accordion

            The pantheon of pioneers in conjunto music includes artists who are household names to fans and students of the genre. Among the most recognized are names such as Santiago Jimenez and especially Narciso Martinez, hailed as the father of the conjunto style. Although not as well-known as his celebrated contemporaries, accordion-player Pedro Ayala deserves recognition for his contributions to the early development of this grassroots style during the 1930s and 1940s.

            Known as “El Monarca del Acordeon,” Ayala is considered a pivotal figure in the evolution of conjunto music, which arose from working–class communities in south Texas along the Mexican border. Ayala developed a unique playing approach on the button accordion that both borrowed from the past and foreshadowed the future, contributing to a genre that author Manuel Peña called “a collective folk phenomenon.”

            “An adequate discussion of the first generation of modern conjunto musicians ought to include the name of Pedro Ayala,” writes Peña in his 1985 study, The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-class Music. “But perhaps more importantly, by 1947, Ayala’s style, more than anyone else’s from his generation, clearly presaged the changes that were about to propel conjunto music into its final stage. Ayala may therefore be considered a transitional artist who shared much with his older contemporaries but who also pointed toward new stylistic trends crystallizing in the late 1940s.”

            It can also be said that Ayala contributed directly to the next generation of conjunto musicians. His three sons ­– Ramon, Emilio, and Pedro Jr. – founded an ensemble that carried the family name, Los Hermanos Ayala, popular throughout the Southwest since the 1960s. Pedro Ayala Jr., who passed away in 2007, is being inducted this month into the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame, during the organization’s 17th annual ceremony in San Benito, Texas.

            Pedro Ayala Sr. was born on June 29, 1911 in General Terán, Nuevo León, a town immortalized in norteño music, conjunto’s Mexican cousin, as the home base of the famed duet, Los Alegres de Terán. Ayala’s talent was cultivated since childhood in a poor but extraordinarily musical household. His father, Emilio Ayala, was a multi-instrumentalist (accordion, guitar, and clarinet), who at one time played with Los Montañeses del Alamo, another important norteño group from the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. Ayala’s siblings were also musicians, including his brothers Ramiro (guitar, banjo), Santiago (drums), and Francisco (accordion, guitar, clarinet), as well as his sister Felipa (violin).

            “He tried his hand at all of the available instruments, apparently becoming rather adept at all of them,” writes Peña, “though, of course, without benefit of formal instruction.”

            Ayala also learned to play the tambora, a rustic drum fashioned from goatskin, which his father made for him when he was six. It was the first instrument he played in public, according to Peña, who interviewed the musician for his book. Ayala debuted on the tambora at age 10, backing his father on clarinet at a so-called baile de regalo, a traditional dance at which men offered their partners small gifts of candies, pastries and fruits. Ayala recalls that the drum was so loud it “could be heard for miles on a still night,” and it was later dropped from the standard conjunto lineup because it drowned out the other instruments.  

            By then, the family had moved to the United States, setting down roots in Donna, Texas, a small border town located between McAllen and Brownsville, with a population of just 1,500 residents at the time. Ayala was eight when they came in 1919, settling in a city with segregated schools for Mexicans, including an entirely separate school for the children of migrant field workers, which included the Ayalas.

            The family’s move placed the boy smack in the heart of conjunto country, the Rio Grande Valley.

            By 1925, the year Ayala turned 14, he had learned to play the two-row button accordion, the genre’s cornerstone instrument. He was also gaining some early performance experience by playing guitar with Chon Alaniz, one of his favorite accordionists.

            But just as Ayala was emerging as a performer in his own right, a family tragedy suspended his musical development. His brother Francisco died unexpectedly in 1928, and the loss devastated their grieving mother, who for a time banned all music from the family home.

            It would be three or four years before Ayala could pick up his music career where he left off, according to Peña. By then, he was a young man of 25, and the conjunto music scene of the 1930s was gaining momentum as a regional force.

            As Ayala started to make a name for himself as a popular accordionist, he also decided at start a family. On February 3, 1935, he married Esperanza Benitez at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in his hometown. She would remain his wife for life. Wedding guests at the reception danced to the music of Midnight Serenade, a band which featured the groom’s brother-in-law, Jesus Herrera, according to a 2012 profile by journalist and blogger Eduardo Martinez, published in The Monitor, a newspaper based in McAllen, Texas.

