ll his life long he was in tango. Despite he died when he was only fifty-eight, very few are the violinists with a career so extensive and rich. The different groups led by Julio De Caro were the axis of that long career, which was always linked to fundamental orchestras, nonetheless it is hard to find his name in reviews made by scholars. Only some tangos with relative acclaim that he wrote helped him to get out of anonymity.

José Nezow, turned into Nieso, emerged in 1927 with the orchestra fronted by the pianist Roberto Firpo, in which he met the violinist Antonio Rossi. In 1929 he switched to the sextet led by the bandoneonist Pedro Maffia when the latter had to temporarily replace Elvino Vardaro. But that same year he was summoned by Julio De Caro, whose sextet headed the cast of artists of Brunswick, a new recording company which would be very important despite its three-year existence and which ended with the sudden death of its promoter, Z. E. Salesbury. José replaced Emilio De Caro, who had quit because of his health condition.

With Francisco De Caro on piano, Vicente Sciarreta on double bass and the bandoneon players Pedro Laurenz and Armando Blasco, the sextet carried out a dazzling stage, in which it recorded 164 pieces. Nieso was in the sextet’s famous tour of Italy, France and England, which began in March 1931.

In 1932 the De Caro brothers enhanced their orchestra to fourteen members, driven by the trend of that time influenced by the sound movies made in the United States. Nieso then joined a violin section which included Vicente Tagliacozzo, Simón Reznik and Samy Friedenthal. Among the bandoneon players there was a teenager named Aníbal Troilo, and José María Rizzuti was added, because that ensemble included not one but two pianos.

A couple of years later, when Laurenz split with De Caro to put together his own orchestra, Nieso decided to follow him, like Blasco, Sciarreta and Friedenthal. On piano was Pugliese, and with those stars they made their debut at the Los 36 Billares, on the opposite sidewalk of the Germinal, where the Sexteto Vardaro was appearing. So a battle of innovative styles was established and out of it an instrumental splendor was to reach its summit in the two following decades.

In 1937 Nieso founded the Lucerna dancing, on 567 Suipacha Street, which for ten years would occupy the focus of its activity. There people danced to the Di Sarlian beat with the Orquesta Novel or the one led by Miguel Nijensohn, and the admired Antonio Rodríguez Lesende, who had declined an offering to sing with Troilo, could be heard. Anyhow Nieso returned to De Caro in 1938, joining an eleven-piece orchestra, which included important figures like the violinist Cayetano Puglisi and the bandoneonists Carlos Marcucci, Alfredo Cordisco and Calixto Sallago.

After an unhappy stage in which De Caro sped up his pulse to fit the trend in vogue imposed by Juan D'Arienzo, in 1941 he returned to his best level, cutting excellent recordings of his own tangos, like “La rayuela” or “Copacabana (Nido de amor)”, or by other composers, like “Maipo” or “El baquiano”.

While Nieso stayed, in 1942 the personnel of the violin section changed again, including Bernardo Weber as lead player and Bernardo Sevilla. As from 1949, Nieso played in the twenty-four recordings made by De Caro for Odeon until 1951. Weber was still the leader of the string section, which also included Pedro Sapochnik and Luis Cuervo. In the bandoneon section, alongside Carlos Marcucci, Roberto Di Filippo stood out.

The last voyage of this orchestra encompasses seven 78 rpm discs recorded for the Pathé label between September 1952 and August 1953. Weber was replaced as lead violin by Hugo Baralis, and in the bandoneon section, after Di Filippo quit, were successively included Toto Rodríguez and Marcos Madrigal, among another handful of great players.

In the 1950s, Nieso was the lead violin in the Orquesta Estable de Radio El Mundo, which had conductors like Héctor Artola and Carlos García. With that engagement as main job, José was in several worthy experiences, but sometimes they were not long lasting.

In 1953 he was member of the Elvino Vardaro orchestra, which only succeeded in recording one album. In 1957 he was summoned by Astor Piazzolla to join his bandoneon and strings orchestra, while he was member of the orchestra led by the bandoneon player Emilio Orlando, and in the two following years he played in the music groups fronted by the pianists Juan José Paz and Fulvio Salamanca.

Between 1959 and 1962 he played in the Los Violines de Oro del Tango, a not long-remembered ensemble led by Enrique Francini and Héctor Stamponi. In 1959 he joined the last orchestra led by Pedro Maffia, with which he appeared on Radio Belgrano and for the TK label recorded the instrumentals “El Marne”, “El estagiario”, “Tinta verde” and “Pimienta”, plus four pieces sung by Alberto Gómez.

In 1963 he was summoned by the refined Héctor Artola and, in 1964, joined the outstanding Joaquín Do Reyes orchestra, alongside Roberto Guisado and Aquiles Aguilar in the violin section. The core of that group consisted of the bandoneonists and arrangers Máximo Mori and Mario Demarco. Two other bandoneon players, Julio Ahumada and Miguel Bonano, included Nieso in the orchestra with which they appeared on Radio El Mundo after 1963.

In 1966, Demarco summoned him for the group he put together to back up the singer Rodolfo Lesica. On October 12 that year, José died of diabetes, because he was reluctant to accept a medical treatment, in spite of the insistence of his wife, Juana Kriveruk, and his only daughter, Olinda.

Nieso, as composer, left an oeuvre of certain importance, but as he shared a good portion of his tangos with Nijensohn, it turns out difficult to ascertain what his contribution was. Julio De Caro recorded three of his pieces: in 1932, the instrumental “Patria querida”, which Nieso co-wrote with Carlos Arce; in 1940 “No quiero pensar más”, with words by Iván Casadó, sung by Héctor Farrel, and in 1942 “Decime qué pasó”, co-written with Nijensohn and the lyricist José María Suñé, sung by Agustín Volpe. These three authors also signed the interesting “Yo quiero cantar un tango”, in 1943, recorded by Juan D'Arienzo with Héctor Mauré on vocals and by Pedro Laurenz with Alberto Podestá; “Viento malo”, in 1944, recorded by D'Arienzo and Antonio Rodio, and “Sol”, in 1945, in an outstanding recording by Osvaldo Fresedo with Oscar Serpa, and also by Miguel Caló with Luis Tolosa.

«A great violinist and a loyal friend» are the words with which Julio De Caro praised this musician who followed him along the highway of best tango for the quarter of a century.