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Flamenco in Hi Fi with Anita Ramos

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• Amazon Sales Rank: #662889 in Music

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The greatest flamenco guitar duet recording ever made
That this should never have been released on CD is a disgrace -- especially since their other flamenco recording (good, but not AS good) has been reissued over and over under different titles.

Despite considerable research, I've been unable to discover when the present album was recorded -- none of the Decca albums carries a date -- but it must have been around 1960.

Sabicas (1912-1990) and Mario Escudero (1928-2004) were the foremost guitarists of their generation, who also happened to be cousins. But although the total of the albums they both made must run around three figures, they only ever made three records of duets: this, the one previously mentioned, and an album of Latin standards called Romantic Guitars.

This is the first flamenco record I ever heard: it was the days when a record shop would play you a bit of any album you asked for, and some friends of mine asked to hear this. It was like the road to Damascus: in that moment I decided to take up the flamenco guitar.

The tracks are as follows:

01) Colombiana Flamenca
02) Bulerías «Fantasía Andaluza»
03) Farruca «Variaciones de Farruca»
04) Verdiales/Fandangos de Huelva «Ritmos Malagueños»
05) Soleares «Gitanos Trianeros»
06) Campanilleros «Villancico Flamenco»
07) El Vito «Temas Andaluces»
08) Alegrías «Pregón Gaditano»
09) Granadinas «Bordones Granadinos»
10) Zapateado «Recuerdo a Estampío»

Track 4 is erroneously labelled a malagueña (which confused me for years). Track 10 is in fact a brilliant mixture of a zapateado and a tanguillo, with Escudero playing in C and Sabicas playing in A capo'd three frets higher.

After all these years, I'm still finding new things in this album. It was issued both in stereo and mono, so make sure you ask which version it is before you buy.

The total time is 37'35".