conjunto music

Fred Zimmerle (1931-1998) was born in San Antonio of German and Mexican ancestry, a heritage that embodied the cultural fusion of the border region of South Texas. He became one of the most popular and influential acts in the highly competitive conjunto scene in post-war San Antonio, beloved by fans and respected by peers as a historic figure.

His grandfather, Fritze Zimmerle, was a German immigrant who spawned an entire clan of musicians, including Fred’s father, Willie, who played accordion while his mother backed him on guitar. Immersed in that musical environment, Fred learned to play guitar, harmonica, and accordion by age ten, and he landed his first paid gig five years later, playing guitar at a wedding with his uncle, Jimmie.

The roster of relatives who were also musicians included his brothers, Henry (guitar) and Santiago (bajo sexto), two other uncles, Felix (fiddle) and Cecilio (guitar), and his sister Caroline who was a singer. Fred’s son, Larry Zimmerle, backed up his father on several recordings and later played with Los Pavos Reales, a popular South Texas conjunto. His nephew, Nick Villareal (born Nicolás Zimmerle Villareal II), gained fame as an accordionist and songwriter. And his aforementioned brother, Henry Zimmerle Sr., also became a prominent figure on the San Antonio conjunto scene, along with his son, Henry Jr.

Fred Zimmerle was still in grammar school when he fronted his first band, a harmonica combo. Shortly after the end of World War II, when he was still in his early teens, he founded the original Trio San Antonio, a group he helmed for half a century until his death in 1998. At around the same time, circa 1946, the young musician and his budding ensemble recorded their first tracks for RCA. He then went on to record more than 250 songs during his career, many his own compositions.

Zimmerle made a splash from the start. He broke with conjunto tradition, which typically called for a lineup of at least four musicians, choosing the trio format instead. Zimmerle admired the great Tejano accordionists who preceded him, such as Narciso Martinez and Santiago Jimenez, but by the late 1940s he had developed his own unique style on the squeezebox. On vocals, he incorporated the distinctive harmonies of duets popular in northern Mexico, thus minting the “Norteño Sound” within the conjunto genre of San Antonio.

With the Trio San Antonio, Fred Zimmerle sang and played accordion. His vocal partners included brothers Henry, who was also a songwriter, and Santiago, who played bajo sexto. Other illustrious collaborators were Andrés Berlanga, Steve Jaramillo, and Martin Chavarria, all three of whom sang and played bajo sexto. The group also featured Juan Viesca who was known as “El Rey del Tololoche” and played the upright bass, or contrabajo, that was a cornerstone of post-war conjuntos through the late 1950s.

“Fred Zimmerle … has long been one of my favorite accordionists, and his duet singing with old-time troubadour Berlanga brings chills down my spine,” wrote Frontera Collection founder Chris Strachwitz in notes to a compilation. He cites one track in particular as an outstanding example of Zimmerle and Berlanga performing together with the early Trio San Antonio: “Un Recuerdo Quedó” (One Memory Remained), recorded in 1945 as a 78 on the Ideal label. “This selection has some of the purest country-style singing in Mexican-American music,” adds Strachwitz. (Aside from doing vocals on this track, Zimmerle plays accordion and Berlanga is on bajo sexto.)

Like many other artists in this working-class genre, Zimmerle held a day job to support his musical career.  Until his retirement, he worked days at the Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. In his later years, he taught accordion classes at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio.

“Younger musicians would often pay a pilgrimage to Zimmerle's door to meet him,” writes AllMusic.com biographer Eugene Chadbourne. “German punk rock group FSK paid such a visit, and remarked in a later tour-diary that they were surprised that  [Zimmerle] didn't know a single word of the Deutsche mother tongue. They must not have realized that although Zimmerle's grandfather was German, he was 100 percent Tex-Mex.”

