Entre dos Aguas

Paco de Lucía's most famous piece was never meant to exist. While recording the 1973 album Fuente y caudal, producer José Torregrosa decided the record was one track short and told the guitarist to come up with something on the spot. What Paco improvised was a flamenco rumba, and by most accounts he leaned on tunes he already knew, among them Las Grecas' Te estoy amando locamente and Caramba, carambita by Los Marismeños, a song he had co-written. The recording broke with habit in small but telling ways. His brother Ramón de Algeciras played the second guitar, Eduardo Gracia added bass, and instead of the handclaps that normally drive a rumba, Pepe Ébano played bongos. Even so, Fuente y caudal sold poorly at first and was close to disappearing from the catalogue within months. Paco's manager Jesús Quintero and several journalists persuaded the label to release Entre dos aguas on its own as a single in 1974. It sold more than 300,000 copies, spent 22 weeks near the top of the Spanish charts and went gold in 1976. That single changed what a flamenco guitarist could be. An instrumental with no singer became a hit with listeners who had never sat through a flamenco recital, and it launched Paco de Lucía's career far beyond Spain. It remains his best-known work at home and abroad, and it is still treated as a masterpiece of the genre, which is a remarkable fate for a few minutes of filler recorded because a producer counted the tracks.