El puente (1995)

(original cover)

El puente is a mixed bag of rarities, but I was driving on the 405 freeway in LA when I first heard “Pa’l mercado” and got so emotional that I almost crashed.

By the time “Al Pepe Sasía” (a tribute to one of Uruguay’s most legendary soccer players) came up, I had to pull over.

Years earlier, I had enjoyed the first mix of “Ella allá” in the infamous cassette single that included “Nunca nunca.” I was happy to play it again when I got El puente, and the song hadn’t aged a bit.

Liner notes by Guilherme de Alencar Pinto: “The Jaime Roos a las 10 tour (1993-1994) was the first by a Uruguayan musician through the country’s 19 departments [provinces]. It also marked the end of the La Escuelita chapter. In November 1994, Jaime started rehearsing with La Doble, his new backing band.

In his already extensive career (almost 20 years as a solo artist) he had accumulated several rarities he considered valuable. While preparing his next album of new material (Si me voy antes que vos, 1996), he decided to release this collection. He named it El puente, after the short poem he had written in Amsterdam in 1983 and which he included in the booklet. The only common denominator in this very eclectic material is Jaime’s presence as an author and/or musical director and/or main performer.

[In El puente,] the only recordings previously included on a Jaime album are three from Mujer de sal junto a un hombre vuelto carbón (1985), in duet form with Estela Magnone. The other three tracks with Estela belong to her first solo album, Vals prismático (1993), produced by Jaime.

Also included are his solo contribution in La Escuelita’s Ahora sí!! (1990) and his two compositions for Pinocho Routin’s first album, Noches de carnaval (1995), produced by Jaime and released a couple of months earlier than El puente. Pinocho had been a member of La Escuelita from its beginnings and was one of that group’s singers that remained in La Doble (the other being Benjamín Medina and Freddy ‘Zurdo’ Bessio). Zurdo had played the bass drum in all of Jaime’s murga recordings since 1986, but it wasn’t until the early ’90s, when he heard him singing a few lines in a La Reina de la Teja performance, that Jaime discovered Zurdo could sing. Immediately, Jaime assigned him singing parts for Mauricio Rosencof’s stage play El vendedor de reliquias (1992), in the A las 10 tour and in La Margarita (1994). These two recordings with Routin are the first songs by Jaime with solo vocals by Zurdo Bessio, who would acquire so much importance in future works.

The other recordings had never been released before: Two live songs with [Rubén] Rada and Hugo Fattoruso, the rescue of an unfinished album project done in the United States, an instrumental for a TV series and an advertising piece. Several of these tracks were retouched or finalized specifically for El puente. Members of La Doble took part of the most recent ones; Nego Haedo came from La Escuelita, but for Marcelo Núñez, Gustavo Montemurro and the Ibarburu twins (Nicolás and Martín) it was their first recording with Jaime.

‘Cielos’ is the oldest track. Upon leaving the Elvysur studio after recording ‘Ella allá’ (1983), [Eduardo] Mateo, Jaime and Darío Ribeiro went to a bar and started rambling about the possibility of making music without tuning the instruments. To test the hypothesis, they went back to the studio and improvised on guitars. Mateo used Jaime’s Morris, while Jaime opted for an electric guitar that was on the floor (it was broken and missing a string). It is the only Mateo/Roos co-authorship.

Just like the recordings, the photos in the booklet belong to different eras and situations. Those on the cover and back cover were taken without notice by Mario Marotta during a promotional photo session at Parque Hotel in 1991, while Rosina Molinolo (the session’s makeup and wardrobe artist) held the mirror. The bridge’s isotype was drawn by Jaime and digitally imitated by Juan Lo Bianco.

The album’s impact was smaller than that of Jaime’s albums with new material or greatest hits compilations. Nevertheless, the original edition on CD and cassette went Gold.”

Next page: Selladas uno.