Four Mexican Songs

"Las Mañanitas" has been described as perhaps the best known folk song of Mexico. Dating from the 1890s, it's traditionally sung at birthday celebrations and other special occasions. But this version of "Las Mañanitas" – from a 10-inch disc c.1940s – may count as being among the lesser known recorded versions of this beautiful song. Las Mañanitas is performed here by Eithne Golden ("Eithne Merriam Golden Sax" being the singer's full name following her marriage in 1956); and whose biography is quoted below.

1. Las Mañanitas 
sung by Eithne Golden, c. 1940's 
(traditional / 1890's)

2. Guadalajara
Noël De Salva (ensemble), c. 1940's 
(music by Pepe Guízar, 1937)

3. La Bamba
Noël De Salva (ensemble), c. 1940's 
(traditional / Veracruz)

4. El Rancho Grande 
Noël De Salva (ensemble), c. 1940's
(music by Emilio D. Uranga, for a 1920's musical; first recorded by Victor, 1928)

These are 78 rpm transfers made during the 1980's from discs owned by a late friend – an unparalleled lover of music, collector and former record seller during the 1930's – but one who especially loved Mexican music. I made these tape transfers at my friend's request since he no longer had a functioning turntable and wanted to listen to these selections. 

The Eithne Golden disc is presently nowhere to be found. The Noël De Salva selections are from discs my friend had acquired years before on a trip to Mexico (the ensemble itself seems to have vanished from memory – at least, as far as I can discover... but I'm not a specialist in this area of music). The dating of these recordings is off-the-cuff information I have from my friend – who, in any event, was more interested in the music than the ensemble.

Regarding "La Bamba", my friend insisted that the slower tempo of the Noël De Salva version was more suitable for a folk song – that the tempo often used for performances was far too fast (for example, the much faster tempo used by the Ballet Folklórico de México, which can be heard below). Finally, the first recording made of  "La Bamba" in 1939 does seem to support my friend's preference:

_______________

"Eithne Merriam Golden Sax – a multi-linguist who worked for the United States Foreign Service, the United Nations, and Voice of America – and her twin sister Deirdre were born in New York City in 1919....

A native of Masseytown, Macroom, Co. Cork [Ireland], her father was deeply pre-occupied with the Irish struggle for independence from Great Britain at the time his daughters were born. In the aftermath of the Easter Rising in 1916, Irish ex-patriates and refugees in New York City gravitated to their apartment at 1245 Amsterdam Avenue, between 121st and 122nd Street near Columbia University. Golden had been in the United States since 1901. A gifted orator, poet, and writer, he worked tirelessly for Ireland’s cause as New York Secretary of the Friends of Irish Freedom, General Secretary of the Irish Progressive League, and National Secretary of the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic. Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, whose death on hunger strike in 1920 while imprisoned in England rallied Irish America, was Peter Golden’s second cousin.

Helen Golden – the daughter of an heiress to a timber fortune in Lyons Falls, Lewis County, New York – was actively involved in Irish republicanism as well as suffragism and the peace movement. When Peter Golden was on tour, Helen Golden was his representative at meetings: she was secretary of the Irish Progressive League and, in August 1920, helped organize a longshoremen’s strike in support of Terence MacSwiney that prevented British ships from being loaded on the New York docks, the first of several anti-British protests in the United States....

Musical interests brought Eithne Golden to New York City when she was seventeen, first studying singing with Theodore Van York, then classical guitar, Russian, and Portuguese. At twenty-one, she applied for a position with the United States Foreign Service and in 1940 was sent to Portugal. For 'two most rewarding years,' she worked by day in the secretarial pool, translating Portuguese documents for the American Legation in Lisbon; in the evenings, she learned to play the Portuguese guitar and made a name for herself as 'the American girl who sings the Fado,' the mournful music of the urban poor just then being popularized by Amália Rodrigues (1920–1999).

Her mother’s serious illness prompted Eithne Golden’s return to the United States, and after her death in 1943, a move to New York City’s East Village. She joined the New York Society for the Classical Guitar and in 1946 was a founder of "Guitar Review" magazine. That same year, she began to work for the Basque government in exile, campaigning for independence through editorial work with sympathetic newspapers and spots on local radio shows much like the advocacy Peter Golden had undertaken for Ireland. She also had an intimate relationship with António de Irala, a delegate to the Basque Government in the United States.

In 1949, Eithne Golden tested for and was accepted as a translator at the United Nations, then just four years old. She quickly moved up the ranks, at first working primarily in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, but, over time, adding both Russian and three Turkic languages to her repertoire. She met and married Ernest Sax, an Austrian immigrant and producer for Voice of America, at a U.N. party in 1956 and, under his tutelage, moonlighted as a producer of music shows in Tatar and Uzbek for the network...."

Biography from: http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/aia/collections/ihoral/saxeg01.php