Preface

The aim of this website is to provide public access to a discography of Francisco Canaro with the most reliable data available.

I would like to ask my reader friends to please let me know of any errors or omissions by using the contact form. Any information that serves to complete missing data or to clarify remaining doubts is highly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance for your help!

At the moment, data on the discographical work of Canaro are scattered over multiple discographies. The most outstanding ones are the "Estudio de la discografía de Francisco Canaro" by S. Nicolás Lefcovich (2nd edition, n.d. but not before 1993), the "Discografía de Francisco Canaro" by an unknown author (n.d.), and a discography published in the journal "Los Grandes del Tango" № 3 (November 1990). Other important sources are the discographies of some of Canaro's singers by Roberto Gutiérrez Miglio, mostly published in his book "El tango y sus intérpretes" (Ed. Corregidor, vol. I [1992], vol. II [1994], vol. III [1997], vol. IV [1999]), and the discography of Azucena Maizani by Fabio Daniel Cernuda. To compile this discography I also used images of original records, registers, catalogues, and advertising of record companies, scores, lists of Canaro records or recordings published on the Internet, the databases of several companies collecting royalties (SADAIC, AGADU, ASCAP, SACEM, SGAE), or accessible through the ISWC Network and the Catalogue of Copyright Entries. All these data were aggregated, compared, and, if necessary, corrected.

Among the discographies consulted (the three Canaro discographies in particular), there is a striking concordance (as if they were based on identical or very similar sources). It must be stressed that such identity of data does not prove that they are correct, because the discographies were also shown to contain a considerable number of common errors. However, it did not seem reasonable to me to restrict myself to data corroborated by original records because then this discography would necessarily have remained very incomplete.

This discography contains a total of 3789 3799* recorded works, which is 56 66* more than the 3733 works of Lefcovich’s Canaro discography (the chronological enumeration of that discography ends with 3734, but 3032 is skipped). 117 128* recorded works missing in Lefcovich's Canaro discography were added, and 62 works contained in that discography, although the respective recordings do not belong to Canaro or probably do not exist, were deleted (not taking into account missing or probably non-existent takes ["tomas"]).

Above all, I want to thank five persons without whose help this work would not have been possible: Aníbal Sotullo (for establishing the Colección Canaro), Carlos Puente (for sacrificing hours of his time manually correcting my first trials and giving me so many important suggestions), Enrique Norberto Binda (for communicating to me the total of Canaro’s acoustic recordings, particularly the numerous recordings of José Bohr with the Jazz-Band and the Trio Canaro that were missing), Fabio Daniel Cernuda (for answering me so many questions about Canaro’s first electric recordings), and Federico García Blaya from Todo Tango (for providing me with so much valuable discographical material). I am also grateful to José Manuel Araque, Horacio E. Asborno, Alessandro Beltrame, Horacio Bollero Chiarella, Daniel Borelli, Horacio Federico Bramoso, Elena Bravo ("Elena de San Telmo"), Joost Brunsting, Sergio Gabriel Bustos, Rubén Castaldi Marinoni, Norberto Chab, Royce Chau, Tobias Conradi, Ricardo García Blaya, Bernhard Gehberger, Martín Javier Gorosito, Jorge Gutman, Tine Herreman, Thomas Jordan, César La Buonora, Amado Lafuente, José Alfredo Liébana, Héctor Mario Lobato, Horacio López, Agilmar Machado, Enrique Marotti, Cristian Medina Valenzuela, Renato Domingo Menare Rowe, Edouard Pécourt, Carlos Picchio, Boris Puga, Carlos Ríos, Susana Rodrigues Tuegols, Jorge Américo Rotella, Rudi B. Sazunic, Georg Schwarz, Dr. Gustavo Segu, Eduardo Sibilin, Dr. Pablo Taboada, Luis Valenzuela, Johan "Jo" Vindevogel ("El Flaco"), and to several other persons who were so helpful in communicating me discographical data on Canaro whose names I cannot remember.

This discography is dedicated to Carlos Alberto Verduri, Jorge Angella, and others who remained unknown whose work forms the basis of any discographical work that followed.

Vienna, February 2010

Christoph Lanner

* Since publication of the discography in February 2010, the following major changes have occurred:

• • In March 2010, Fabio Daniel Cernuda published a discography of Anita Palmero, and in December 2010, the second part of his discography of Azucena Maizani. Both contain, among others, three recordings with accompaniment by Francisco Canaro before unknown.

  • The original version of this discography contained an unreleased recording of the tango SENTIMIENTO GAUCHO with vocal refrain ("estribillo") by Ada Falcón and Angel Ramos, according to Gutiérrez Miglio's discography of Ada Falcón (published in "El tango y sus intérpretes", vol. I) made on 30/09/1930. In February 2011 it was clarified through a post by Fabio Daniel Cernuda in the Todo Tango "Mesa del Café" that there were two recordings with vocal refrain ("estribillo") by Ada Falcón and Angel Ramos, both of them made on 15/10/1930 (matrices № 6170 and 6170/1). As the discography did already contain these matrices, the surplus recording of 30/09/1930 was deleted.

  • The original version of this discography contained two recordings of the tangos EL CHAMUYO (matrix № 001) and EL DESALOJO (matrix № 002) released on a record of the ATLANTA label. In March 2011, it turned out that on the label of this record the Quinteto Criollo "Tano Genaro" is figuring. These recordings were therefore deleted, too.

  • In March/April 2011, five recordings made in December 1930 with the Chilean singer Julio Silva Salinas were added.

  • In July 2011 an unreleased recording of the tango TIEMPOS VIEJOS with vocal refrain ("estribillo") by Roberto Maida was added, most probably made in the first half of the year 1937.

  • In January 2013, the existence of the unreleased recording of the tango LA PAYASA by Tita Merello made on 02/07/1955 has been verified.

  • In June 2013, a recording of the tango DERECHO VIEJO made in 1918 and released on a record of the ARTIGAS (UY) label was added.

  • In April 2014, two matrices containing recordings of the march PATRIA HERMANA made in July 1939 in Brazil were added, one of them released on an ODEON (BR) record.

  • In January 2016, the first acoustic recordings by the Orquesta Típica Canaro for the ATLANTA label were newly periodized, particularly on the basis of the dates of Legal Deposit of the recorded works.

  • In July 2016, the recording of the speech VITO DUMAS HABLA AL PUEBLO DE SU PATRIA, released on record № 4795 A, was deleted because the speaker is not a singer of the Orquesta Típica Francisco Canaro (Agustín Irusta) but Vito Dumas himself.

  • In April 2025, the recording dates of several recordings by the Orquesta Típica Canaro for the ATLANTA label were corrected because supplement № 1 to the ATLANTA catalogue of September 1916 indicates that the matrices released on records № 3013 to 3042 belonging to the so-called "Serie Canaro" (Canaro Series) were recorded in 1916. This means that the periodisation of the first recordings of the Orquesta Típica Canaro with 1915 by some discographies is probably incorrect.