A couple weeks ago, I posted a video of ‘Tico, Tico’ that I liked. Since then, I’ve run across some more performances of it that I like. The first one is by Paco de Lucia. He gets pretty fast with his fingers on this. I used to have an LP or two of his. I’m not sure what the short bits that follow his performance are.
Here’s another version that’s pretty fun – it’s by Liberace. He gets some incredible speed in his performance.
Liberace was one of the more flamboyant performers I remember from my youth. I remember Bugs Bunny did a Liberace impression once or twice. Given his over-the-top wardrobe, I wonder if he had the same problem with the IRS that Diana Ross had – they were going to disallow the deductions she took for her stage outfits, but she demonstrated that most of them she couldn’t wear offstage – they wouldn’t allow her to sit down. He couldn’t make the same argument, since he performed sitting down.
Here he is performing ‘Malaguena’ and mugging with Sammy Davis, Jr.
And here’s another version of Malaguena, this time from Chet Atkins.