F-S74 Carmencita of Sjösala. Having spent two years (1907–1909) sailing around the
Red Sea,
Ceylon and South Africa, Taube began his career as a singer-songwriter and collector of sailors' songs, and on Christmas Eve 1908, on board the Norwegian ship
SS Bergen headed for Spain, he performed "Turalleri, piken fra Hamburg". Following a five-year stay (1910–1915) in
Argentina, he developed an interest in
Latin American music and introduced the Argentinian
tango to Sweden in the twenties. Contrary to widespread perceptions, Taube did not work as a
gaucho (cowboy) on the
Pampas but as a
foreman supervising workers who were digging canals designed to prevent flooding on the vast plains. He is perhaps best known as a depictor of the idyllic, with motifs from the Swedish archipelagoes and from the
Mediterranean, from a perspective every Swedish four-week holiday tourist could recognize. But he also wrote the most hard-hitting anti-fascist anti-war poem in the Swedish language, "Målaren och Maria Pia", about the Italian war in Abyssinia, from the late 1930s. He also composed the anthem of the budding environmental movement in the 1970s, "
Änglamark" (originally written for the successful 1971
Hasse & Tage film
The Apple War). Taube's literary secretary
Inga-Britt Fredholm worked as a secretary at the Park Avenue Hotel in
Gothenburg starting in the late 1950s. There, in 1962, Evert Taube met her and this led to her becoming his literary secretary for more than ten years. During the 1964–1965 period she undertook travel for work, along with Taube, going to the
Antibes in
France and to the
Pampas in
Argentina. She collaborated with
Astri Taube on "Vid tiden för Astri och Apollon: okända dikter och berättelser", published in 1964. During the 1960s Fredholm collected Evert Taube's stories and published them in eight volumes at
Albert Bonniers Förlag under the shared title of "Samlade berättelser med tillhörande visor och ballader", released 1966–1967. In the 1970s she produced two pictorial biographies of Taube: ”När jag var en ung caballero: en bildbiografi" (1970) and ”Kom i min famn: Evert Taube 1920-1971 : en bildbiografi" (1972). Among Taube's most famous songs are "
Calle Schewens vals", "
Min älskling (du är som en ros)", "Dans på Sunnanö", "Brevet Från Lillan", "Flickan i Havanna", "
Änglamark", "
Sjösala vals", "
Fritiof och Carmencita", "
Så skimrande var aldrig havet" and "Så länge skutan kan gå". In 1976 he released an album of songs (on SR Records) about and by Sweden's 18th-century bard,
Carl Michael Bellman, performing 9 of Bellman's ''
Fredman's Epistles including the ever popular Vila vid denna källa, Ulla! min Ulla! säj, får jag dig bjuda, and Solen glimmar blank och trind''. Taube has been translated into English by Helen Asbury,
Paul Britten Austin, Emily Melcher and others. His songs have been recorded in English by
Roger Whittaker,
Sven-Bertil Taube,
Martin Best, Roger Hinchliffe and Emily Melcher. ==Personal life==