uis Saldarriaga, known in the national, international and music milieu as El Caballero Gaucho, was born in the city of Pereira but he spent the years of his youth in Anserma nuevo. His father Pedro Antonio and his mother Carmen Emilia used to sing and they teamed up as a duo similar to the one of Margarita Cueto and Juan Arvizu. That is to say that Luis Ángel received singing as an inheritance.

When, for the first time, he appeared in an amateur contest on the radio station Armenia Pregones del Quindío he was sent to hit the road and was recommended to sell coffee. By that time Luis Ángel had got a rundown small guitar and with a practical teaching method he learnt with nobody’s help. He was so persistent that he came back to the radio station but this time he won the first prize and as an award he received two shirts, soaps and a trouser.

His father taught him the craft of woodworking. With his brother José Ramírez and his cousin Luis Bernardo Saldarriaga (later an excellent composer and second voice of the Los Pamperos duet) formed the Los Trovadores Andinos trio and they appeared on La Voz de Pereira for several months. When there Luis Ángel sang a tango as soloist he, immediately, had to sign a four-year contract. The day of the debut the owner of the radio station told him: - Today you sing at nine in the evening.
- But, sir, I’ve seen on the billboards that at that time somebody called El Caballero Gaucho sings.
-The thing is that, from now on, we have decided that you’ll be known as El Caballero Gaucho.

Thereafter he was summoned by the Codiscos label for which he recorded the tango “Cuando te conocí”. Later he switched to Discos Fuentes in 1958 and then he released national hits like “Al final del camino”, “Siempre solo”, “Para ti madre”, “Regalo divino”, “Te llegó la mala”, “Goteras”, “Del mismo lodo”, “Perdón por tu amor”, “Dolor gaucho”, “Misiva amarga”, “Pasión sin nombre”, “Veneno mortal”, “Cuando todo te falte”, “El vals de la ilusión”, “Viejo farol”, “Amores de arrabal”, “Alma de mujer”, “Viejo juguete”, “Lejos del tambo”, “Cuando llora un hombre”, “Gotas amargas”, “Cobarde corazón”, “Junto a ti”, “Flor de boulevard” and many others.

Luis Ángel told the anthropologist and writer Carlos Humberto Hiera that he has been exclusive artist of Discos Fuentes for thirty-two years and that in his more than fifty years in show business he has recorded around eight hundred songs and a hundred and eighty were written by him. He is regarded as one of the most outstanding interpreters of the pampera music with guasca style.

El Caballero Gaucho told the researcher Juan David Arias the following: «I composed the tango “Viejo juguete” in Medellín, on the corner of Abejorral Avenue and San Marcos. That happened in 1956 when, to relax for a while, I went to the terrace of the hotel where I was staying. And I saw there on the terrace across the street that there were two well-dressed kids playing and I guessed that they belonged to a well-to-do family. Suddenly one of those kids threw away his toy because it seemed he did not like it. With my eyes I followed the little toy until it fell on Abejorral Avenue. Then a boy in poor clothes who had been walking holding his mother’s hand jumped into the street to get the fallen toy. But unfortunately a passing bus rolled him down and put an end to his life. After seeing this tragedy I wrote this tango in only twenty minutes.

On a day I was with some friends. There was a young couple I appreciate very much. After lunch my friend and I said goodbye to the young woman but when my friend came closer to kiss her she turned her face away. On our way back my friend told me: -Did you notice her gesture? –And I replied: -Don’t pay attention, because now kisses are given by force of habit. Hence my song “Besos por costumbre”.
If the song has no rhyme, I think there’s nothing. For writing “Viejo farol” and all those songs that I have written it’s necessary to have learnt a lot of poetry and meter. I have learnt very much by reading Julio Florez and Porfirio Barba Jacob.

In my life I have had four women. The first one died when she was twenty-six and she gave me three children. She was a beautiful woman but her soul was even more beautiful. The second one died at age twenty-nine and gave me seven children. Later I married a fair-haired girl and people began to say: -What’s that fly doing in a milk pot? Certainly, I, so brownie, and with such a blonde! It was when I told her: -Babe, why did you and I marry if we’re incompatible –so we split with no hard feelings. Now I have the warmth of a sound, pure, clean nest... a woman with great qualities. I have thirteen children and the only one with whom I had no children was the blonde.

I did not want to be known as El Caballero Gaucho but they gave me that name. On a certain occasion doctor Ramírez Johns called me to record for Discos Silver and I would do that on condition they did not call me Caballero Gaucho because I was not gaucho but Colombian, I was born in Pereira, I liked my folk music and I was not Argentinian. But he answered me: -Look, man, all the letters you see in these bags are letters for El Caballero Gaucho so I cannot record any other but El Caballero Gaucho.

They had suggested something like Luis de la Rosa, Luis de la Roca, Luis de la Fuente but Luis Carlos González said: “With that voice he has to be called El Caballero Gaucho” and so I remained up to now. I don’t know if Luis Ramírez drags El Caballero Gaucho or El Caballero Gaucho drags Luis Ramírez.
I have won two platinum discs, three gold discs and a Golden Oscar I was awarded in New York in a tour de force with Los Niches and Los Visconti performing three days of concerts. But the public chose me".

Despite he is not from Antioquia I include him in this book because El Caballero Gaucho has meant for our rural people what Carlos Gardel is for the Argentine people. Luis Ángel Ramírez is the singer of tangos criollos and guascas par excellence and is one of the greatest idols for our working and mountain men.

Director’s Note: Alberto Burgos Herrera, author of this note is Colombian, a professional physician and also an intellectual, tough defender of the music of his country, researcher, writer, radio broadcaster, promoter of festivals and, as if this is not enough, painter too.