Merritts Hill Music

Bryzgi Shampanskovo - The Champagne Tango! A popular tune has crept in here, but its iconic status in the USSR made it a classic. The history of Russian popular music boils down to Stalin hating jazz and loving ballroom. (Imagine for a moment how different it might have been the other way round!) The tango "Espuma de Champagne" was recorded in Paris and pirated in 1937 for distribution in the Soviet Union as "Bryzgi Shampanskovo". Its popularity had not dimmed by 1988 when it featured in the film of the same name. The bootleggers were not very good at transcribing foreign names or reading each other's writing, so confusion as to the authorship reigned as long as communism - the closest they could get was "Luisi". (For the second batch of pressings they gave up and credited it to Oskar Strok, who composed many fine tangos but not this one.) We now know that it was written by the Argentinian bandleader José Maria de Lucchesi, about whom we know nothing else: neither the Russians nor indeed the Argentinians can come up with any dates or places of birth or death. But the tune lives on.