The Frontera Collection contains dozens of recordings by both Trio San Antonio and Fred Zimmerle as a solo artist. Many of these recordings have been released over the years by Arhoolie Records as compilations , including the eponymous LP (Arhoolie 3004) featuring the catchy polka “Viva el West Side” that highlights the group’s musicianship. (The album was later reissued on CD (Arhoolie 9052) with additional tracks.) Thanks to Strachwitz’s liner notes, these albums also serve as the primary source on Zimmerle’s life and career. Despite his stature in the genre, whatever written material about the artist that may exist is not readily found online.

In 1978, Zimmerle was the subject of an oral history conducted by journalist Allan Turner, who specialized in the folk culture of Texas and the South. Turner’s tapes of his interviews with Zimmerle, along with musical recordings, are preserved in the Allan Turner Collection, part of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin.

            Trio San Antonio remained relatively active until Zimmerle's death from a heart attack on March 5, 1998.

– Agustín Gurza

Santiago Almeida was an exceptional bajo sexto player who gained a historic place in the pantheon of Mexican-American music as the pioneering partner of famed accordionist Narciso Martinez. Together, the duo would shape the style we know today as conjunto music, with the accordion and 12-string guitar as its instrumental core.

Almeida was born on July 25, 1911, in Skidmore, Texas, a town of 1,000 residents at the time, located between San Antonio and Corpus Christie. His family were farmworkers who played music in their spare time. By the time he was a teenager, Almeida had learned to play the bajo sexto, a 12-string guitar built with bass strings in six double courses, or rows. At 14, he was playing along with seven brothers in the traveling Almeida family orchestra, which performed at dances in towns all along the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

La Orquesta Almeida was one of the so-called “orquesta tipicas” popular in those days, consisting of clarinet, flute, bajo sexto and string bass. Because they provided the entertainment at a wide variety of social functions, orchestra members “had to be familiar with just about every type of dance tune popular at the time,” writes Chris Strachwitz in his liner notes to the LP Narciso Martínez: Father of the Texas-Mexican Conjunto, a compilation released by Arhoolie Records. “The tunes in those days were not as simple as they are today; they had more involved chord changes and modulations which only a musician well-trained in the repertoire could master.”

It was in the mid-1930s that Almeida teamed with Martinez, and the duo developed a unique style of playing together that helped shape the sound of conjunto music and influenced generations of musicians to come. Martinez became known for his distinctive style on the accordion that emphasized the right-hand melody, at the expense of the bass side of the squeezebox. But for his new style to work, Martinez had to depend on Almeida to pick up the slack, playing bass and harmony parts on his bajo sexto. This innovative technique gave the duo its trademark sound—one that earned them the reputation as the founders of the modern Tex-Mex conjunto.

Indeed, Almeida was much more than just a back-seat accompanist to Martinez, even though the accordionist gained more celebrity and enjoyed a longer career, later as a solo act. Fans and students of the genre also recognized Almeida for his musical contributions.

“Almeida played the accompaniment for the innovative accordion leads of Martínez, but was also an innovator himself,” states a biography posted by the National Endowment for the Arts when it named Almeida a 1993 National Heritage Fellow. “He played in all keys without a capo, using a technique similar to what is known today as cross-picking. He used a three-note ‘bass arpeggio,’ alternating each bass note with a single higher drone note, all at a relatively high speed. This technique is especially effective in accompanying waltzes and huapangos, but can also be applied to the performance of other musical styles.”

In 1936, a year after Almeida and Martínez started working together, a local merchant by the name of Enrique Valentin heard them play and persuaded them to go to San Antonio to meet Eli Oberstein, the recording director for the Bluebird label, an RCA Victor subsidiary. On October 21 of that year, the pair recorded their first 78-rpm single for the Bluebird label: a polka titled “La Chicharronera” and a schottische, “El Troconal.” Experts regard these as the earliest recordings of modern conjunto music. The A side, translated as “The Crackling,” was an instant hit and remains a standard of the genre.

