Enrique Villegas, the most important Argentine jazz musician, was born in 1913. His entire family was from San Juan but he was born in the city of Buenos Aires. On the same block as the bandoneonist Aníbal Troilo and the folklore pianist Adolfo Ábalos. His mother, Helena Reybaud, died when he was six months old and his father, Enrique Ulises Villegas, a dentist, lawyer and notary, became a breeder of fighting cocks and moved away from the city. So he was raised by his aunts.

He entered elementary school and at the same time began his journey at the Buenos Aires Music Conservatory directed by the composer Alberto Williams. He learned to decipher music before he learned to read and write. At the Conservatory he studied the musical structures of tango, folklore and classical music and at the age of nine he encountered jazz for the first time. He entered the college but his attendance was deplorable. He would sneak off to study piano. As he used to say, he was "a pianist by nationality." In the fourth year he dropped out of high school. His routine was to rehearse nine hours a day. He did not drop out of school because of an existential vacuum. He did it consciously and chose a path that he followed for the rest of his life.

In 1932 she premiered Ravel's Piano Concerto at the Odeón Theater in Buenos Aires and a few months later she played the original version of George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' at the National Council of Women. At that time he discovered his "spiritual teachers": Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong who would mark his future style. Later he incorporated other influences: Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. He did not deprive himself of anything by adding to his palette of founding sounds.

His clean and jerk was going to be interrupted by military service. But when he went for a medical check-up, he was declared unfit. So, he distributed a personal card, which said: “Enrique Villegas, seven-month-old. For this reason, he was saved”.

In 1935 he got his first job at the Alvear Palace Hotel, playing with guitarist Eduardo Armani. Later he joined LR1 Radio El Mundo as a musician, where he would be fired when he expressed that Ravel's death had been more important than that of the Pope. Brutal honesty. Secured dismissal.

In 1941 he presented his work 'Jazzeta,' the first movement together with Carlos García as a soloist and other important jazz musicians. In 1942 he conducted the concert "Ideal de Jazz" on Radio Belgrano where he premiered "Three O'Clock jump". In 1943 he formed an original band -the Santa Anita Sextet-, with Panchito Cao on clarinet, to inaugurate the nightclub La Cigale and in 1944 he formed Los punteros, together with Juan Salazar on trumpet, Bebe Eguía on tenor sax, Jaime Rodríguez Anido on guitar , Nene Nicolini on double bass and Pibe Poggi on drums. He did not stop at musical formations and experimentation. Meanwhile, his fame grew.

In 1949 he made a break with jazz. He replaced Horacio Salgán in the accompaniment of the criolla music duo Martínez-Ledesma and recorded folk songs with the Ábalos Brothers. In 1950 he gave a piano recital at the Odeón Theater, in three parts: the first was Creole music, the second were works by Brahms, Schuman, Ravel and Bartok, and the third were jazz compositions. An all terrain.

At the same time, he was co-founder of the Bob Club, a refuge for musicians and music lovers who watched the new trends in jazz. They fixed their senses on bebop, the jazz avant-garde pulled by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk. They would meet every other Monday at the headquarters of the YMCA (Youth Christian Association) where they organized jam sessions with the public, listened to records that came from the US and commented on the news released by Héctor Basualdo in the “Modern Jazz” audition on Radio Splendid. In that tribe Rubén Barbieri, Leandro "Gato" Barbieri, Horacio "Chivo" Borraro, Jorge Navarro, Jorge González, Alfredo Remus, Alberto Casalla drank.

In 1955 he was hired by Columbia Records and went to live in New York. He recorded a couple of albums with Milt Hilton on bass and Cozy Cole on drums. When he was asked to play Caribbean rhythms, he declined. He dedicated himself to playing in small venues and frequenting musicians such as Cole Porter, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole or Coleman Hawkins; in 1957 he met Duke Ellington in Cleveland. Immediate musical magnetism and mutual jazz identification.

They were years with a very austere economic situation but with notable exchanges. He lived on coffee with milk and bread and butter but played jazz, went regularly to the various New York movie circuits and rubbed shoulders with teachers and colleagues in their sauce. In 1963 he performed a series of concerts in Germany, France and Spain and returned to New York to continue bustling with jazz in its purest form. The day of his debut he arrived with a black double bass player. The owners of the place franked him: "Blacks, no." "So, I don't debut." The next day, he embarked and returned to Argentina. It was the year 1967.

He was already a myth but close and affable. To such an extent that in that round he received his nickname "Mono". The journalist Rodolfo Arizaga, from Primera Plana, gave it to him because of his appearance, but he made fun of that nickname and replied that it was because he imitated human beings very well. He gave several concerts with a consolidated trio structure. He was first accompanied by Jorge López Ruiz (double bass) and Carlos Casalla (drums), then Alfredo Remus and Néstor Astarita and, finally, Osvaldo López.

He made recordings for the Trova label and released several albums such as 'En cuerpo y alma,' 'Tributo a Monk,'' Metamorfosis,' 'Porgy & Bess,' 'Encuentro,' 'Inspiración' (along with saxophonist Ara Tokatlian), 'Baladas de amor,' '60 years,' '8-3-73' and 'Tribute to Jerome Kern' (Hallelujah Records).

He opened a nightclub in Viamonte that he called “Villegas y sus amigos”, he played between one thirty and three in the morning. They closed it due to annoying noise according to the closing act. In 1971 he was the first jazz musician to play at the Teatro Colón. He performed “Rhapsody in blue” with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Pedro Ignacio Calderón. In 1974 he repeated the performance at the Velez Sarsfield stadium in front of 20,000 spectators and in 1975 he returned to the Teatro Colón but this time with a piano solo in a remembered jazz repertoire. He finished his performances at La Peluquería de San Telmo, it was an intimate, pleasant, dignified refuge. Friend of Macedonio Fernández, Jorge Luis Borges, Xul Solar, Astor Piazzolla.

An endearing character, a master of irony. He used interviews as provocative little literary genres. Biting, funny, austere, disciplined in his métier, complaining about the lack of good pianos in our land, cautious, agnostic and with firm convictions.

On the day of his death in 1986, a double bass player sent a heartfelt telegram: "Enrique, rest in Jazz." That music was his engine in life.

—Rubén Ruiz (August, 2022)
https://www.apjgas.org.ar/efemerides