Leading Latins

Hosts of North Americans love Latin American music. Last week they had a chance to learn how Latin Americans themselves estimate the rumba and conga artists now performing in the U.S. Manhattan's big Spanish-language daily La Prensa gave a party for the winners of its recent musical popularity poll. Few of the leaders were favorites of the U.S. public, many were unknown to that public.

Since the number of ballots a voter could cast in La Prensa's poll was limited only by the number of copies of La Prensa he could get his hands on, the poll had a somewhat dubious quality. But since ballot-box stuffing was general for all contestants, the poll did represent a rude cross section of New York City's Latin American opinion. And that opinion (with some 200,000 Spanish-speaking inhabitants, New York is the biggest Latin city north of the Tropic of Cancer) is undoubtedly passionately informed.

The Kid Scores. La Prensa's poll gave long-nosed Xavier Cugat. captain of the U.S. rumba industry (TIME, Dec. 28, 1942) only eighth place among bandleaders. The winner (pulling more than twice as many votes as his nearest competitor) was a stocky Cuban named Machito ("The Kid"). One of the chief attractions at Manhattan's La Conga, kinky-haired Machito (real name Frank Grillo) has built his reputation among knowing Latins with a high-octane rumba style that would rattle the fenders off a jeep. Often he prances before his ten-piece band in a solo rumba routine known as the Golpe de Bibijajua (derived from the limping walk of one of North Africa's largest insects). The band is brassy and solid, without Cugat's high romantic perfumery. Machito accepted La Prensa's honors with almost arctic calm. Said he: "I was no surprised. Cugat, he is ... commercial."

Among dance teams the winners were childlike, ingratiating Rosario & Antonio, now on Broadway with Olsen & Johnson's Sons O'Fun. Rosario & Antonio (only 21 and 20 respectively) danced as children in the market places of Seville and Granada, later toured Europe and South America, reached Manhattan two and a half years ago as a specialty act at the Waldorf-Astoria's Sert Room. Their flashing gyrations and intricate footwork so excited their first-night audience that it buried them in flowers. Known as Los Chavalillos Sevillanos ("The little kids from Seville"), first-cousins Rosario & Antonio now want to dance Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera.

Winner among male singers was Miguelito Valdes (real name Eugenio Lazaro Miguel Izquierdo Valdes y Hernandez), whose vigorous song-shouting has been featured with both Cugat and Machito. With the latter's band, big, bull-like Valdes recently recorded an album of his guarachas (risque ballads) and pregons (street-vendor songs) for Decca. He sings in a variety of moods from the comic to the truculent, but always with a full head of steam. He grew up on the Havana docks, became a prize fighter, started as a singer when the Havana Riverside Casino fished him out of tough waterfront cafes. Last week Valdes finished off an eight-week run at La Conga, where he made such a hit that one of the nightly duties of the headwaiter was to wipe off the lipstick feverish women had implanted on his photograph in the lobby.

La Prensa's only winner widely known to the U.S. public was in the class of female entertainers: the explosive Spanish gypsy dancer, Carmen Amaya (TIME, Feb. 17, 1941). Hollywood's cavern-mouthed Carmen Miranda came in 20th, famed Dancer Argentinita 37th.

April Records

Shostakovich: Piano Concerto (Halle Orchestra, Leslie Heward conducting, with Eileen Joyce; Columbia; 6 sides). One of Shostakovich's early (first performed in 1933) and most sparkling scores. Brilliantly performed and well recorded.

William Walton: Scapino, A Comedy Overture (Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock conducting; Columbia). A smartly tailored trifle by the most famed of younger British contemporary composers.

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter conducting, with Kerstin Thorborg, contralto, and Charles Kullman, tenor; Columbia; 14 sides). A reissue of Columbia's 1936 recording, when the Vienna Philharmonic was still at its pre-Nazi best. Mahler's symphonic setting of the verses of Li Tai Po and other Chinese immortals remains one of the few great musical compositions of the 20th Century, one of the most tragic works in all musical literature.

Beethoven: Symphony No. I (Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conduct ing; Columbia; 8 sides). Fifth on the list of currently available versions, Rodzinski's is rather rough, undistinguished, and not to be compared with the fine interpretations of Toscanini (Victor) and Weingartner (Columbia).

Album of Danish Songs (Lauritz Melchior, tenor; Columbia; 4 sides). A group of appealing ditties sung with masculine ardor by the finest of contemporary heroic tenors.

Ellingtonia (Duke Ellington and his band; Brunswick; 8 sides). An anthology of some of Ellington's earlier, and most warm-spirited, recordings. Included: East St. Louis Toodle-Oo; Rockin' in Rhythm; Black & Tan Fantasy; Mood Indigo.

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