            The couple had seven children, according to the article which cited interviews with Ayala’s widow and a son. The children are Anita, Elia, Emilio, Maria Magdalena, Maria Olga, Pedro Jr., and Ramon. Wikipedia claims the Ayalas had nine children, but fails to cite a source.

             After getting married, Ayala continued to do farm work while cultivating his music career, a double duty which was common among artists at the time. During the mid to late 1930s, he focused on the accordion as his primary instrument, but he also joined Midnight Serenade, his wedding band, as a guitarist, to gain experience with an orchestra. During this time, he also started composing his own songs.

            The young musician was still in his 20s when he had his first opportunity to record for an American record company, but it never materialized. The label’s talent scout was actually planning to record another artist, Arnulfo Olivo, who was Ayala’s compadre. When Olivo passed on the offer, he recommended Ayala as a substitute, but the label declined and recorded neither.

            It would be another decade before Ayala would make his first recordings.         

            So while Ayala’s contemporaries steadily built their discographies during the 1930s and 1940s, Ayala continued to perform live throughout the Rio Grande Valley. According to Peña, he appeared mostly at so-called bailes de negocio, or taxi dances, where men paid women for a dance on makeshift platforms set up outside of cantinas, a popular practice in rural communities.

            While he would come to influence the next generation of conjunto musicians, Ayala admits that he was strongly influenced at first by his peers, freely imitating other players, such as Martinez.

            “We all began to copy Narciso,” Ayala is quoted as saying in Peña’s 1999 book, Música Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation.  “He started to record first, and I used to play the tunes he recorded, just like he had recorded them.”

            Ayala made his first recordings in 1947 for Mira Records, a fledgling label based in McAllen that would soon become a powerhouse in the field. The label was founded by local entrepreneur Arnaldo Ramirez, who soon changed the name to Discos Falcon, creating a brand that became synonymous with conjunto music and Tex-Mex culture.

            Ayala’s first recordings for Mira were two polkas, “La Burrita” and “La Pajarera.” The label executive dubbed the act Pedro Ayala y su Conjunto del Rio. Before the end of the decade, Ayala recorded several other notable songs, including "El Naranjal," inspired by a major freeze that destroyed Texas orange crops in the winter of 1948. Ayala made the record with the orchestra of a cousin, Eugenio Gutierrez, marking the first time the button accordion was featured in an orchestral setting, according to The Monitor article.

            "Back then the accordion was not appreciated much, it was kind of considered a low-level instrument," Ayala’s son Emilio told the paper. “That would worry him very much, so little by little, he started raising the value of the accordion."

            It was Falcon’s founder who gave Ayala the nickname that would stick through his entire career: "El Monarca del Acordeon." Ramirez also made Ayala the label’s house accordionist, recording studio sessions with a host of regional stars, including Lydia Mendoza, Luis Pérez Meza, Luis Aguilar, and many others.

            In his own recordings, Ayala added the tololoche, or contrabass, to the instrumental lineup. He was not the first to do so, explains Peña; Santiago Jimenez had added the instrument years earlier, but the novelty didn’t stick at that time because other musicians failed to follow suit. After Ayala re-introduced the instrument in his earliest recordings, Peña says, it “rapidly took hold,” creating what was to become the core of the modern conjunto ensemble: accordion, bajo sexto, and tololoche.

            Peña describes Ayala’s accordion technique as “snappy,” with “his polkas featuring fast sixteenth note fingerings,” in the style of Martinez. But Ayala exhibited a more marcato style, forcefully emphasizing certain notes, a technique that would influence younger players, such as Tony de la Rosa and Valerio Longoria, who would soon gain fame in the field.

            “Pedro Ayala’s recordings of the late 1940s bring the curtain down on the first scene of conjunto’s stylistic development,” writes Peña. “Rigidly taking their cue from the older musicians, particularly Martinez and Ayala, the younger performers soon begin to forge their own conception of what conjunto should strive for musically.”

            Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Ayala went on to record dozens of tracks for regional labels, including Bego, Falcón, Ideal, Bernal, Discolando, RyN, Pato and Oro. He also continued to tour extensively, performing at marathon dances that would last from dusk to dawn. And he composed many popular songs in a variety of styles, including valses, polkas, and redovas.

