In the earliest years of the twentieth century, North American ballroom dancers favored the waltz or the polka. But in the teens, a new dance, the tango, broke onto the scene when Vernon and Irene Castle performed it in a Broadway musical. Rudolph Valentino, Arthur Murray, and Xavier Cugat popularized it even more in the 1920s and 1930s, and thousands of enthusiasts began crowding dance floors around the country.
This work chronicles the history of the tango in the United States, from its antecedents in Argentina, Paris, and London to the present day. It covers dancers, musicians, and composers and the tango's influence on American music. Chapters are dedicated to the Castles, Valentino, Murray, and Cugat, the Big Band and jazz singers who incorporated tangos with English lyrics into their repertoires, Juan Carlos Cobian, Osualdo Fresedo, Franciso Canaro, Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla, the influence of World War II, portrayals of the tango in the movies and ballet, and recordings by Gerry Mulligan, Gary Burton, Al Di Meola, Yo-Yo Ma, and Julio Igelesias, among many other topics.
