Osvaldo Fresedo
Encyclopedia
Osvaldo Fresedo nicknamed El pibe de La Paternal ("the kid from La Paternal") was an Argentine  songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

 and director of a tango
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...

 orchestra. He had the longest recording career in tango, from 1925 to 1980.

Career

Fresedo was born into a middle-class family in La Paternal, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. His mother gave him the first music lessons. While he as still small, his family moved to a working-class neighborhood, and it was there he began his interest in tango. He learned to play the bandoneon
Bandoneón
The bandoneón is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It plays an essential role in the orquesta típica, the tango orchestra...

 and as a teenager joined several of the most famous orchestras of the era of the Guardia Vieja ("Old Guard").

In 1920 traveled to United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In Camden, New Jersey
Camden, New Jersey
The city of Camden is the county seat of Camden County, New Jersey. It is located across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 77,344...

 he recorded a few albums with a quartet that also included violinist Tito Rocatagliatta and pianist Enrique Pedro Delfino.

Back in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, he formed his first orchestra which, from the outset, displayed his trademark style. Although his style evolved somewhat in the following decades, its essence remained the same: his performing group always displayed true elegance. Fresedo was one of the innovators of tango in the early 1920s, along with such other young musicians of the time as Julio de Caro
Julio de Caro
Julio de Caro was an Argentine composer, musician and conductor prominent in the Tango genre.-Life and work:...

 and Juan Carlos Cobian. All of them brought a high level of musicianly technique and were thus able to bring about the more refined musical style that characterized the what later became known as the tango of the Guardia Nueva ("New Guard").

In the 1920s, Fresedo worked feverishly as a composer and conductor. Before this time he had already composed "El espiante" ("The Rejected One"), to which he now added "Vida mía" ("My Life"), "El Once" (the name of a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires), "Pimienta" ("Pepper"), among others.

His activity as an orchestra conductor was tireless, as a result of demand for his recordings and their wide acceptance among the public, especially the more affluent, obligating him to divide his orchestra into four groups and place each in a different nightclub. It was, without doubt, his best time from a commercial point of view, and also probably as a composer of tunes. Between 1925 and 1928, Fresedo recorded about 600 pieces for the Odeón label.

Many of these recordings feature the voices of singers such as Ernesto Famá (the most emblematic of his singers of the era), Teófilo Ibáñez and Juan Carlos Thorry
Juan Carlos Thorry
Born José Antonio Torrontegui and known as Juan Carlos Thorry was an Argentine film actor, tango musician and director....

, among others.

Having left Odeón, and fronting a larger orchestra (which he had already started to form in the early 1930s), he began what we might call his second era as maestro, with a new orchestral style and, above all, with the vocal participation of Robert Ray(perhaps the most emblematic of Fresedo's singers). The Fresedo-Ray recordings are among the most memorable in the history of tango: "Vida Mia", ""Como una princesa" ("Like a Princess"), "Isla de Capri" ("Isle of Capri"), among others.

The 1940s brought forward a new generation of musicians—Anibal Troilo
Aníbal Troilo
Aníbal Carmelo Troilo was an Argentine tango musician.Anibal Troilo was a bandoneon player, composer, and bandleader in Argentina. His orquesta típica was among the most popular with social dancers during the golden age of tango , but he changed to a concert sound by the late 1950s...

, Osvaldo Pugliese
Osvaldo Pugliese
Osvaldo Pedro Pugliese was an Argentine tango musician. He developed dramatic arrangements that retained strong elements of the walking beat of salon tango but also heralded the development of concert-style tango music.Some of his music, mostly since the 50s, is used for theatrical dance...

, Miguel Caló
Miguel Caló
Miguel Caló was a famous tango bandoneonist, composer, and the leader of the Orchestra Miguel Caló.-External links:**...

, Alfredo De Angelis, Ricardo Tanturi, Ángel D'Agostino, etc.—and a new characteristic style. Fresedo sought to adapt to these new times, but somehow, this attempt merely detracted from the strength of the fresediano style that had so successfully combined so as successful rhythm and elegance. From this time forward, his orchestrations become slower and he chooses mellifluous singers who even, in some cases, give a certain boleristic
Bolero
Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...

 air to their versions of his tangos.

Despite the continual changes that occurred in the tango, Fresedo continued to record throughout the 1930s and 1940s on RCA Victor, with participation from the singers Ray, Ricardo Ruiz and Oscar Serpa. He then went on to record again for several years on Odeón, until nearly the end of the 1950s, with singers Héctor Pacheco, Carlos Barrios
Carlos Barrios
Carlos Barrios is an Australian artist, born Carlos Manuel Barrios Rosa in 1966 in San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America.-Early life:Carlos’ father was an archaeologist who introduced him to the art and artifacts of ancient Central American cultures from an early age. Carlos first began to...

 and Armando Garrido. Beginning in 1959 we went over to Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

, where he was one of the first artists to record in stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...

.

Fresedo continued to lead orchestras until his retirement in 1980, doing his last recordings that year on Columbia's label CBS, where he recorded with Argentino Ledesma as the last guest singer.

External links

  • Discography of Osvaldo Fresedo on Victor Records
    Victor Talking Machine Company
    The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....

     from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)
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