31 Facts About Carlos Gardel

Carlos Gardel was one of the most influential interpreters of world popular music in the first half of the 20th century.

Carlos Gardel was notable for his baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics.

Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Carlos Gardel wrote several classic tangos.

Carlos Gardel died in an airplane crash at the height of his career, becoming an archetypal tragic hero mourned throughout Latin America.

In 1967, a controversial theory was published by Uruguayan writer Erasmo Silva Cabrera, asserting that Carlos Gardel was born in Tacuarembo, Uruguay.

Carlos Gardel was born to unmarried 25-year-old laundress Berthe Gardes, the baby registered under the name Charles Romuald Gardes in Toulouse, France, on 11 December 1890.

Carlos Gardel's mother settled at the western edge of the central San Nicolas district of Buenos Aires, at Calle Uruguay 162.

Carlos Gardel worked two blocks away on Calle Montevideo, pressing clothes in the French style, which commanded a relatively high price in the fashion-conscious city.

Carlos Gardel began his singing career in bars and at private parties.

Carlos Gardel sang with Francisco Martino and later in a trio with Martino and Jose Razzano.

Carlos Gardel created the tango-cancion in 1917 with his rendition of Pascual Contursi and Samuel Castriota's Mi noche triste.

Carlos Gardel went on tour through Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Colombia, as well as making appearances in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Madrid.

Carlos Gardel sold 70,000 records in the first three months of a 1928 visit to Paris.

Carlos Gardel was aware of the fact that much of his popularity was based on his attractiveness to women.

Carlos Gardel had one major girlfriend in his life: Isabel del Valle.

Carlos Gardel met del Valle in late 1920 when she was fourteen years of age.

Carlos Gardel arranged for del Valle to have a house; he provided money for her to live on.

Carlos Gardel had his lawyer stop making payments to del Valle, who later married another man and moved to Uruguay.

Carlos Gardel was always respectful of the memory of Gardel, even when interviewed about him in late life for a 1980s television program.

Carlos Gardel died on 24 June 1935 in crash between two Ford Trimotors at Olaya Herrera Airfield, Medellin, Colombia.

Carlos Gardel's body was laid to rest in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

The place and year of Carlos Gardel's birth was a controversy that provoked debate; Toulouse, France, in 1890 was the most widely accepted version for many years.

Scholars such as Vanderbilt University history professor Simon Collier, University of Belgrano agriculture history professor Osvaldo Barsky and Uruguayan history professor Jorge Ruffinelli from Stanford University write about how Carlos Gardel was born in Toulouse, France, in 1890, and how he laid a false trail about his birthplace beginning in 1920, when he was almost 30.

In October 1920, Carlos Gardel first applied for Uruguayan citizenship; in Buenos Aires he went to the Uruguayan consulate to complete paperwork that said he was born in 1887 in Tacuarembo, Uruguay.

Uruguay maintained a neutrality policy during the war, so Carlos Gardel probably chose Uruguayan citizenship on that basis.

In 1967, writer Erasmo Silva Cabrera started the modern dispute over Carlos Gardel's birthplace when he published arguments describing Carlos Gardel as having been born in Tacuarembo, Uruguay.

The unwanted boy, named Carlos Gardel, was offered to Bertha Gardes who was passing through the area on a cabaret dance tour.

Reporters often wrote that Carlos Gardel was Uruguayan, born in Tacuarembo.

Carlos Gardel wrote the music and Alfredo Le Pera the lyrics for the following compositions:.

Carlos Gardel has been posthumously inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.

Carlos Gardel appears as a fictionalized character in the play El dia que me quieras by the Venezuelan writer Jose Ignacio Cabrujas.