...when this guy in a sports jacket leaps in front of the car to stop us and a tres-chic-quita in a red dress asked if we knew El Chueco personally and if we'd 'like our windscreen cleaned so you could get a better view of the massive, towering obelisk, if you catch my drift".
I replied that 1, we not only knew Fangio, but played bridge with him on a weekly basis, 2, proffering "windscreen cleaning" services has accompanying connotations veering on the prurient and could be considered impolite and unbecoming a lady in a red when such solicitation is directed toward a Ferrari-driving, bridge-playing couple parked next to an obelisk in broad daylight and 3, "drifting" won't be invented for at least another twenty years, if you catch my power slide.
The situation was growing uncomfortable to say the least, but fortunately, at that moment another schnook in a sportsjacket walked up and said, "Soy Allen Funt. ¡Sonrisa, you're en cámara indiscreta!" and we all made ha-ha chirrups at each other in the interests of avoiding further embarrassment.
I grew tired of keeping up with the witty repartee and decided the time had arrived to decamp. "¡You're nada pero el poor-man's Bob Saget!"I invected in the general direction of the camera as I stuck the car in gear and laid tracks (amid a plume of 12 cylinders-worth of oily black smoke) down the boulevard on the way to our tango lesson.
Anyhow, about the record...
There's precious little information about Argentina Today by Vlady and his Buenos Aires Orchestra, the real story behind the cover shot, or even Vlady himself. The album is mentioned somewhere in the June 9, 1956 issue of Billboard (I can't find the actual mention, but google says that it's in there) and the album cover indicates that Vlady (no last name given, leading me to believe that he might be considered the Montovani doppelganger of Argentina) was a well respected film and TV music composer and arranger and at one time a pretty fair pianist. Most of the pieces on this album would be considered "light classical", sounding as if there was more than a little Villa-Lobos influence in the arrangements, albeit without a big enough budget for a massive 'cello section. The recording quality is pretty good, in a high fidelity (ie: mono), orchestral sort of way. No bandonéons were hurt in the recording of this album - this was recorded during the pre-Piazzolla era in Argentine music. Given the approximate age of the album, it's likely that it was recorded right about the time of Juan Perón's overthrow in 1955 so it's unlikely that anything would have been recorded in BA that might rock the boat of the junta that had recently come to power.
Given the military's grip on the country at that time, who the heck was able to drive a Ferrari around town anyway? This is just one of those album covers that asks a lot more questions that it answers, including this closeup snagged from the back cover:
Pan American World Airways? What's Pan Am doing providing photos of cars and obelisks and the like for use on album covers, particularly WHEN THERE'S NOT EVEN AN AIRPLANE IN THE PICTURE??? Sheesh, this whole thing is just plain odd. But I like the shot of the car and the music's okay, despite it being kind of uninvolving and safe.
