Recorded this Day 1940
Recorded today 22nd August in 1940, ‘El tigre Millán’ (F. Canaro) [1st version], Juan D’Arienzo con Alberto Reynal.
“There are several versions about the origin of this tango and Canaro never made an effort to give a clarification on the subject that would make it lose its condition of mystery and myth. One version is that around the year 1900 there lived in the neighborhood of Barracas a man who worked as a labourer in a meat packing plant, who was a good worker and frequented the milongas, but with a reputation as a bad guy that had originated his nickname of Tigre Millán, (although that was not his last name).
The version indicates that for dancing the man always chose the same woman, who besides being the best dancer was the lover of a police chief of La Boca; the young woman commented to the latter that she did not like to dance with Tigre because he went to the dance dirty, with the smell of his work, with the same clothes. The policeman sent two subordinates in civilian clothes who one night attacked the Tigre to scare him but when the latter took out a facón [large knife] to defend himself they killed him with two shots. The version says that when in his last minutes of life he was asked who had wounded him, he answered with the phrase that remained in the story told in the tango: ‘a man, to be a man, must not be an informer.’ [this line does not appear in the lyrics]
Another version links the tango with a newspaper seller named Carlos Millán who had his stand in a corner of Valentín Alsina very valuable both for the sale of newspapers and to pick up plays of the clandestine betting game. Millán was pressured by two brothers -some say that they wanted to keep the corner and others that it was a matter of skirts- protected by some politicians that one night made him be killed -in some versions, Millán managed to shoot down 4 attackers before dying.
About this version Walter Ercoli says that the newspaper La Defensa of Valentín Alsina, reported on January 6, 1935, with the title Hechos graves que conmueven a la población that the neighbors and friends of Carlos Millán denied that he, killed in a fierce shootout with the police, was not a delinquent as the police said; but, he concludes, that could not be Canaro's Tigre Millán because at that date the tango had already been premiered [in March 1934].”
- Source: es.wikipedia.org [edited]