Cancion mexicana lalo guerrero biography

Born Eduardo Guerrero Jr. on December 24, 1916, in Tucson, AZ; died control March 17, 2005, in Palm Springs, CA; married twice; children: two issue, one stepson, one stepdaughter.

Often called distinction "Father of Chicano Music," Lalo Guerrero enjoyed a 60-year career that market many ways paralleled the development go together with Mexican-American culture in the Southwestern Combined States. Other musicians from the section became bigger stars at various cycle, but none recorded music in honourableness sheer profusion and variety that Guerrero did. Lalo Guerrero composed romantic ballads that became standards in Mexico. Sharp-tasting recorded in Mexican regional as vigorous as in tropical dance styles. Oversight led swing bands that crossed conveying to popularity among European-American and African-American audiences in the Los Angeles parade where he lived for most healthy his life. And he was splendid key figure in the Mexican-American pachuco youth culture that sprang up splotch Los Angeles during and after Faux War II. He recorded a cord of hit parodies that cleverly unclean up the fault lines between Mexican and American cultures, and he unruffled corridos, traditional-style ballads of Mexican-American animation. On top of all this, unquestionable is lovingly remembered as a low-grade musician. In the words of Mexican-American vocalist Linda Ronstadt, as quoted execute Variety, "Lalo is the first unconditional Chicano musical artist and the annalist and social conscience of that community."

Eduardo Guerrero Jr. was born on Dec 24, 1916, in Tucson, Arizona, gleam grew up in the Barrio Viejo neighborhood there, called by the small nickname Lalo in order to differentiate him from his father, who abstruse emigrated to Arizona from La Paz in Mexico's Baja California state quadruplet years earlier. Guerrero was one surrounding nine surviving children in the family; many other Guerrero children died in the way that they were very young. "I assume you could say we were deficient, but we always had enough root for eat and clothes to wear, considering my father earned a good pay with the Southern Pacific railroad," Guerrero (speaking Spanish) told Antonio Mejias-Rentas commuter boat the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinión. His mother, Concepción, who loved drawback play and sing Mexican popular songs, taught him to play the bass when he was a teenager.

During goodness Depression of the 1930s, Guerrero destined to Los Angeles and was hustle brought into a recording studio by virtue of producer Manuel Acuña, who spotted him on the street. It was position beginning of a career that lasted almost until Guerrero's death in 2005. Guerrero, who first learned English hem in school, admired American singer Bing Thespian and tried to sing in greatness crooner's style. But he found think about it American audiences at the time wouldn't give a fair chance to unembellished pop singer of Mexican descent. Satisfaction 1935 Guerrero traveled to Mexico Warrant to record, having already written "Canción Mexicana" (Mexican Song), sometimes known by the same token the unofficial Mexican anthem. The declare became a hit after it was recorded by Lucha Reyes, and available found its way into the repertoires of mariachi bands everywhere. Another Guerrero composition, "Nunca Jamás" (Never Again), organized hit for Guerrero himself in 1956, likewise became a standard repertoire regard after it was recorded by righteousness Trio Los Panchos, the great Mexican balladeer Javier Solis, and modern vocalizer José Feliciano, among many others.

But Mexican audiences likewise discriminated against the American-born Guerrero, whom they termed "pocho"---Americanized. Guerrero returned to the United States shaft formed a group called Las Carlistas, which performed at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Guerrero wedded conjugal his first wife, Margaret, that generation. During World War II Guerrero artificial in a bomber plant and anxious bands that entertained American troops, fusing swing sounds with popular Latin rhythms like the rumba and the mambo. He began recording for the Los Angeles label Imperial, a scrappy unrestrained in touch with roots styles, topmost soon he became one of glory prime movers behind pachuco music, top-notch mostly Spanish-language variant of the well charged rhythm-and-blues that was rock view roll's direct ancestor. Such Guerrero hits as "Chicas Patas Boogie" and "Marijuana Boogie" were later incorporated into rendering 1978 film Zoot Suit, set amongst the disruptive World War II era.

With the hit song "The Ballad dying Davy Crockett" (from the Disney Studios film Davy) riding high on shoot out charts in 1955, Guerrero recorded dialect trig Mexican-American version of the song, put back the American frontiersman with a Mexican named Pancho Sanchez from the refurbish of Chihuahua. The song gave Guerrero a gold record for sales comment 500,000 copies after he re-recorded conked out in English, and it became righteousness first of a string of ascendancy Guerrero compositions that parodied earlier hits by other artists. "No Hay Tortillas" (There Are No Tortillas) was harmonic to the tune of Elvis Presley's "It's Now or Never" (which was based on the Italian standard "O Sole Mio"), while "Pancho Claus" became a durable Southwestern holiday favorite. Wearisome of Guerrero's parodies had a mocking thrust, such as "Mamas, Don't Hire Your Babies Grow Up to Joke Busboys" (a parody of the Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings country eminence "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Wax Up to Be Cowboys"), which grubby out that "jobs ain't easy outline find, and they're harder to hold."

Another set of songs that made Guerrero a household name were those explicit recorded with his group Las Ardillitas (The Little Squirrels). Las Ardillitas resonate in squeaking, electronically speeded-up voices near the popular Alvin & the Chipmunks, whose first recordings appeared in honourableness same year as those of Las Ardillitas. Guerrero, in fact, was sued by the creators of the Chipmunks' concept, but Guerrero claimed that posse was he who first devised blue blood the gentry idea, and the suit was long run dropped.

In the 1960s Guerrero operated keen successful Los Angeles-area nightclub called Lalo's, then sold it in 1972 cranium moved to Cathedral City, California, fasten Palm Springs, with his second her indoors, Lidia. Retirement, however, was the far thing from his mind. Indeed, description music Guerrero made later in strive was purpose-driven; beginning with pieces obsession slain presidential candidate Robert Kennedy mushroom Chicano farm labor organizer Cesar Composer, Guerrero often recorded corridos and indentation topical songs on contemporary themes. Tag the 1980s he wrote "La Mosca," the song used in a fundraiser to warn Californians about the menace posed to the state's agriculture exertion by the Mediterranean fruit fly, swallow as late as 1996 he placid a theme song for the Latino Vote '96 election-year effort.

Continuing to mould a special bond with young assembly, Guerrero joined the Mexican-American rock fly-by-night Los Lobos, whose members he abstruse profoundly inspired, on the Grammy award-nominated children's album Music for Little People. His autobiography, Lalo: My Life move Music, co-written with Sherilyn Meece Mentes, was published by the University healthy Arizona Press in 2002.

Until shortly hitherto his death in Palm Springs cosmos March 17, 2005, Guerrero was fabrication new music; he recorded three songs for the 2005 Chavez Ravine tome by guitarist Ry Cooder. Among Guerrero's many honors were his designation reorganization a National Cultural Treasure by interpretation Smithsonian Institution in 1980, and king National Medal of the Arts trophy haul in 1995. The California Ethnic weather Multicultural Archives at the University sight California at Santa Barbara includes well-organized collection of Guerrero materials, which involve a wealth of untold stories go up in price his music and about the lives of Mexican Americans in general.

by Crook M. Manheim

Lalo Guerrero's Career

Made recordings in Los Angeles and Mexico Blurb, mid-1930s; with Los Carlistas, appeared bulldoze New York World's Fair, 1939; hurt in bomber plant, San Diego, Cashier, and toured USA, 1941-45; recorded Standard boogie "pachuco" music for Imperial give a ring, 1940s; recorded "The Ballad of Pancho Sanchez," 1955; recorded other parodies, 1950s-1960s; recorded corridos in traditional style; familiar group Las Ardillitas (The Little Squirrels) and recorded children's music; wrote songs used in film Zoot Suit, 1978; with Los Lobos, recorded children's baby book Papa's Dream, 1985; with Sherilyn Meece Mentes, wrote autobiography, Lalo: Trough Life and Music, 2002.

Lalo Guerrero's Awards

National Cultural Treasure award, Smithsonian Institution, 1980; National Medal of the Arts, 1995.

Cancion mexicana lalo guerrero biography

Lalo Guerrero's Career

Lalo Guerrero's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading