Francisco Rotundo

Historical background

Francisco Rotundo's case was unlike that of other bandleaders, Benedetti writes: he did not follow the same path, and formed his orchestra for the pleasure of it. Rather than develop a personal style, he preferred arrangements that served his singers, and at a time when ensembles were full of virtuoso players, all he asked of his own was neatness. To judge him on that would be to overlook the results: his approach was representative of a whole current, and he could afford to finance his own orchestra without depending on the public's response. After an orchestra competition in 1944 he began to gain ground among the típicas of the decade, slowly. Michael Lavocah puts it more bluntly: the orchestra had no strong personality of its own, and Rotundo had understood that a great singer could secure him work.

He turned that into a strategy. In late 1948 he made Floreal Ruiz an offer he could not refuse, becoming the first man to poach a singer from Aníbal Troilo. It came at a price: Rotundo was with Pampa, a subsidiary of Odeon and thus a competitor of RCA-Victor, and had to pay a hundred thousand pesos in transfer fees. Through his microphones would pass Aldo Calderón, Mario Corrales, Carlos Roldán, Floreal Ruiz, Julio Sosa, Enrique Campos, Jorge Durán and Alfredo del Río, showcased by the orchestrations of the bandoneonist Ernesto Tití Rossi. Julio Sosa joined him in April 1953. The end was political as much as musical: the orchestra prospered under Peronism, Rotundo's wife being a senator, and when the government fell in 1956 the orchestra became unemployable. Rotundo had to give up music for some years, and his wife was jailed.

Source: Benedetti, Nueva historia del tango : de los orígenes al siglo XXI, 2015; Michael Lavocah, Tango Masters: Aníbal Troilo, chapter "Aldo Calderón (1949)", citing Floreal Ruiz's own words as reported by Osvaldo Sanguiao, Troilo, p. 85.