During that marathon session, they recorded a total of 20 songs at the Bluebonnet Hotel in San Antonio, where labels would set up mobile recoding studios. According to one source, the two musicians were paid $150 for their work, of which Almeida received a third. The duo would go on to make more than 60 records for Bluebird between 1935 and 1938, including redovas, polkas, huapangos, schottisches, and mazurkas. The pair soon “became the most imitated and sought-after conjunto musicians in South Texas,” according to the NEA.

Almeida and Martinez continued to perform together into the 1940s. They toured extensively and were in demand as studio musicians to back up popular singing stars of the day. The duo also continued to record together for independent labels, mainly Disco de Oro and Ideal Records, where they became “the house instrumentalists,” as described on the website for American Sabor, a Smithsonian exhibition. “During their time there, they recorded hundreds of songs with many musicians and vocalists also involved in the development of conjunto and Tejano music.”

Almeida stayed with Martinez until 1950 when demand for conjunto music started tapering off. The guitarist first moved to Indiana but eventually wound up in the state of Washington where he and his family made a living picking apples. He settled in Sunnyside in the Yakima Valley, a hub for Mexican-American migrants in the northwest. He started teaching music and mentoring young guitar players interested in his distinctive style. He continued to play his bajo sexto for family events and for dances at the local Assembly of God church, where he was a member. 

During retirement, Almeida fell into such deep obscurity that fans and friends back in Texas thought he had died. However, his reputation was revived in 1987 when he was inducted into San Antonio’s Conjunto Hall of Fame. Six years later, his home state honored him with the Governor's Arts and Heritage Award, recognizing artists for their contributions to the creative vitality of Washington. That same year he became the first Washington resident to be named an NEA National Heritage Fellow, which earned him a $10,000 award from the NEA.

Almeida died on July 8, 1999, just before his 88th birthday.

          -- Agustín Gurza

In the late 1970s, in between journalism jobs, I worked in the music industry, on the selling, not the producing, side. With absolutely no direct experience in the market, I took a job as Latin-music buyer for Pickwick International, a major record distributer on a national level. With a gargantuan warehouse in the San Fernando Valley, the company operated its own chain of record stores, Musicland, and supplied hundreds of record departments in national retail chains, including Sears, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, and Kmart.

The problem was that Latin music wasn’t selling well in these outlets, despite a heavy Latino clientele in many of the stores. So I was brought on board in hopes I could fix the problem. The managers took a chance on me because in my previous job as an editor at Billboard, I covered the business and also tracked the sales charts for top sellers in Latin music.

That’s when I discovered that writing about the business and actually being in the business are two very different things. I was nervous, but truthfully, the solution wasn’t very hard to find. The records weren’t selling because the company simply wasn’t putting out the right product, for various internal reasons.  In a nutshell, the stores didn’t have the big hits by the big stars, so shoppers were turned off.

My job was to make sure we got the right records in the racks, then did enough promotion to win customers back. Sometimes even I was surprised by our success.

One of our biggest promotions featured an in-person visit by one of the major norteño acts at the time, Los Cadetes de Linares. These promotions were typical in those days. An artist would agree to visit a retail store and sign autographs for fans, while the dealer sold a pallet of records in a few hours. A win-win, as the cliché goes.

Los Cadetes were hot at the time, so we knew they would draw a crowd. But we never expected the masses that showed up at the Kmart store in Delano, California, to greet the singing duo, Homero Guerrero and Lupe Tijerina.  Of course, this was farmworker territory, the natural fan base for norteño music. People waited in line for hours and packed the aisles so thick that other shoppers couldn’t get to the toothpaste or the TVs. It was a mob, but a most orderly and patient one.

I was impressed by the professionalism of the two musicians. They stayed to sign the very last autograph. They were not exactly charmers; they didn’t smile and you couldn’t call them outgoing. But they didn’t complain, either. Dressed in matching guayaberas, they were serious and respectful, and that’s all their fans required. People approached them with a mixture of awe and delight. Even the star-struck Kmart employees proudly displayed their personally autographed posters, as you can see in one of the photos I took with my old Minolta 35mm manual camera (which explains the lousy focus).  In the other photo, Tijerina takes a copy of the LP Pistoleros Famosos from a fan to sign, while his partner signs a separate autograph with a curious boy looking over his shoulder.

That day, records by Los Cadetes sold like hot tamales. In the end, promotions like this helped drive Latin music albums to the top of Pickwick’s western-region sales charts. I wound up being sort of a star myself at the company. But it’s easy to look good when you’re simply making available the music by artists that so many people love.

Both members of Los Cadetes have now passed away, but their music is still played and sold. You can read my full biography of this enduring norteño duo here.

-- Agustín Gurza

Los Cadetes de Linares was a popular norteño duo composed in its prime by Homero Guerrero and Lupe Tijerina, both from the town of Linares, Nuevo Leon, south east of Monterrey, Mexico. They were particularly well known for their popular corridos, starting with their first single, “Los Dos Amigos” (The Two Friends), written by Tijerina. Their career together lasted a short eight years, until Guerrero’s untimely death. Yet, they left a lasting legacy through scores of recordings as well as appearances in films that carried the titles of their best-known ballads of outlaw bravado and tragedy, including “Las Tres Tumbas” (The Three Graves), “Cazador de Asesinos” (Hunter of Assassins) and “Pistoleros Famosos” (Famous Gunslingers).

Though often impersonated by bands that hijacked their name, the original Cadetes de Linares had an inimitable style that influenced a great number of conjunto and norteño groups, and many of their songs have been recorded by countless other artists. The Frontera Collection contains some 150 authentic Cadetes recordings, many written by Guerrero and Tijerina as individuals or as a team. They put such an unmistakable stamp on their music that they became identified as the interpreters of certain hits, even though many other top bands did their own not-so-memorable versions. There are almost two dozen renditions of “El Chubasco” in the collection, for example, including recordings by other top duets such as Los Alegres de Terán and Carlos y José, as well as Los Tremendos Gavilanes. But the one that is remembered, for its tight harmonies and irresistible accordion riffs, is the hit by Los Cadetes de Linares.

The full name of the band’s founder is Homero Guerrero de la Cerda, a singer and bajo sexto player born April 10, 1937, in El Popote, Nuevo Leon. His rancho, or small farming community, lies within the municipality of Linares, an area best known for its musical native sons. He was part of a large farm-working family that could not afford to nurture his childhood dreams to be a musician. Unable to buy a guitar, the boy made one by hand with wood and rubber bands. His older brother Benjamin taught him to play, and he performed at school and family functions, as well as in the main square of his hometown.

When he was just 16, Guerrero moved to Monterrey, the state capital and a vibrant mecca of norteño music in the 1950s. He took a job in a factory that produced paint pigments but continued to pursue his goal of breaking into the music business, frequenting the city’s well-known musical hangouts. There, he rubbed shoulders with other norteño musicians who would go on to make a name for themselves, including Salomón Prado, Juan Salazar, and Los Gorriones de Topo Chico.

Guerrero finally formed his own group in 1960, teaming up with Adan Moreno, the first in a string of accordionists who would work as his partner. Moreno, who was also from Linares, left the band in 1967 due to creative differences. Guerrero then hit the road, working his way along the migrant trail from Louisiana to Ohio and Michigan, then back-tracking to south Texas.​

In 1968, the traveling musician wound up in the border town of McAllen, working at the record-pressing plant of Discos Del Valle, the famed regional label. Owner Cristóbal García not only gave Guerrero a job but also his first break with a chance to record. On his debut album, Guerrero teamed with his second accordionist, Samuel Zapata. According to a biography by his subsequent label, Ramex Records, this duo was christened Los Cadetes de Samuel y Homero, using the military term for the first time. The name “cadets” was chosen, so the story goes, because Guerrero as a young man aspired to attend Mexico’s military academy, but he lacked the resources to pursue his military career ambitions.

