The First Recordings
Tango recordings became be effected in the years 1906/07, developing during the decades of the years ´10, ´20 y ´30, coming to its "climax" in the decade of ' 40 and beginning its decadence from the second half of the decade of ' 50. The same thing happened with musical original manifestations of other parts of the world (the italian canzoneta, the spanish copla, the parisian waltz, etc.) that suffered the same battering of the Anglo-American music expanded all over the world after the second world war.
The sonorous recordings that were effected during the period that goes between the year 1906 and 1954 were printed in plates of pasta of 78 rpm. Though in Argentina recordings began to be realized in vinyl (LP's) during the second half of the decade of ' 50, still they were continued making pasta records until 1960.
It was in the decade of ' 40 where the tango had its "golden epoch ". There existed up to this moment more than hundred orchestras that were acting regularly. The great majority of they they printed their interpretations on different record labels.
These labels, fundamentally foreign companies, as RCA VÍCTOR (USA) and ODEON (G. Br.) for mentioning the most important two who were competing in the business of the disc monopolizing between both almost 90 % of the interpreters, they devoted themselves to spread what the public was claiming, and the tango was, for distant view, the music of major diffusion in the urban conglomerates of influence.
The vynil appears
When there takes place the irruption of the vinyl’s disc, already the tango had begun its decline, but the public still was showing great interest to possess in L.P. the same recordings that they were hoarding on the fragile pasta records.
Finally business, the record companies began to re-edit in L.P. those more requested recordings and of sure placement on the market. It was so they re-produced great quantity of recordings of the decades of ' 40 and previous (fundamentally of Carlos Gardel died in 1935). Appeared in shops the material with instrumental versions of the principal orchestras, and also sung topics printed by the binomials most emphasized like TROILO-MARINO, TROILO-FIORENTINO, D´AGOSTINO-VARGAS, PUGLIESE-CHANEL, PUGLIESE-MORAN, TANTURI-CASTILLO, DARIENZO-EGHAGÜE, etc.
But all was not reissued, often because the quantity of items to be included on an LP (usually twelve) did not match the number of recordings of a particular vocalist, some by problems with master copies, and so on. But the fundamental reason of why so many reissues were not done was for "market" reasons, that is to say that for all the interpreters did not exist the same safety as for the placement and sale of the minimal quantities to make, as a matter of costs and profitability.
As never existed by the Government, no specific entity to handle archiving, classify, preserve and keep all the graphics or sound to produce the cultural phenomenon of tango in those decades; and companies were not required by any law to preserve the originals, only versions have survived the most popular performers and within those themes well known and spread.
There are no statistics on the number of recordings made during the decades mentioned above, since there are no official records and many of those belonging to the record companies have been destroyed. Experts' estimations speak about a quantity 25.000 pasta records of 78 rpm produced during this period, only about tango.
If the estimation was true, there existed about 50.000 recorded versions of tangos (the discs had a side item), of which only later they have been re-edited later in modern sound media, as were the LP's (decades of 50 and 60), cassettes (70s and 80) and CD (90s onwards), around 12,000 recorded versions of tangos from different interpreters.
There would be then between 38.000 and 40.000 versions in 78 rpm that were never re-edited.