Por Una Cabeza by Carlos Gardel
Por una cabeza is a tango with music by Carlos Gardel and lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera, written in 1935 for the film Tango Bar. Gardel recorded it in New York on 19 March 1935 with Terig Tucci's orchestra on RCA Victor 32534. The title is a horse-racing phrase meaning by a head, and the lyric compares a compulsive gambler at the racetrack with his attraction to women. It belongs to the last months of Gardel's life. He and Le Pera died together in a plane crash at Medellín on 24 June 1935, and Tango Bar premiered in New York on 5 July 1935 and reached Buenos Aires later that year. In his 1969 memoir, Tucci recalls Gardel phoning him at three in the morning to say he had found a great melody. Decades later the tune found a new audience in film through the tango scene with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992). The song has also been recorded by orchestras led by Caló (1953) and De Angelis (1976). The original is a sung tango in Spanish, so any instrumental piano version is an arrangement of a song with words, and whether it prints the Spanish lyrics depends on the edition.
Acerca de Por Una Cabeza
Por una cabeza is a tango with music by Carlos Gardel and lyrics by Alfredo Le Pera, written in 1935 for the film Tango Bar. Gardel recorded it in New York on 19 March 1935 with Terig Tucci's orchestra on RCA Victor 32534. The title is a horse-racing phrase meaning by a head, and the lyric compares a compulsive gambler at the racetrack with his attraction to women.
It belongs to the last months of Gardel's life. He and Le Pera died together in a plane crash at Medellín on 24 June 1935, and Tango Bar premiered in New York on 5 July 1935 and reached Buenos Aires later that year. In his 1969 memoir, Tucci recalls Gardel phoning him at three in the morning to say he had found a great melody.
Decades later the tune found a new audience in film through the tango scene with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992). The song has also been recorded by orchestras led by Caló (1953) and De Angelis (1976). The original is a sung tango in Spanish, so any instrumental piano version is an arrangement of a song with words, and whether it prints the Spanish lyrics depends on the edition.