QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES:
The life and legend of Carmen Amaya.

Excerpt from the book "Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies". Author: Paco Sevilla.

3. Manuel Torre.

On July 22, 1933, just hours before Marchena was about to perform with his company in Sevilla, Manuel Torre "El Niño de Jerez" died in the Red Cross Hospital there. Pepe, who had attended to Manuel in his last days, would pay all the funeral expenses and look after the family. If Antonio Chacón’s death had ended an era, the passing of Manuel Torre put a final exclamation point to that ending.

Chacón and Torre shared a common beginning. Both were born in the gypsy barrio of San Miguel in Jerez de la Frontera, within blocks of each other, although nine years apart. Both had gone to Cádiz to learn from the cantaor of legend, Enrique el Mellizo. After serving apprenticeships in Jerez, each had made a name for himself in Sevilla. But that’s where the similarity ends. Manuel was an illiterate, extravagant gypsy, an inconsistent cantaor who, when he was on, moved his listeners with power, passion, subtlety of shading and unforgettable soulfulness and echo. He was also an introverted man who buried his insecurity under endless obsessions. Chacón, a payo, achieved status as an elegant and cultured gentleman and could sing well under almost any circumstances, although, according to many, not with the same passion as his gypsy counterpart.

Manuel Soto Loreto was born in 1878 into a family of field workers. He acquired the nickname "Torre" (Tower) from his father, Juan Torre, who stood over six feet tall.

Manuel was slightly shorter at five feet eleven, but in a time when the average height of men was a little over five feet, he was a veritable giant. Surrounded by masters of gypsy cante in his family and among his neighbors, and living in a barrio of gypsy blacksmiths, Manuel could not help but absorb the important styles of the cante jondo, the most profound gypsy songs, especially the siguiriyas and the martinetes (songs of the blacksmiths). While serving in the military in Cádiz he fell under the spell of Enrique el Mellizo. It is said that he became so emotional on listening to the old man sing that he took a bite out of a drinking glass, and another occasion tried to throw himself off a balcony. It is also likely that he absorbed some of Enrique’s eccentricity and hypochondria.

El Mellizo is credited with being the first to sing the normally festive tango in a slower, more profound manner. Some believe he got the idea from Diego el Marrurro, a professional cantaor who lived in a small room off the patio of the Torre home in Jerez. Regarding these slow tangos, La Niña de los Peines said that they had been sung for years in her family, and she recorded them sometime between 1905 and 1910 with the guitar of Luis Molina. Entitled "Tangos de la tontona", they were pure tientos as we know them today, both in melody and the rhythm of the guitar, and included the well-known verse that begins "Eres tontita e inocente..."When Antonio Chacón began to sing the slow tangos, he improved them further, making them even more profound, and after recording them as tangos in 1910 and 1913 he began to call them tientos, possibly after a line of verse that went, "Me tiraste unos tientos..." (You tempted me...). Another important branch of flamenco had been created.

But it was Manuel Torre who first brought this slow tango of El Mellizo and El Marrurro to the public of Sevilla when he made his debut in Café Novedades in 1901. There is no record of that performance, but the following year he appeared in the Filarmónico-Oriente Concert Hall, where he was billed as "Manuel Soto (el Niño de Torres) – Singer of Tangos." Sharing the program with him was a classical Spanish dance group, a comic song and dance group from Cádiz called "Las Ranas" (The Frogs), and a cuadro flamenco that included the cream of flamenco artist of the late 1800s: Dancing were Salud Rodríguez and her sister Lola, Juana la Sordita (the Deaf One), Juana and Fernanda Antúnez, Pepa de Oro (the milonga singer), and Josefa Molina. Interestingly, the singers were all women – unusual in that male dominated world: La Sordita’s sister, La Serrana, one of the real giants of the cante at that time, Rita Ortega, and María Avila. On guitar were Salud’s brother, Joaquín Rodríguez, and Juan Habichuela.

Manuel Torre must have made quite and impression with his height, his dark good looks, and his very gypsy way of dressing in a dark suit of raw silk, a white shirt with a white silk scarf tied about his neck, and a gold watch chain dangling from his vest pocket. It is possible that he sang this early and well-known tango:

And then there was the voice. Manuel’s singing has been described variously as bewitching, black, hair-raising, spine-chilling, hypnotic... He lacked the gravelly vocal quality known as afillá (after a gypsy named El Fillo) that is normally desired in flamenco singing, and neither did he employ the typical nasal sound or sing with a constricted throat. Yet he still managed to produce a very flamenco sound, with just enough roughness to appeal to aficionados of the cante. He was the first important cantaor to sing with an open throat and full lungs, which gave him tremendous power. The strength and passion of hi singing won over the gypsies, while, at the same time, his clear tones appealed to the non-gypsy general public and contributed to hi rapid rise to celebrity. The singer Pericón de Cádiz said that, "You got that sound of his in your ear and it stayed with you for weeks!"

The great singer of soleares from Alcalá de Guadaira, Joaquín de la Paula, told Antonio Mairena about a fiesta in Sevilla around 1920, given by Felipe Murube for some Galician friends. Although Murube considered Manuel Torre a good friend and was crazy about his singing, he was fed up with singer’s difficult nature and didn’t invite him. Among the guests was La Argentina’s lover, Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, and the invited artists included Antonio Chacón, La Niña de los Peines and her brother Arturo, Joaquín de la Paula, Fosforito, Niño Medina, the dancers La Macarrona and La Malena, and the guitarist Habichuela and Manolo de Huelva. In spite of these great artists, by six o’clock in the morning the Galicians were bored and told Murube they wanted to leave:

For the most part, Manuel Torre did not invent cantes, but interpreted existing cantes in such a way as to make them into something new an memorable. In that way he established a number of cantes in flamenco repertoire, cantes that might have disappeared without his contribution. For years he was much in demand as a singer of farrucas and the peteneras of La Niña de los Peines. He made the tarantas, the songs of the miners in Eastern Andalucía, into something more gypsy and, in the process, led to the creation of the modern tarantos that is such an important element in the dance of today. It has been suggested that he learned the tarantos from Concha la Cartagenera or from one of his early loves, Pepita la Murciana. His famous verse certainly supports the idea that he learned from a woman: