Maria Elena

Spanish Words & Music by Lorenzo Barcelata
English lyric by S.K. Russell, 1932
Recorded by Los Indios Tabajares, 1963 (#6)(instrumental)*


Dm7   C    G7  Fdim      C   G          C    Cdim   Dm7     G7
Mar - i - a E - le - na you    are the answer to a prayer;

     Dm   Dm+7          Dm7-5  G7          Dm7 G7             C    G
Mar - i - a E - le - na, Dear,   can't you see    how much I care?

    C   G7  Fdim           C   G            C  Cdim      Dm7     G7
To  me              your voice  is like an echo in the night*

Dm   Dm+7       Dm7-5  G7                Dm7 G7 Fdim     C    G
And when you're near,    my heart can't speak   above a sigh.



Dm7   C    G7  Fdim        C   G          C    Cdim   Dm7     G7
Mar - i - a E - le - na, please  say that we will never part;

Dm   Dm+7                E7           E7-9    E7      Am      A7
Mar - i - a E - le - na, Dear, please take me to your heart.

  F         Fm7      C9     C        A7
A love like mine is great enough for two --

   A7/9       D7             G7           C
To share this love is really all I ask of you.

*Call it a livingroom performer's creative license, but I like the third line the way it reads here. . . even though I have found that most lyric sources (at least, the ones I trust) have it as "the echo of a sigh." Maybe Russell did write it that way, but why the needless repetition with the next line? And as long as we're being honest about creative license...I'm including the words here only to simplify figuring out the timing, because the version I'm most attached to is an instrumental anyway.

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.