            Ayala began his recording career comparatively late, at the end of the 78-rpm era, but he went on to make several albums in the new Long Play format introduced in the 1950s. His LPs included “Viva Mi Desgracia” (1968) and “Adios Mama Carlota” (1973).

            In 1959, Ayala and his family hit the migrant trail again, picking cherries in Michigan and grapes in California. Wherever they went, Ayala would play at local dances. And he wasn’t alone. His widow recalls working the fields around Shelby, Michigan, alongside other conjunto stars of the stature of Valerio Longoria and Tony De La Rosa.

            Ayala’s sons followed their father’s footsteps as conjunto musicians during the 1950s, starting with Pedro Jr. on accordion and Ramon on bajo sexto, joined later by their younger brother Emilio on electric bass, which had mostly replaced the tololoche in modern conjunto ensembles. Billed as Los Hermanos Ayala, the brothers made their first recording in 1959 for Bronco Records, a subsidiary of Falcón. They recorded and toured with their father, as well as an independent act, playing together for half a century until Pedro Jr.’s death at age 62.

            On a personal level, the elder Ayala was admired for his forthright manner and his honesty, according to The Monitor. He once compensated a promoter for arriving late to a show, due to car troubles, by returning part of his pay, his son Emilio recalled. And he was known for helping fellow musicians repair their accordions, a skill he had learned from his father.

            Pedro Ayala Sr. passed away on December 1, 1990. He was 79.

            His widow recalled the qualities of her late husband when she was interviewed for The Monitor in 2012.

            "He lived such a happy life, always had a smile on his face and would always treat everyone with respect and help them out in any way he could," said Esperanza, who was 90 at the time. "Those were such beautiful times."

            In 1988, Ayala received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the nation’s highest honors in traditional arts. On that occasion, he performed at a concert in the nation’s capital.

            Arhoolie Records released a compilation of his recordings in 2001, titled El Monarca del Acordeon, now available through Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

– Agustín Gurza

EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the first articles I wrote as a music critic for the Los Angeles Times was about a documentary that told the story of how the accordion became a lead instrument in Mexican-American music. Titled Accordion Dreams, this 2001 PBS production traces the history of the instrument from its German roots to its adoption by Tex-Mex musicians along the U.S.-Mexico border and its evolution in the hands of experimental young players today. The accordion is a showcase instrument in two closely related genres that are central to the Frontera Collection: norteño and conjunto.

Over the years, accordion music from the collection has been featured on compilation albums released by Arhoolie Records, the label launched by Frontera Collection founder Chris Strachwitz. One such album, for example, focused on the music of Narciso Martinez—a.k.a. El Huracán del Valle—who is considered the genre’s most influential instrumentalist. Martinez is also known as the father of conjunto music, due to his novel style of playing, which Strachwitz discusses in my earlier blog about conjunto music.Arhoolie also released a series of three compilations, these by various artists, focused specifically on the “Norteño Acordeon.” They are Part 1: “The First Recordings:” Part 2: “San Antonio, The 1940’s and 50’s;” and Part 3: “South Texas and Monterrey, N.L., The 1940s and 50s.” Each album was issued with liner notes by Strachwitz, revealing his broad knowledge of the music and first-hand experience with many of the artists. We are reprinting those liner notes as a series, with links to examples from the Frontera Collection. (The notes have been updated for clarity and accuracy, in the case, for example, of artists who have since passed away.) We begin with Part 1, released in 1975, in which Strachwitz touches on the origins of the accordion in Germany and discusses the songs and artists included in this first compilation. The notes also feature a brief sidebar written by musician Ry Cooder, who explains the workings of the button accordion (also known as the diatonic accordion), which is favored by Tex-Mex musicians over the piano accordion. Learn why in the Part 1 liner notes below.      ̶ Agustín Gurza

The first accordion was built in 1822 by Friedrich Buschmann (1805 –1864), a German musical instrument-maker also credited with inventing the harmonica. He called it a Ziehharmonika (zieh in German means pull). However it was Cyrill Damian who in 1829 in Vienna, Austria, began to mass-produce and adopt the name accordion for these instruments. (In Spanish, the name of the instrument is spelled acordeón.)

I found the first written report of the accordion being used along the border in John Peavey’s Echoes from the Rio Grande Valley (Springman-King, 1963, page 27). He describes an open-air dance about 1905 where a band consisting of fiddle, accordion, and drum supplied the music. Most people told me that the instrument was brought into the area by German and Bohemian settlers who were also active in the construction of mines and railroads in Northern Mexico. Some of the tunes heard on this compilation may also be of central European origin.

The Musicians

Among the first accordionists to become popular in South Texas via phonograph records were Jose Rodriguez and Bruno Villareal. Both came from San Benito. Bruno Villareal, almost blind, was labeled on his records “El Azote del Valle” (the Whip of the Valley) and is today still remembered by people as far north as Amarillo, Texas, playing in the streets with a tin cup attached to his piano accordion, which he used from the late 1930s onward. “La Cascada,” one of two Villareal tracks heard on this compilation. Is a mazurka recorded in San Antonio with bajo sexto and tambora on January 31, 1935.

While Bruno was an itinerant street musician, Jose Rodriguez played primarily for dancing. Fellow musician Narciso Martinez recalled attending a dance where Jose Rodriguez, known as “La Bamba,” was playing. Upon spotting Narciso, Jose stopped the dance and told Narciso that he did not want him around because he wanted to guard his tunes for his own recording sessions and accused Narciso of “stealing” his material. (More on Martinez, a key figure in the music, in a moment.)

Jesus Casiano, another squeezebox player heard on this album, lived in San Antonio where he continued to record for Rio Records in the 1950s. Known as “El Gallito” (The Little Rooster), he made polkas his specialty, such as the one included in this compilation, “La Bien Polviada.”

Lolo Cavazos, who was born January 5, 1906 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and later settled in Alice, Texas, recalls that accordion music was popular since he was a little boy. He believes norteño music got started in the Rio Grande Valley. Self-taught, he played a two-row instrument and in the 1950s recorded for the Ideal label.

The most important and influential accordionist in the San Antonio area during this period of the first recordings was Santiago Jimenez Sr. (1913 – 1984). Born in San Antonio, Santiago was labeled “El Flaco” (the Skinny One) on his first records, a nickname later inherited by his son. He started to play accordion about 1923 and learned most of his early tunes from his father, Patricio Jimenez. About 1935 Santiago bought his first two-row accordion at a pawnshop and within a year was broadcasting daily over the radio. Thomas Acuña, music store owner and talent scout, heard these programs and asked Santiago to record. The pay was only $7 per record and no royalties but via his records and radio programs Santiago became more and more popular. During World War II the major record companies stopped recording regional music, giving rise to many small firms in the late ‘40s. Santiago was one of the first to record for Globe and Imperial and was especially successful with “Viva Seguin” and “La Piedrera,” which have become polka standards in South Texas. In “La Nopalera,” a polka recorded in San Antonio in September 1938, he is accompanied on bass by Santiago Morales.

Santiago used to get his accordions tuned and repaired by the Stark Brothers, both immigrants from Germany during the 1920s. Chris Stark vividly recalls how Mr. Jimenez “was always trying to do something different” and asked that accordions which came from the factory in the key of G or C be put into a lower key like E, which Santiago preferred. Santiago Jimenez lived in Dallas in the mid-1970s (at the time of this writing), but still played from time to time especially when visiting his children, particularly Leonardo, who gained fame by his adopted nickname, Flaco Jimenez. The musical patriarch’s other son Santiago Jimenez, Jr., known as Jimmy, plays very much in his father’s tradition and most of the other children play as well. The delightful Jimenez accordion sound will live on, and Flaco’s little boy has already mastered “La Piedrera!”

Finally the Father of Norteño music, Narciso Martinez, was no doubt the most popular accordionist from the 1930s to the ‘50s. Born October 29, 1911 in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Narciso grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and became known as “El Huracán del Valle” once he started to record in 1935. Besides being a superb musician, Narciso emphasized the treble end of the accordion, leaving the bass part to his bajo sexto player. In the 1940s when Ideal Records started, Narciso became their primary artist who not only recorded prolifically on his own but also helped create the Norteño style: two voices backed by accordion. The singers were Carmen and Laura and their records were very popular and influential. On “Flor Marchita,” a schotis, Narciso is accompanied by Santiago Almeida on guitar or bajo sexto and Santiago Morales on bass. It was recorded in San Antonio on September 13, 1937. During the 1970s when he was in his 60s, Narciso continued to play for dances and parties while working as an animal keeper at the Brownsville zoo.