That first record included songs – such as “La Menudita”, “Estoy Pagando”, “Las Puertas del Cielo” and “Ven a Buscarme” – that Guerrero would later re-record as Los Cadetes de Linares. But they produced no big hits. Within a year, family issues forced Zapata to leave the group.

Still seeking success in the music business, Guerrero moved again, this time to Houston where he partnered with his third accordionist, Candelario Villarreal, originally from Matamoros. The pair performed in dance halls and nightclubs around town and were eventually noticed by Emilio Garza, founder of Ramex, the label that would finally hit it big with Los Cadetes. But before that could happen, Guerrero would need to make one more change to his musical partnership. Friends were saying that the accordion accompaniment of Villarreal didn’t fit his style, so he replaced him with Lupe Tijerina, the highly respected musician who would remain his partner until death did they part.

Since both Guerrero and Tijerina hailed from the same hometown, a lucky new name was born: Los Cadetes de Linares. In 1974, Ramex printed only 200 copies of their first record, which became a runaway hit requiring many more pressings. The album included the Tijerina corrido that would become their first major smash, “Los Dos Amigos,” written by Tijerina. This marked the true beginning of Los Cadetes de Linares, who would go on to enjoy a series of chart-topping hits, such as “El Chubasco,” "Las Tres Tumbas," "Pueblito," "Regalo de Reyes," "Polvo Maldito," “Cruzando el Puente,” “Pistoleros Famosos” and many more. Aside from making an outstanding vocal duet, Guerrero and Tijerina were also composing partners. They wrote 23 songs together, including “El Caballo Jovero,” “El Tejanito,” “Tu Nombre,” and the aforementioned “Cazador de Asesinos.” Individually, Guerrero also composed more than a dozen songs, including the tear-jerker about a grown son visiting his mother’s gravesite, “Dos Coronas a Mi Madre.”

By the end of the 1970s, Los Cadetes had received multiple honors and gold records and had been featured on television programs that gave them international exposure, such as Raul Velasco’s Siempre en Domingo, the weekly variety show broadcast from Mexico City. Their appearancs in several classic Mexican films helped amplify their musical success.

Tragically, Guerrero died at the peak of the success he had sought for so long. The musician was killled in a car crash on February 19, 1982, while traveling on the road between Monterey and Reynosa in his home state of Nuevo Leon. After his partner’s sudden death, Tijerina composed a touching tribute that struck a chord with the band’s mourning fans. It was a bolero titled “Adiós, Amigo Del Alma," which roughly translates as Farewell, My Soul Mate, and it too became a hit.

Tijerina, admired by his peers as an accordionist’s accordionist, considered retiring after the loss of his longtime musical partner. But public clamor convinced him to continue with Los Cadetes de Linares.   So, the band’s original drummer, Ernesto Baez, took over as lead singer and bajo sexto player. Tijerina and Baez continued to play sold-out stadiums and appear on popular television variety shows.​

After Baez left the band in 2006, he was replaced by Rosendo Cantu. But the glory days of Los Cadetes de Linares had now faded, and the band’s success devolved into a bitter business dispute when Cantu claimed the rights to the name of the original duet. Meanwhile, Tijerina started another band under an unmistakable moniker, Los Cadetes de Linares de Lupe Tijerina. This was not the first dispute over the name and legacy of the band. Other ex-members also formed splinter groups using the name Los Cadetes de Linares, prompting Tijerina to assert that only two people, in fact, could claim to be legitimate “cadetes.”

Thus, when Tijerina himself passed away unexpectedly earlier this year, he was honored as “El Último Cadete,” the last cadet. On the night of July 4, 2016, Tijerina had barely played two songs of a concert in a town outside the city of San Luis Potosi, another stop on a busy tour schedule, when he suddenly fell ill and had to leave the stage, accompanied by his daughter Yahaira, who is also a performer. While his musicans caried on, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died of heart failure in the early hours of the following day. He was 69.

A new generation now carries on the music of the famous duet, with a modern twist. Yahaira Tijerina, sporting long blonde hair under a black cowboy hat and tight stretch pants, shows off her accordion skills in this video during a Florida concert. She also posted a recent Facebook video to warn fans against scam artists pretending to represent her late father’s interests. Meanwhile, Homero Guerrero Jr. performs and records norteño music under the name his father founded, but with a hip-hop variation in the spelling, Los KDT’s de Linares. One of the band’s music videos about a racy love affair has more than 2 million hits on YouTube. In another video featuring the catchy love song “Mi Niña Bonita,” the new band can be seen perfoming before a large crowd in the open plaza of the city where it all started, Linares, Nuevo Leon.

The younger Guerrero also recorded a song in memory of his father, “Lagrimas de Tu Hijo” (The Tears of Your Son), which was included in a Ramex Records compilation marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Guerrero Sr. The posthumous tribute album, entitled Homenaje A Homero Guerrero...25 Aniversario, also included two farewell tunes: “Despedida con Mariachi” by Raul Ramirez, and  “Adios Amigo del Alma” by his friend and musical partner Lupe Tijerina.

In the latter song, Tijerina visits the gravesite of his friend and collaborator to bid his last farewell: “I remember the old days, that we lived together as brothers. We shared sorrows, we laughed and we cried. Goodbye, friend of my soul. In my heart, there is no calm, but I must resign myself.”

Yo recuerdo aquellos tiempos que vivimos como hermanos. 
Las tristezas compartimos, y reímos y lloramos.

Adiós, amigo del alma.

En mi corazón no hay calma; ya me voy a resignar. 

-- Agustín Gurza

Related Post: My Memorable Meet-and-Greet with Los Cadetes de Linares

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

The Story of Hymie Wolf and Rio Records

During World War II, national record companies such as Victor, Columbia, and Decca just about stopped recording and releasing regional music in the United States. In those years, the major labels were battling a strike by the musicians union and facing a shortage of shellac, the material used to press records. After the war was over, local entrepreneurs sensed a great, pent-up public demand for recordings by local performers, especially from tavern owners who had jukeboxes. With no experience in the music industry, many of these local businessmen started their own record labels from scratch, buying essential record-making equipment: a disc cutter, blank acetates, a mixer, and a couple of microphones. Manuel Rangel Sr., who ran an electrical repair business that serviced jukeboxes in the San Antonio area, was by most accounts the pioneer of Tejano record labels starting with the release of a tune by accordion player Valero Longoria on  Rangel’s Corona label, probably in early 1948.

Not far behind, however, was another small business owner from San Antonio named Hymie Wolf, who founded Rio Records in what used to be his liquor store. He remodeled the liquor store into a record shop and set up the recording studio in a back room. The letterhead of this one-man operation proudly announced ”Wolf Recording Company, Home of the Rio Record.” 

Located at 700 West Commerce Street in the heart of San Antonio’s bustling downtown area, the store was just a few blocks east of the Plaza del Zacate where produce was the main business. Here all kinds of folks would congregate, and in the evenings they would listen to strolling musicians or buy hot tamales from street vendors. Just a few blocks to the south, off South Santa Rosa Street, was a busy area of honky-tonks and cantinas where Tejanos and Mexicanos would socialize, imbibe, dance, carouse, or relax at the end of a day of hard labor or try to drink away their problems. They would listen to live conjuntos or to recordings on a jukebox, which was often better, and of course cheaper, at repeating favorite songs endlessly to one’s heart’s desire.

By the late 1940s, musical ensembles known as conjuntos (groups)  typically  featuring two harmonizing voices, an accordion, a bajo sexto, and a string bass, were making the music that Spanish-speaking factory hands, truck drivers, and other blue-collar workers wanted to hear. Strolling musicians of all sorts, including duets with guitars, trios, mariachis, as well as conjuntos, wandered from cantina to cantina in search of customers willing to pay for songs to be delivered on the spot. Singers had to know the latest hits and sing them well in order to compete with the jukeboxes. For dancing, however, musicians were hired for the evening. There, in addition to an appealing vocal delivery, stamina, and endurance, musicians needed instrumental prowess, rhythmic energy, and cohesion to be popular with the dancers. Many of the musicians also began to learn that if they could come up with their own songs, they could earn extra money by getting their compositions into the hands of established recording stars.

