Amazon.comAh, the tango. It conjures up steamy images of late nights in dark bars, roses in the teeth, and deep, backbreaking dips. We've all seen the movies, and many of the songs on this album are songs that have been heard in many different contexts over the years. The beauty of this record is that now you hear them in their original form, as lush and juicy as you could imagine. The dangerous sound of Ricardo Pedivilla and his orchestra, with its choppy violins and lush piano riffs, is classic tango. The more stripped-down sound of Enrique Mora and his quartet (violin, piano, accordion, and bass) is the prototype for the experiments of Astor Piazzolla yet to come. The overripe orchestrations of Lorenzo Barbero are right out of a 1930s spy movie but have some surprising twists as well. All 15 of the tracks here are from the 1950s, a golden era for the tango as it moved from the alleys to the concert halls and before it became a revolutionary force in the new "world music" of the 80s. --Louis Gibson