            – Chris Strachwitz, 1975

The Button Accordion

The diatonic accordion has been popular with Border musicians for probably over 70 years, and most of the instruments used in the Border area have been made by the German Hohner company. Hohner built their diatonic button accordions simply and inexpensively to popularize the instrument in America. The instrument heard on most of these selections (except the first two items which feature probably a one-row instrument) has two rows of treble buttons tuned in two major scales, such as G/C or C/F, and eight bass buttons, four for each key. The button accordion works like a harmonica in that each button has a two-note value, one pushing and one pulling, so that a scale run is played by working the bellows in and out, unlike the piano accordion, which plays any group of notes in one direction. “Diatonic” indicates that the instrument does not have regular sharps and flats, as does the piano accordion, but it does have one flat key per row at the low end of the treble side.

These accordions are double reed, that is, with each note one reed vibrates at standard pitch and the other about one fourth tone sharp. The dissonance produces a vibrato effect that gives the button accordion its unique sweetness and delicacy. Two adjacent buttons played together almost always produce a pleasant third interval, which is the basic harmony of all Mexican singing. No wonder this instrument became popular with the people of the Border!

The piano accordion never equaled the button style in popularity with Norteño musicians, probably because in addition to being four times as expensive, it doesn’t have the right kind of vibrato sound and staccato action that characterizes the fast, choppy polka and the more expressive corrido and cancion style playing. The simple, direct action makes the button accordion very responsive to the technique of the player, and this flexibility led to the development of individual styles and eventually stylistic trends in Tex-Mex accordion playing. According to several accordionists, people at dances have even expressed their open dislike towards the piano accordion.

                                    – Ry Cooder, 1975

Valerio Longoria is considered one of the most innovative conjunto musicians who shaped the music’s classic period in the post-World War II era, a group considered “la nueva generación,” the new generation. The son of migrant farmworkers, he is credited with a number of firsts in the Tejano genre during a career that spanned more than 60 years. He was the first to introduce lyrics to what once was a strictly instrumental style. He was the first accordionist to also sing while he played, the first to introduce trap drums to the traditional instrumentation, and the first to experiment with octave tuning. He was also the first to incorporate other styles into his repertoire, especially the musically sophisticated bolero that gave the genre an air of being more jaitón, slang for “high-tone.”

          Through such innovations and modifications, the musician from lowly migrant roots elevated the blue-collar ensemble from its status as cantina music to a style seen as more respectable. The 2001 PBS series American Roots Music proclaimed Longoria “a pivotal figure in the evolution of the conjunto style by introducing innovations that catapulted the music to a new stylistic level while raising its social value.”

          While sources differ on biographical details, the Texas State Historical Association states that Longoria was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on December 27, 1924. (Others say it was March or February of that same year and in Kenedy, Texas). In any case, there is no dispute that his beginnings were humble. Longoria worked the fields at a young age and had little formal schooling. Yet, he developed a talent for music – and a curiosity about instruments – at an early age.

          Longoria got his first guitar when he was six and he also learned to play harmonica. His father, Valerio Longoria, Sr., later bought him an accordion for $10, which he learned to play by watching conjunto master Narciso Martínez. He started tinkering with instruments as a young boy, taking them apart and rebuilding them to see how they worked. It was a knack that would later serve him in his quest for creating new sounds with traditional instruments. In one accordion, for example, he added an extra row of buttons to the standard three rows; in another, he tuned the reeds an octave apart “to produce a rich, organ-like sound,” according to the National Endowment for the Arts, which named him a National Heritage Fellow in 1986. Longoria’s self-taught skill with his instruments made him “something like the Les Paul of the accordion,” writes Eugene Chadbourne on the All Music website.

          Longoria hit the migrant trails in the early 1930s, working the fields by day and performing by night at dances for fellow workers. It was around this time he developed another innovation – a system of straps allowing him to play standing up. “One of his biggest influences on the music,” writes Chadbourne, “was just a question of posture: it was largely Longoria that got accordion players used to the idea of standing up onstage.”

