Devotees of this brilliant pianist might bicker about whether he was born in 1905 or 1906, but not about his importance to the country's music scene. Someone doing the tango just might not be doing it if there had been no Rene Cospito, while his Don Goyo quartet brought American jazz styles into the country's music scene in a way that had been unimagined before. But the mild-mannered, gracious Cospito would most likely deflect such statements. Perhaps the late-'40s Rene Cospito y Su Ritmo recording entitled "Quizas, Quizas" -- that's perhaps, perhaps -- summarizes his attitude about both his proper birth date and his stature on the Argentinian music scene. It is one of many sides released by the prolific Cospito during his long tenure with his country's branch of the international Victor recording empire. He hailed from the Devotee Villa area of Buenos Aires, a hotbed of musical activity at the turn of the 20th century. Cospito became known for his piano work, comfortable with jazz as well as tango and bursting forth from the very seams of superb compositions such as "Esponjita," "Porota," and "Yuyito." The aforementioned modesty was quite evident in his work with the Don Goyo combo, named after an affectionate nickname for the mountain Popocatepetl but hardly indicative of a volcanic ego. The pianist used his own name with such infrequency in this group that tango archivists sometimes aren't even aware he was involved. In 1995, the elderly Cospito received a special award for his contributions to Argentinian music. ~ Eugene Chadbourne