Niño Ricardo
photo: anual · cc by 3.0 ↗Manuel Serrapí Sánchez, known as Niño Ricardo, was a Seville-born guitarist regarded by many as the most accomplished flamenco player of his generation, expanding the harmonic and melodic vocabulary of accompaniment and solo toque alike. A prolific composer of falsetas (signature melodic runs) that entered the shared repertoire of later guitarists, he taught and mentored the young Paco de Lucía, who considered him his first guitar hero.
Niño Ricardo came up alongside Ramón Montoya as one of the guitarists who shaped his early professional career — Montoya is widely credited as the founder of flamenco guitar's concert-solo tradition, and Ricardo built directly on the harmonic and technical ground Montoya broke.
listen forMontoya's 1928 'Rondeña' treats the guitar as a self-sufficient concert voice with rich, unresolved harmony; Ricardo's own soleares extend that same ambition into denser, faster falsetas.
Along with Montoya and Javier Molina, Manolo de Huelva was one of the three senior guitarists Niño Ricardo looked to as he began his professional career at Seville's Salón Variedades — de Huelva was famous among aficionados as the preferred accompanist of Manuel Torre, Antonio Chacón, and La Niña de los Peines.
listen forDe Huelva rarely allowed commercial recordings of his own playing, guarding his style closely; a surviving historical recording backing dancer La Argentinita shows the spare, deeply traditional accompaniment style Ricardo absorbed before pushing toward denser, more virtuosic solo playing.
Javier Molina, founder of the Jerez school of flamenco guitar and an early touring accompanist of Antonio Chacón, was the third of the guitarists credited with guiding Niño Ricardo at the outset of his career — a link between Ricardo's dense, Seville-rooted style and the older Jerez accompaniment tradition.
listen forAlmost no solo recording of Molina survives, since his career centered on live accompaniment rather than records; his influence is best heard indirectly, in the rhythmic drive of the Jerez-inflected passages inside Ricardo's own compás-heavy playing.