          In 1942, at age 18, Longoria joined the Army and was stationed in Germany, the mother country for accordion and polka music, which had been introduced to Northern Mexico by German immigrants. While there, he played accordion in local nightclubs. After the war, he settled in San Antonio, an emerging mecca for conjunto music. There, he formed his own band and made his first recordings for the Corona label: the instrumental polka “El Polkerito” and “La Guera Chavela ,” a corrido also known as “Jesús Cadena.” He also recorded for Ideal Records, making $20 per recording, $5 more than with Corona. Though he went on to wax more than 200 tracks for almost every major label in the genre, the Ideal sides are still considered his best work. The Frontera Collection currently features 374 recordings by Longoria, including 62 with his conjunto and 312 as a soloist or with collaborators, such as the 18 with his father. Many of his recordings are available on various compilation CDs released by Arhoolie Records, the label owned by Frontera Collection founder Chris Strachwitz. Arhoolie also released two CDs by the accordionist’s conjunto; one of them, entitled “Caballo Viejo” (Old Horse), features three generations of Longoria musicians: Valerio Longoria on accordion, his son Valerio (the 3^rd) on bajo sexto (12-string guitar), another son, Flavio, on alto sax and Valerio (the 4^th) on drums.

          In 1959, Longoria went on the musical migrant trail, moving to Illinois, then Florida, Colorado, Idaho, and eventually California. He continued to record along the way, for Firma in Chicago and Volcán in Los Angeles. But those labels failed to promote his music effectively back in Texas, where his fan base began to slip away. In the 1980s, he moved back to the Lone Star State after getting wind of rumors that he had died and his friends were planning a memorial album. He again settled in San Antonio and began to rebuild his career and his reputation.

          In 1981, Longoria established a new base at the Guadalupe Cultural Center in San Antonio, where he taught accordion to children and aspiring musicians for almost 20 years. In 1988, he scored another hit with “Amor Chiquito,” teaming with Tex-Mex singer Freddy Fender. In 1997, at the age of 72, he appeared in the hit film Selena, about the life and tragic early death of young Tejana singing star Selena Quintanilla, played by Jennifer Lopez.

          Among his many honors, Longoria was among the first inductees into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1982. And in March 2000, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Antonio Current Music Awards. Three months later, the revered musician was diagnosed with lung cancer and spent his final days in a San Antonio nursing home. His death in December of that year, at age 75, was reported in a news obituary in The New York Times.

          “He had a real spark to him,” Strachwitz told the newspaper at the time. “I believe he had one of the best voices of any of the singers from San Antonio.”       

                   --Agustín Gurza

Narciso Martínez, nicknamed “El Huracán del Valle” (the Hurricane of the Valley) for his fast and powerful accordion playing, is acknowledged as the father of conjunto music. He was the genre’s first successful recording artist and the most popular accordion player of his day. No single accordionist was more influential or had a more lasting and widespread impact than Martínez, with hundreds of recording credits over his 60-year career. He was known for a distinctive style that emphasized the melody side of the instrument and left the bass parts to the bajo sexto player. It was a technique that created a snappy, staccato sound that was copied or imitated by virtually every conjunto accordionist who followed him. To this day, his sound is synonymous with Tex-Mex conjunto music.

          Martínez was born October 29, 1911, in the border town of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was brought to the United States that same year and lived most of his life in La Paloma, Texas, near Brownsville, in the region known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The son of migrant farmworkers, he received little formal education. In 1928, while still in his teens, he made two decisions that would have life-long impact: He got married and he took up the accordion. He and his wife, Edwina, eventually had four daughters. With the pressures of a growing family, he quickly got good enough on his instrument to perform at dances, picking up techniques from the Czech and German immigrants of the region. In 1930, he bought his first new accordion, a one-row button model made by Hohner, and five years later switched to the more versatile two-row version.

          Around this time, in the mid-1930s, he also began his productive association with the remarkable talent of Santiago Almeida, who played the bajo sexto, a 12-string bass guitar. It was that fruitful teaming that established the basic instrumentation of the cojunto and allowed for the duo’s trademark innovation – right-side melody on the accordion, left-side bass notes on the bajo sexto. In 1936, a year after Almeida and Martínez started working together, a local merchant by the name of Enrique Valentin heard them and persuaded them to go to San Antonio to meet Eli Oberstein, the recording director for the Bluebird label, an RCA Victor subsidiary.  Their first record – “La Chicharronera” (The Crackling) – was released later that year and became a big hit. Soon, they had the most popular and well-known dance band in South Texas.

