noticed that there was also a 2nd volume featuring very unknown recordings. It turned out that volume 2 had been published in Brasil and is even harder to find. Eventually I found an offering via Mercadolibre Brasil. If you have ever tried to obtain something from Mercadolibre Brasil, you know what I went through trying to obtain it (basically it is not possible to buy anything unless you live in Brasil). With the help of Eduardo Zavala and his contacts in Brasil I was able to order this and a few other rare Brasil tango LPs. Eduardo Zavala is also running the Ada Falcón museum La Joyita Casona & Museum.
These are two of the few LPs bought from Brasil. First is the bespoke Volume 2 by Dalva de Oliveira, the second managed to be added here just because of the ridiculousness of the cover design compared to modern standards.

The initial idea behind this acqusition was to release a compilation of all Dalva de Oliveira tango recordings. Sadly I do not feel that the quality of the Volume 2 LP is good enough to be worked on. There is one offering on Discogs, but rated "good", which means even worse than what I've got already. So I'll wait trying to hunt down a better version of this LP before working on a complete Dalva de Oliveira compilation. If you come across a good version of this LP please give us a shout out.

So recently added LPs include:
Tangos - Volume 2 - Dalva de Oliveira - ODEON (MOFB-3356)
Tangos Eternos - Cuban Tipical Orchestra - ITAMARATY (LP-ITAM 2001)
OK Mr. Tango - Mariano Mores - Vikki Carr - CBS 42284
Hugo Del Carril - Ansonia Records (ALP-1359)
Poema - Tangos em Hi-Fi - Orquesta Los Porteños - RCA-CAMDEN 107.9003
Tangos, Tangos, Tangos - Orquesta Típica de Edoardo Lucchina - DURIUM FERMATA PREMIER PRLP-1116
El Rey Del Tango - Hugo Del Carril - SECCO RECORDS TROPICAL (TRLP-5021)
Tangos, Tangos, Tangos - Volume 2 - Fulvio Salamanca y su Orquesta - RGE FERMATA PREMIER 307.3252

featuring rare recordings, but not really interesting for Tango-DJ-ing purposes.

And last but not least a non-tango LP, but featuring one of my most favorite Jazz recordings in outstanding quality - Take Five on Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits - CBS-32046, quite suitable as a Cortina though.


Tango Time Travel Release featuring Pedro Laurenz

By now you probably have already noticed the latest Tango Time Travel release featuring Pedro Laurenz.

It is covering 80 recordings by Pedro Laurenz, most of them featuring the best quality available. I am very happy to be in close contact with Jens-Ingo and Béné regarding their new releases and by comparing some transfers to existing releases listed in the TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE it was possible to even improve the meta data and the quality of some of the transfers. They do fantastic work and is defenitely worth being supported!


TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE surpasses 80.000 records

With the recent addings of the 78-RPM record collection, LPs and digital releases of TangoTunes and Tango Time Travel the TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE surpassed the 80.000 records! Taking into consideration that each entry consists of about 20 individual fields we are talking of almost 1.5 million manually maintained entries!

Recently two of the few big tango websites (todotango.com and tango.info) went offline for weeks and this is when plenty of people working with tango music notice how much such sources of tango information is missed.

I work very hard trying to constantly extend and improve the database. At the same time I try to take the precautions necessary to keep the TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE up and running in the future and thereby stay available to the tango community. Big thank you to everybody supporting this project as a supporting member or in any other way.

Stay safe!

Bernhard Gehberger
TANGO-DJ.AT
Vienna, 2021-04-02

TANGO-DJ.AT
Association for the preservation
and provision of Argentine tango

Buergergasse 18/14
1100 Vienna
Austria / Europe

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