PLAYLIST
1. POR QUE CANTO ASI/LA CUMPARSITA
2. QUE ME QUITEN LO BAILAO
3. MADAME YVONNE
4. EL CIRUJA
5. QUE ME VAN A HABLAR DE AMOR
6. EL ULTIMO CAFE
7. SOLEDAD
8. MARIA
9. EN ESTA TARDE GRIS
10. CAMBALACHE
SYNOPSIS
Julio Sosa, a big guy, moody, great friend and singer was born in the locality of Piedras, province of Canelones in Uruguay on February 2, 1926
He was probably the last tango singer who really attracted big crowds. The fact that almost half of his repertoire was identical to that of Carlos Gardel, didn’t seem to matter although he also interpreted quite a few contemporaries titles.
Historians agree that Sosa’s was one of the most important voices that the tango had during the second half of the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, a period during which the music of Buenos Aires wasn’t doing too well with the younger generations.
His early death, gave some people an excuse to repeat the myth of Gardel, but Sosa was not Gardel. His extroversion and the lack of tenderness in his voice set him apart from the paradigm of the tango singer.
Journalist Ricardo Gaspari, press and promotion executive of a record company, gave Sosa the nickname for which he will be eternally known, El Varon del Tango, (The Male of Tango). That was the name of his first LP. Everything seemed to be going his way. Reality was not far off, as Sosa got the youth to come back to the music that belonged to them in the first place. The tango.
Regardless of the tango and poetry, Sosa had another passion, cars. He owned an Isetta, a De Carlo model 700 and a DKW Fissore. He crashed with all three because he had a taste for high speed. The third accident was fatal. At dawn on November 25, 1964, Julio Sosa run into a warning light lamppost at the corner of Avenida Figueroa Alcorta and Mariscal Castilla. He was admitted to the Hospital Fernandez and then transferred to the Hospital Anchorena, where he passed away at 9:30 am on November 26, 1964.
His remains lay in wake at Salón La Argentina, but an overflow crowd forced the vigil to be moved to the Luna Park (legendary boxing stadium with capacity for 25,000 people). Two days earlier he had sung his last tango, La gayola (The jailhouse). The last verses end in a prophetic way, “To make sure I get flowers when I’m in the coffin.”
His memory remains alive, and his figure continue to acquire myth dimension as the years go by with the generation, and the generations that follow, that lived his rise to fame as one of the most prominent figures in the history of tango.
RADIO DEL TANGO 