Some of the singers and musicians who found their way into Wolf’s backroom recording studio were already established artists who had been making a living with their music for some time. There was San Antonio’s premier corridista, Pedro Rocha, who had recorded extensively in the 1930s and was well known on the local music scene. Also recording for Rio were Juan Gaytan and Frank Cantú (aka Pancho Cantú), popular San Antonio singers and composers who had been on the music scene for many years. Lydia Mendoza’s sisters, Juanita and María working as the duo Las Hermanas Mendoza, were also a big name in San Antonio having started their career at the Bohemia Club there during the war.

However, most of the performers to appear on the Rio label were young upstarts determined to be heard.  The first artists to appear on a Rio 78rpm disc were the dueto of Andres Alvarez and Polo Cruz. The two were accompanied by accordionist Jesus Casiano, who was already an established recording artist from the pre-war era. The label read “Alvarez y Cruz y Los Tejanos” and the first song, Rio No. 101, was “Mujer de las Cantinas” (Woman of the Bars)! Honky-tonk music had arrived and Rio Records, during the brief decade of its existence, documented some of the finest Spanish-language examples of this genre in San Antonio. Indeed, these Rio recordings constitute an  authentic audio snapshots of a vibrant culture and tradition which came to life and threw off its old conservative shackles during the social and economic boom period of the post-World War II era.

Fred Zimmerle, along with his brothers, started his career on Rio and became one of the best and most beloved accordionists with his Trio San Antonio. Valerio Longoria came over to Rio and introduced the high-tone bolero to cantina patrons. Tony de la Rosa, on his way to becoming the polka king of South Texas, cut some early sides for Rio (as Conjunto De La Rosa) while visiting San Antonio. Conjunto Alamo, with Leandro Guerrero or Felix Borrayo on accordion and Frank Corrales on guitar, became very popular around San Antonio. Pedro Ibarra also became a well-respected musician in town and remained active on the local music scene all the way through the 1990s. And Los Pavos Reales came to San Antonio from nearby Seguin to become major stars of conjunto music.

A young man named Leonardo Jimenez, strongly influenced by Pedro Ibarra, made his first records for Rio with Los Caminantes . One of Don Santiago Jimenez’s sons, he became world-famous   20 years later as Flaco Jimenez. (The Frontera Collection contains 73 tracks by Los Caminantes on Rio. Those first recordings by Flaco Jimenez and Henry Zimmerle with Los Caminantes are available on a compilation CD, Arhoolie 370, titled Flaco’s First.)

Many of the artists on Rio Records were young rebels, in some waysthe  equivalent of today’s blues, rap, or punk musicians: Los Tres Diamantes, Los Chavalitos, Conjunto Topo Chico, Conjunto San Antonio Alegre, and from the lower Rio Grande Valley, Armando Almendarez, the accordionist who had obviously listened to the jukebox records of the King of Louisiana Zydeco, Clifton Chenier. An authentic Tejano orchestra, Alonzo y Sus Rancheros, as well as the classy ranchera singer Ada García , who had a marvelously soulful voice, also appeared on the label.

Perhaps some of these singers and musicians would have found their way to other enterprising upstart record producers, as many of them later did, but few producers seemed to have had the kind of rapport, enthusiasm, and congenial relationship with the artists as Hymie Wolf . Besides all the fun and joviality evident on these recordings, the enthusiastic music merchant turned Rio Records into a successful, if limited and short-lived, enterprise with the help of his personality, resources, business experience, and the all-important cooperation of local singers and musicians.

