Manuel Romero wrote a one-act titled El bailarín del cabaret in 1922 for a comic actor named César Ratti, who was the head of the Apolo theater in Buenos Aires. The ephemeral show did prove to hold one major attraction, but it was destined to showcase a different talent: the gifted fair-haired singer Ignacio Corsini (pictured above), who performed the tango “Patotero sentimental” onstage as part of the action. The song was a runaway hit—at the premiere, the audience demanded not just a second but a third performance of it. Corsini soon recorded the tango with Roberto Firpo’s orchestra, and the number immediately became a classic in the tango songbook. (As for Romero, he quickly wrote a sequel play, using the name of the tango as its title, a practice not uncommon at the time: the same happened with “Milonguita” too, just a year or two before.)
The story is just one of many examples highlighting how central the stage was for new songs of the time, in the decade before cinema rose to prominence. The theater was literally where songs came from: and with theater, of course, comes a certain measure of illusion. As in any other genre of song, it is not facts we encounter in tangos but fictions, poses, moods. Another great lyricist, Francisco García Jiménez, in his 1965 chronicle Así nacieron los tangos (How Tangos Were Born) frames the matter succinctly: “There were no and are no ‘sensitive’ hoodlums. But Romero invented one for a tango… Corsini put such conviction into his singing and his role, that with little effort the public came to see the brutal image of the hoodlum softened into that of an unscrupulous ‘seducer.’” Doing what we can to read history by the glare of the stage lights, we do well to distinguish the story of the tango from the stories in the tango.
Note: In the first half of the verse, and again at the end of the song, the speaker addresses himself objectively, a stage device not uncommon in tango lyrics.
Sensitive Hoodlum
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Ignacio Corsini
Roberto Rufino (orq. Di Sarli)
Local hoodlum, king of the dance hall,
Local hoodlum, sensitive guy,
You conceal behind your laughter
Such a growing urge to cry.
As the years now continue passing,
There is no love that enters my breast.
In my life I had a good amount of girlfriends,
But never a woman yet.
When I’ve put down two glasses too much,
In my heart rises up with dismay
A remembrance of that woman who was true,
Who was loyal in her love,
Whom I, thankless, threw away…
I made fun of her love at the time
And never saw I’d be sorry someday,
Never thought how the years would be cruel,
And bring tears to the eye
Of this king of the cabaret.
Such a poor thing… how she was sobbing,
When I blindly was sending her off!
The gang was around me mobbing
And it’s not manly, to go soft.
Local hoodlum, king of the dance hall,
You’ll recall her forever and sigh.
You may laugh, ha-ha-ha, but your laughter
Only hides an urge to cry.
Patotero sentimental (1922)
Music: Manuel Jovés
Lyrics: Manuel Romero
.
Patotero, rey del bailongo,
patotero sentimental,
escondés bajo tu risa
muchas ganas de llorar.
Ya los años se van pasando
y en mi pecho no entra un querer.
En mi vida tuve muchas, muchas minas
pero nunca una mujer.
Cuando tengo dos copas de más
en mi pecho comienza a surgir,
el recuerdo de aquella fiel mujer
que me quiso de verdad
y yo, ingrato, abandoné.
De su amor me burlé sin mirar
que pudiera sentirlo después,
sin pensar que los años, al correr
iban, crueles, a amargar
a este rey del cabaret.
¡Pobrecita… cómo lloraba
cuando ciego la eché a rodar!
La patota me miraba
y no es de hombre, el aflojar.
Patotero, rey del bailongo,
de ella siempre te acordarás.
Hoy reís, ja, ja, ja, ja, pero tu risa
sólo es gana de llorar.