Max understood that, although these first recordings were mostly by opera singers like Enrico Caruso, the real market lay in popular music artists of the period. In a day in which radio was in its own infancy, these recordings were usually the only way large numbers of people could hear different kinds of music.

"When the gramophone really came into its own in Argentina," Max said, "it was thanks to the popularity that, day by day, was enjoyed by 'criolla' music (music from Argentina itself). From the time of the 'payadores' (itinerant singers) like Negro Gazcón, Gabino Ezeiza, Villoldo and others, who were singing just as the disk was perfecting itself."

Max, recognizing clearly in 1900 that cinema and recording were the coming industries, applied himself to his work so intently that, in 1908, when Lepage y Compañia now had one hundred fifty employees, he bought the company. Soon thereafter, he built the first recording studio in Argentina, taking advantage of new technology that allowed recordings to be made by the thousands. He also worked to establish the legal rights of music authorship for performers, something that had not previously existed in Argentina.

Max also saw the attractiveness of providing a very comfortable place for people to view the new movies coming from Europe, New York, and the upstart Hollywood. In 1919 he built a 1,000-seat cinema on the Avenida Santa Fe, then as now one of the fashionable shopping streets in Buenos Aires. Calling it the "Grand Splendid," he showed all the latest movies, and the theater was an instant sensation. It also had a large stage, and he mounted live shows that featured the many musicians he was recording.

One of these was Carlos Gardel.

A former street singer, Gardel had made an early reputation as half of the Razzani-Gardel duo that was popular on the Buenos Aires music scene before and during World War I. Eventually the two split up, and Carlos Gardel continued on as a single, signed to an early recording contract by Max. Carlos was still a "criollo" singer whose music had a country flavor heavily influenced by the music of the Argentine pampas and the gauchos, but he was an urban kid who had been brought as an infant to Buenos Aires by his mother, a French woman from Lyons.

As in many great cities, there were populations in Buenos Aires that had been forced to emigrate from other countries by war or great economic difficulties. There was chaotic urban noise and emotional dissociation, the alienation that comes from the break-up of families, from the loss of community, the anger and rage of having to fight so hard for what in the end can be a meaningless urban existence. Gardel was no stranger to this, and his first solo recording, in 1917, was a tango entitled "Mi noche triste," about a man sitting alone in his Buenos Aires room, crushed because his lover has just left him.