Tico Tico
78 rpm Columbia 38244
Today I picked up a record at random, and it became this one. Xavier Cugat (1900–1990), the Spanish-American bandleader, sure had an orchestra suited to play numbers like this.
The vocalist that has to sing a lot of words is the American actress Elena Angela Verdugo (1925–2017). I can’t catch everything she says at once, but I understand that the title refers to a little bird.
The song was already composed in 1917 under the name Tico-Tico no Fubá.
In the 1940s, this samba was used in Walt Disney’s Goodwill tour of Latin America.