          Martínez was prolific in the studio, recording up to 20 tracks in one session. His popularity soon extended beyond the Mexican American community. He recorded under the pseudonym “Louisiana Pete” for the Bluebird label’s Cajun series; and for the Polish market, the label marketed his group as the Polski Kwartet. He continued to record for his core audience, doing primarily instrumental polkas, which were his bread and butter, as well as huapangos and Bohemian redovas. His popularity spread nationally and internationally thanks to RCA’s global promotional capabilities. Many of his records were also pressed and distributed in Mexico, a market that generally looked down upon working-class music from north of the border.

          After World War II, with the rise of independent, local ethnic labels, Martínez made a move to Ideal Records, based in San Benito, Texas, which was to become a force in the Tex-Mex market. In 1946, the new label’s recording director, Armando Marroquín, hired Martínez for its very first release, now available on the Arhoolie Records compilation Tejano Roots (CD/C 341). As Ideal’s house accordionist, Martínez accompanied some of its most popular artists, notably the duet Carmen y Laura, Las Hermanas Mendoza, María and Juanita, as well as their celebrity sister, Lydia Mendoza, one of the genre’s most popular and respected vocalists. The sound of the duet singers, accompanied by guitars, was long a favorite in the region. Now, with the addition of Martínez’s superb accordion accompaniment, the modern sound of norteño music was born, changing from mainly instrumental dance music to an ensemble featuring singers as the star attractions.

          “Narciso Martínez once told me that he felt his lack of singing ability held him back,” wrote Chris Strachwitz in the liner notes to the compilation album Narciso Martínez: Father of the Texas-Mexican Conjunto (Ideal/Arhoolie CD-361). “Perhaps this perceived handicap was actually a blessing since it no doubt contributed to Narciso developing his remarkable talent of mastering a huge repertoire of virtually all regionally popular dance tunes and styles, including polkas, redovas, schottisches, waltzes, mazurkas, boleros, danzones, and huapangos. Narciso learned many of the tunes by having a friend whistle the melody and arrangement which they had recently heard played by a local orchestra or brass band. While his friend – who had a good ear to pick up tunes – whistled, Narciso would pick out the notes on the accordion, thereby transposing the tune to the accordion.”

          Almeida, his longtime partner and “left-hand man,” so to speak, stayed with Martínez until 1950 as demand for the touring conjunto was falling off. With increased competition from both sides of the border, older musicians were soon pushed aside. By the late 1950s Martínez had been replaced on the song charts by Conjunto Bernal, Los Alegres de Terán, Los Donneños, Los Relampagos, and other artists who became popular for both their singing and musicianship.  

          Martínez, like many other conjunto pioneers, never earned much money as a musician. He continued to play on weekends, sometimes at so-called “bailes de negocio” (business dances), where men paid to dance with women. On occasion, he’d be hired by old friends or nostalgic fans to play at special occasions such as anniversaries, quinceañeras, birthday parties, or receptions for baptisms and weddings. But increasingly he felt forced to turn to jobs outside of music to earn a living. In the 1960s and ’70s, he worked as a truck driver, a field hand and a caretaker at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville.

          In 1976, Martínez was featured in Chulas Fronteras, the Strachwitz-produced documentary film by Les Blank about Texas-Mexican music. In the 1980s, Martínez continued to receive accolades and recognition for his music and cultural contributions, from both within and outside his own community. He was inducted into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1982 and was honored the following year with a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to the nation's cultural heritage. In 1991, the Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center was named in his honor in San Benito, Texas, near his life-long home of La Paloma. In January of the following year, his last album was released, 16 Éxitos de Narciso Martínez (16 Hits of Narciso Martínez), on the R y R label of Monterrey, Nuevo León.

           In May of 1992, Martínez was scheduled to appear at the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio. Instead, he was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with leukemia. Narciso Martínez, El Huracán del Valle, died in San Benito on June 5, 1992.

          Posthumous honors continued after his death. Martínez was an inaugural inductee into the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame in 2000. Two years later he was inducted into the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame. He is also an inductee in the Houston Institute for Culture Texas Music Hall of Fame. And each year since 1992, a hurricane blows through San Benito once again at the annual Narciso Martínez Conjunto Festival, which showcases old and new forms of the genre and celebrates its pioneer.

– Agustín Gurza