Wolf  was the last of four sons born in San Antonio to Morris and Rose Wolf, who themselves were both born in Russia. His father had a clothing store on Commerce Street  where the famous Los Apaches Restaurant later resided. (The restaurant is now closed.)  Wolf was educated in San Antonio, spoke fluent Spanish as well as some German, and eventually taught electronics at Kelly Air Force Base. And it was around 1948 he remodeled his liquor store and opened the Rio Record Shop  that housed the Wolf Recording Company and became “Home of the Rio Record” for the next decade.

In 1956 Wolf met Genie Miri and they got married on June 23, 1960. For the next three years Wolf, who was an excellent pilot, also operated an aviation business and took his wife on many trips. The couple worked together at the record shop until Wolf’s death on October 10, 1963. His wife  continued to operate the shop for many years after but the label stopped recording activities in 1963, except for Rio No. 455 by Luis Gonzales which was issued in July of 1964 and saw its last re-pressing in 1968. In the 1970s I met Genie Wolf at the old location of the store.When I inquired as to which local conjunto impressed her the most, she suggested I record Flaco Jimenez, whom she felt had a lot of charisma. In 1991, I purchased all the masters and contracts of Rio Records from Mrs. Wolf for Arhoolie.

Most Rio 78s and 45s are  exceptionally rare because sales were small due either to limited distribution or to the fact that no one heard or wanted them. Wolf did not believe in promotion, even going so far as to charge radio stations for copies instead of paying them to play his records, as was the general custom at the time! And he was cautious in production, judging by entries in his ledger book, which shows orders and sales for Rio releases. For example, in August of 1956 he initially ordered 300 copies of No. 374 by Los Caminantes (200 78s and 100 45s). However, that recording of “Mis Penas” backed by “Borrar Quisiera,” both written by Henry Zimmerle, became a popular item and re-pressings were frequent but in small quantities ranging from a low of 25 to a high of 110, eventually resulting in a total of 2820 units, combined 78s and 45s,  being pressed by 1961. In contrast, the initial pressing order in 1960 for the 45rpm single Rio No. 441 by Los Navegantes was for 150 units, and the item was never re-pressed.

In addition to being hard to find, these recordings were primitive; and as the competition grew, most artists turned to more professional labels and producers including Jose Morante in San Antonio and Falcon and Ideal records in South Texas. For authenticity however, no other label or producer captured pure cantina music the way Hymie Wolf did on his Rio recordings.

̶Chris Strachwitz

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

Conjunto music, the accordion style so popular with Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest, comprises a cornerstone of the Frontera Collection. Yet conjunto as such does not appear on the list of Top 20 genres compiled for my book about the Frontera archive and published in 2012 by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press. That fact points to a confusion about the term that sometimes stumps even fans familiar with the genre.

       “An accordionist by the name of Roberto Rodriguez was actually the first to make a recording in the conjunto style, on June 11, 1930, in San Antonio. The few sides he made, however, either did not have the sound the public wanted or the 75-cent record price at the start of the Great Depression was too high. For whatever reason, he was apparently not asked to return to the recording studio. The next day, however, on June 12, 1930, the same label – the OKeh record company – recorded a blind musician by the name of Bruno Villareal, who from all accounts played a small piano accordion. Billed as ‘El Azote del Valle’ (The Scourge of the Valley), he went on to record prolifically over the next several years, aided no doubt by the fact that by the mid-1930s, during the depth of the Depression, most record prices had dropped to 35 cents. He is today generally recognized as the first conjunto accordionist on records, many of which are found in the Frontera Collection. (The "Valley" in his nickname, of course, refers to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, the border region, where all this music originated.)”

 

1. An essay entitled “Música Fronteriza / Border Music” by Manuel Peña, published in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

 

2. “Yo Soy de Aqui,” a collection of photos of accordion players from central Texas, taken by Daniel Schaefer.

     

3. An extensive collection of essays and liner notes from Arhoolie Records titled “The Roots of Tejano and Conjunto Music.” Aside from the notes on Martinez, the Arhoolie material also includes articles on San Antonio conjuntos from the golden years of the 1950s and a focus on the women artists of tejano music.