Ricardo Tanturi

Historical background

Ricardo Tanturi was working as a dentist at the Alvear Hospital when, at a ball in 1941, colleagues urged him to hear a young medical student sing. That student was Alberto Castillo, a singer with a streetwise, flamboyant delivery who became the voice of Tanturi's orchestra. Tanturi himself led a deliberately simple band from the piano: a strong, clear beat inherited from D'Arienzo but without virtuoso soloists, understated bandoneones and violins pushed to the front. 1942, the golden year of the Tanturi-Castillo partnership, produced the hit "Así se baila el tango" ("This is how tango is danced"), whose lyrics mocked well-dressed pretenders who knew nothing of real dancing - a hit so provocative it reportedly started fights on the dancefloor. Castillo, who by day practised as a gynaecologist under his real name and sang tango by night as Alberto Castillo, left in 1943 to go solo.

To replace him, Tanturi auditioned singers and chose a young Uruguayan, Enrique Troncone, renaming him Enrique Campos by opening a phone book at random - to avoid confusion with the many other singers using the stage name Ruiz. With Campos, the orchestra's sound shifted toward more melody, in step with tango's broader turn from rhythm to melody around 1942. A detail for DJs: it's also during the Campos years, from 1945, that a subtle change in syncopation marks the orchestra's later recordings.

Source: Michael Lavocah, Tango Masters: Tango Stories, Musical Secrets, chapter 8 "Ricardo Tanturi: This is How Tango is Danced!".