Tanguito

José Alberto Iglesias (September 16, 1944 – May 19, 1972), better known as Tango or its diminutive Tanguito or Ramses VII, was an Argentine rock singer-songwriter.

José Alberto Iglesias was born September 16, 1944, in the industrial town of San Martín, Buenos Aires Province.

His family lived in a modest house in the town of Caseros, close to the city of Buenos Aires.

Iglesias showed no interest in school, and after flunking out at age 13 he tried different apprenticeships, including gardening school, but did not persevere.

The only issue that held his interest was rock and roll.

At age 17, José was a fixture of social ballrooms in the Mataderos and Flores neighborhoods, singing mostly rock and roll covers.

He also gained local fame as a rock and roll dancer, while most people in the suburbs were tango dancers.

To highlight this contrast, his friends started calling him "Tango" or "Tanguito" (the diminutive of "tango").

Born into a working-class family from western Greater Buenos Aires, he began his career in the early 1960s as the lead singer of the nueva ola group Los Dukes, which recorded two singles released on label Music Hall.

In the mid-to-late 1960s, he became a leading figure in the countercultural underground of Buenos Aires, a scene that gave birth to Argentine rock (known locally as rock nacional, Spanish for "national rock"), the earliest incarnation of Spanish-language rock.

With his first band, Los Duques, he recorded a few covers and one original song in 1963.

In 1965, Tanguito and his friend Horacio Martínez became regulars of a night club named La Cueva ("The Cave") in the Recoleta district.

The club was to become the cradle of Argentine rock, with celebrities-to-be such as Moris, Sandro, and Litto Nebbia performing regularly, and other figures such as Pipo Lernoud, Miguel Grinberg and Miguel Abuelo sharing the limelight.

Many of them were struggling with writing rock lyrics in Spanish, and Tanguito was initially perceived as a novelty act, who could sing energetic Elvis Presley covers in broken English.

The musicians would end the night by walking up Pueyrredón avenue together to have late supper or breakfast in café La Perla del Once in the Balvanera district.

When Tanguito once ranted in the café's washroom about being alone and sad in the world, Nebbia encouraged him to write a song based on his refrain.

Tanguito obliged, and Nebbia added a choir with a vaguely bossa nova air.

That song would become the first mega-hit of Spanish language rock and roll: "La balsa" ("The raft").

Tanguito is celebrated for co-writing Los Gatos' hit "La balsa", that catapulted the burgeoning rock nacional into massive popularity in the summer of 1967–68.

Nebbia's band, Los Gatos, recorded it on June 19, 1967, and got a significant amount of radio play that helped the single sell over 250,000 copies.

Both the name and the lyrics of the song may refer to José Feliciano's La Barca, and many of Tanguito's friends acknowledge that Tanguito had Feliciano's song on his mind.

Tanguito's own rendition was not immediately recorded, but was broadcast on national television a few months later, in a segment about the Buenos Aires version of the hippie phenomenon.

This success led to a contract with RCA Victor which soon ended after the little impact of the 1968 single "El hombre restante".

Tanguito later worked for Mandioca, Argentine rock's first independent record label founded by producers Jorge Álvarez and Pedro Pujó in 1968.

The success of "Los Gatos" and Tanguito's status as co-composer of "La Balsa" hinted that a career break was around the corner, yet his first single, recorded January 18, 1968, was not marketed effectively by RCA and sales floundered.

During 1968, several songs by Tanguito, notably Amor de Primavera ("Spring Love"), were being covered or borrowed by emerging artists in the Argentine rock and roll scene.

Tanguito would also take credit for other people's songs, including the ribald song "Errol Flynn" which was popular in the summer of 1968.

All of Tanguito songs are credited to "Ramsés VII", one of his many pseudonyms, after the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses and Tango's affectation for seventh chords.

Other pseudonyms he used from time to time include Susano Valdez and Drago (after a then-popular seltzer machine).

When Tanguito broke with RCA he found a new home in Mandioca, a label dedicated exclusively to rock, which immediately arranged for studio time.

But he had trouble motivating himself to complete an album.

In the early 1970s, his amphetamine addiction worsened and deeply damaged his career and personal life.

He was arrested on several occasions and later hospitalized at the Hospital Borda, where he was subjected to electroshock therapy.

In May 1972, he was declared legally insane and transferred to a prison for psychopaths.

That same month, Tanguito escaped and lost his life under the San Martín train.

His only studio album, Tango, was posthumously released in 1973 and compiled his recordings for Mandioca between 1969 and 1970.

The album turned Tanguito into a cult figure among suburban rock fans and installed the persistent myth that he had been the original author of "La balsa" and Litto Nebbia had taken advantage of his fragile state of mind.

The musician later became a cultural icon as the subject of the 1993 film Tango Feroz, becoming the archetype of the tragic rock hero.

In 2007, the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone ranked Tango fifty-sixth on its list of the "100 Best Albums of Argentine Rock".

In 2009, the archival album Yo soy Ramsés was released, which compiled unedited 1967 recordings for RCA Victor.