MANITAS DE PLATA — The Greatest Flamenco Guitarist

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Manitas De Plata, Jose Reyes and Manero Ballardo Perform the Malagueñas Flamenco. This is the first recording ever made ​​of Manitas De Plata – October 1963, in Arles, France, produced by E. Alan Silver of the Connoisseur Society (the recording engineer David B. Jones WAS). It WAS INITIALLY year released as LP (“Manitas de Plata at Saintes Maries de la Mer”) on the Connoisseur Society label and Philips (I Believe the Connoisseur Society distribution cam first) I Purchased the chromium-oxide tape version – from Which I Have made ​​this video – when it Appeared sometime in the early 1970s. 

 ~ ~ Guitar: Segovia, Bream, Manitas de de Plata (literally small Scissorhands but in fact is the French expression “nimble fingers”) is a famous gypsy guitarist. Whose real name is Ricardo Baliardo, Manitas de Plata was born August 7, 1921 in Sète, in a caravan. It was soon recognized by his people as Manitas de Plata, the man with the “magic fingers”. It differs every year, playing the guitar at the Gypsy pilgrimage of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Django Reinhardt was alive, he dare not even think to dethrone that which was then considered the king of gypsy music. Ten years after the death of Django, he agrees to play in public, and the miracle happens. In New York, at an exhibition of photographs by his friend Lucien Clergue, an acknowledged admirer of one of the shots and persuaded him to record. He made ​​his debut in the chapel of Arles. An American manager does play on stage at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York in December 1965. The gypsy illiterate, who can not read a note of music, conquers the world. In March 1964, an evening bullfight in Arles, Picasso, after hearing him play, exclaims: “It is more expensive than me! “.He was a friend of Salvador Dalí. Since 1967, Manitas de Plata continues to release records, travels the world surrounded by his tribe and always his eldest son, Manero, one of the last great singers of the Camargue, or developing smaller, his family around him . He played well in the U.S., Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, England, Algeria, etc.. Manitas has sold over 93 million albums of his music, over 83 different disks (source: manitasdeplata.fr). He lives very modestly to the Grande Motte. Manitas has lost his younger brother, 27 May 2009, which accompanied him during his early career on the biggest stages the world Balliardo Hippolyte, 84, also of the greatest friend. On August 8, 2009, there is still the arena “El Cordobés” Palavas-les-Flots (France), at the tribute night dedicated to his brother Hippolyte but also on the occasion of his birthday (7 August 2009), the public makes him a standing ovation while moving him this illiterate gypsy, who introduced El Flamenco worldwide, having reduced later this music to its purest form. Manitas de Plata is now considered the greatest flamenco guitarist in the world although controversial by the purists of the traditionalist school academic Spanish, because of his illiteracy and non-academic. Yet the artist Manitas is the world flamenco, all shades together, to be the best selling album in the world, an artist always respected and loved precisely because of its extraordinary art. Salvador Dali, who resembled the father Manitas, said of him, “Whenever Manitas plays, firefighters take fire.” Manitas met the most influential artistic, economic, literary and political, all captivated by the art, the personality of the artist at once modest and somewhat narcissistic, but always so endearing, touching and authentic. There are a permanent UN International Gypsy world representing these people and stuff.
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Manitas de Plata partying with 60’s sex-bomb Bridget Bardo