Early June
At the beginning of June this year, when I was just starting to collect the source material for Tango Time Machine, I made a quick survey of the El Mundo newspaper just to get oriented. First I checked some issues from January, June, and December of 1940 and '41, satisfying myself that there was only sporadic tango/dance advertising during those years. I figured I'd come back to those issues at some later date, and collect what few ads there were.
Next I checked I checked in '42, and I found that there was a steady progression over the course of the year. The El Mundo "Dance Guides" seem to have originated at some point in late 1941 or early '42, although I'm not yet sure of the precise date, and increased in density throughout the course of 1943. (In a June '42 issue, I found the charming display ad for Juan D'Arienzo, the Chanteceler Cabaret, and various brands of booze, as seen at the right.)
As the weeks and months of '43 went by, little clusters of two, four, or six small, smudgy tango ads gradually expanded to fill half of one page, then half of two facing pages. By December, there were one or two full pages of ads on Saturdays and Sundays, and smaller numbers during the week, too. The "Dance Guide" was in full flower.
During that first reconnaissance of the material, I noticed something odd about the Wednesday, December 1, 1943 edition of the paper. On the radio page, below the Trik y Trake cartoon strip, below the schedule of the day's programming on Radio El Mundo, a space which might typically have been the location for two or three mid-week tango ads, the bottom third of the page was torn out of the book. Above the tear, I could see the upper portion of a three-column display ad announcing an appearance by seminal bandoneonist and bandleader Ciriaco Ortiz. It was the first time I'd noticed any torn pages like that. It made me sad, first of all because it seemed that someone had defaced this valuable primary source material, and second because Ciriaco Ortiz is an important figure in tango history. The ad had a big photo of him opposite a photo of a trumpet or a cornet, probably an emblem of the accompanying jazz act, and I would have liked to see it. At the time, I didn't think more of it than that. I snapped a picture with my phone, and I moved on. For all I knew, there could be many torn pages like that.
Late August
Over the last couple of days, I've been collecting material about Orlando Goñi, the "evolutionary" pianist who left his indelible signature on the Troilo orchestra from its beginnings until September 1943. After being fired by Troilo, Goñi formed his own orchestra; it debuted at the legendary Cafe El Nacional on December 1 of that same year. (Michael Lavocah gives an excellent account of the Trolio-Goñi partnership and subsequent parting in his indispensable book, Tango Masters: Aníbal Troilo.)
As I followed Goñi's solo career via in the pages of the El Mundo Dance Guide, I was struck by how much publicity Goñi's new band had received. I saw an ad trumpeting the famous assertion that 25,000 people had come to hear Goñi's band in the first two weeks at El Nacional. And I saw many subsequent ads for gigs he'd played (or perhaps in some cases not played...) with a succession of singers during the year 1944: Rodriguez Lesende, Aldao and Cabrera, Alfredo Castell, Fiorentino himself, and lastly, Raúl Berón. Some of those ads were relatively small, but many, many of them were "anchor" ads, that is, over-sized, five-column ads spanning the full width of El Mundo's "Dance Guide," at the very bottom of the page where no one could possibly miss them. Here's an example:
There were ads for gigs at El Nacional, the Palermo Palace, the Empire cabaret, the Prince George Hall, Flores Que Surgen, Barracas Central, Club Sol de America, Club S. y Sp. Buenos Aires and others--culminating on 14 December '44 with a show held at the headquarters of the Chacarita Juniors football club: vocals by Berón; supporting act, El Rey del Swing, jazz guitarist Oscar Alemán. After that, the trail goes cold, and so, I'm afraid, does Orlando Goñi. He died in Montevideo on 5 February 1945, aged 31. A very sad end to a brilliant career....
I tracked Goñi's movements right up to the last, but the one thing I could not find, alas, was the announcement of the Goñi band's premier at the El Nacional. Certainly, judging by the countless pesos spent on subsequent advertising of the orchestra, there ought to have been some notice on the day of its very first gig. Let's see, when would that have been? (Consults Michael Lavocah's book once again...) Oh, yes, the first day of December, 1943.
Then I remembered that tantalizing Ciriaco Ortiz ad on the radio page, also from December 1, 1943, its placement on the page, and the big rip where something had been torn out. There was room for something else below it, something big and wide. It could even have been one of those five-column "anchor" ads...
Now that I've given it some thought, I'm quite certain: that's where the announcement of Goñi's debut would have been. I'm also quite certain that someone tore it out. Who? Why? When? I've no idea. It might have happened early on, on the day of the performance itself, or while the newspaper was still on open shelves. Or it might have happened more recently, since the time the old papers were bound in monthly volumes. On thing I definitely plan to check is whether the microfilm version of this page is complete, or not.
There the story ends, rather anticlimactically, I'm afraid. But it's been my experience that stories like this, simply by virtue of being told, have a way of revealing their own endings if one waits long enough. So let's just sit on this one for a while, and see what emerges.... Who knows, maybe one of our readers already knows the answer!
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