Javier Solis

“Perfidia” has stood as one of the most cherished and enduring songs in the Latin American songbook. Composed more than 80 years ago by Mexico’s Alberto Dominguez, it is enshrined as one of those timeless standards that continues to inspire artists and resonate with music lovers, young and old.

            Recently, I heard the song’s memorable melody which watching a new movie on Netflix, the Spanish film Vivir Dos Veces (2019), by Barcelona-born director Maria Ripoll. The movie is about an aging math professor named Emilio, a lonely widower who finds himself sinking into the terrifying early stages of dementia. It explores how he and his small family, a take-charge daughter and precocious granddaughter, handle the crisis.

            The more Emilio’s faculties slip away, the more he obsesses over the memory of a childhood infatuation. He drifts off into gauzy, sun-dappled flashbacks of casual encounters between him as a geeky, awkward boy and her, the lovely, vibrant young girl of his dreams. The classic bolero infiltrates his memories and floats through the film, infusing it with those emotional qualities that characterize so many of these old romantic songs – an almost immobilizing nostalgia, deep yearning for an unrequited love, and the aching sense of loss for what might have been.

            The movie’s narrative revolves around Emilio’s seemingly quixotic quest to find and reconnect with the girl that still sparks his tantalizing memories, and awakens his undying need for true love.

            “Perfidia” was a perfect song choice for the film’s themes of loss and longing. The original Spanish lyrics were also written by Dominguez, born Alberto Domínguez Borrás on Cinco de Mayo of 1906. He was part of a huge family (18 siblings!) from the charming, indigenous town of San Cristóbal de las Casas, one of Mexico’s so-called “pueblos mágicos,” located in the state of Chiapas.

            They were a talented clan, gaining early celebrity as Los Hermanos Dominguez. While still in their teens, several of the brothers formed a marimba orchestra known as La Lira de San Cristóbal, which would go on to record for RCA Victor. In addition to Alberto, three of the brothers also became composers credited with scores of romantic songs: Abel  (“Óyelo Bien,” “Tormento”),  Ernesto (“Adiós en el Puerto” “Buganbilia”) and Armando, known as El Chamaco Dominguez (“Miénteme,” “Sin Saber Porqué”).

            But it was Alberto who enjoyed the most success, propelled by two early compositions – “Perfidia” and “Frenesí.” Released almost back to back, they became popular around the world. By the time he was 35, he had skyrocketed to international fame with these two beloved songs, both destined to become classics. During the 1930s and ‘40s, he made frequent trips to the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean, staying outside of Mexico for years at a time. During his life, he amassed a repertoire of 366 compositions, according to the Mexican composers society Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de México (SACM), of which he was co-founder in his youth and vice-president at the time of his death in 1975 at age 69.

            “Perfidia” made its debut on the silver screen in a film of the same name, also released in Mexico in 1939, and in the U.S. the following year. Filmmakers would continue to feature the melody in their work over the coming decades. In the 1941 film, Father Takes a Wife, a young and dapper Desi Arnaz breaks into the chorus of “Perfidia” to spontaneously serenade an obviously impressed, though just married Gloria Swanson on her honeymoon on the deck of a ship. The following year, in the 1942 noir classic Casablanca, “Perfidia” plays while the characters Rick and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart) dance cheek-to-cheek in the famous Paris flashback sequence. Fifty years later, a version sung by Linda Ronstadt is featured in the soundtrack to the 1992 film, The Mambo Kings, starring Antonio Banderas. (The composer’s other classic, “Frenesí,” was also used in its share of renowned movies, including two Oscar winners: Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), with Robert de Niro.)

             In Vivir Dos Veces, an exploration of the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease, the soundtrack’s haunting rendition is performed in a wistful, whispering voice by Maria Rodés, a singer/songwriter who’s also from Barcelona. Unlike past orchestral arrangements of the song with dramatic vocals, Rodés offers a spare, restrained rendition with a tinkling piano accompaniment.The movie itself – known by its English title as Live Twice, Love Once – got mixed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with only half of the critics giving it thumbs up. It fared better with moviegoers, with almost 80 percent giving it a fresh rating. The disapproving critics called it “predictable” and “unforgettable,” with “comedic and romantic payoffs (that) are limp.”

            By contrast, consider some glowing comments (in Spanish) from people who saw the film and were inspired to seek out the theme song on YouTube:

            “I came here to cry with the song after having cried with the movie.”

            “I watched the film with a lump in my throat remembering the only true love I ever had. There are a lot of versions of this song, but this one goes straight to the heart.”

            “I grew up listening to this song in the voice of my aunt, who suffered from senile dementia and died ten years ago. She forgot everything, except how to sing.”

            These comments left me wondering about the impact of the song itself, which figures so prominently throughout the drama, on the reactions, pro or con, of individual movie-goers. “Perfidia” is one of those old boleros that gets under your skin at an early age, a melody that gets in the bloodstream, a lyric that lodges latent in memory, retrievable at any age. Maybe one likes the movie better if the song awakens those recuerdos, evokes that nostalgia, renews that romanticism.

             In Spanish, the lyrics conjure up a state of darkness and despair, part of a style known colloquially as “canciones corta-venas,” or songs to slit your wrists by. It describes a man so consumed by heartbreak and sorrow that people don’t want to be around him. "Perfidia," which literally means perfidy, is often translated as treachery or betrayal. But the song never actually says the woman cheated, or explains why she left. The man torments himself wondering where she may be and what adventures she may be having. Only God and the sea know the depths of his love and pain, he tells her.

             There are two versions in English, but they both lack the emotional power of the original. The most well-known is by Milton Leeds, born in Omaha, Nebraska, three years after his Mexican counterpart. It is more corny than “corta-venas.”

              A more obscure version, published in 1939 under the title “Tonight,” is an old-fashioned love song credited to bandleader Xavier Cugat and Will Heagney, a successful songwriter and vaudevillian. Cugat had an early hit with “Perfidia” the following year, but as an instrumental. Ten years later, crooner Tony Martin recorded a bilingual version of “Tonight,” using the Cugat/Heagney lyrics. These English verses are much more graceful and literate than the Leeds rendition, although they also lack the element of deep sorrow and desperate loss.

            There are scores of recordings of this classic song, in both languages. I have more than 100 counted so far in my private collection. But I was still amazed at the wide variety of artists who have waxed the song over the years. There are versions in myriad styles, including bolero, jazz, rock, and cha cha cha. “Perfidia” was even performed a cappella in 1941 by a then-fledgling vocal group at Princeton University named the Nassoons, which to this day uses the Mexican composition as its signature song.

            “Perfidia,” like “Bésame Mucho,” “Malagueña,” and many other Latin American standards, were popular among American audiences through the first half of the 20^th century. The Spanish-language songs were completely integrated into the fabric of the music scene in the United States, part of the standard repertoire of many major artists.

             There were vocal versions of “Perfidia” by crooners Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and Julie London. Easy listening renditions by the orchestras of Lawrence Welk, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith. Dance arrangements by the big bands of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey brothers. Jazz interpretations by Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck, and Manu Dibango. In 1960, the Ventures released a surf-rock version of "Perfidia," a twangy guitar instrumental that peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.

             Not all versions hit the right note. A Swiss rockabilly band named Hillbilly Moon Explosion recorded a quirky, bilingual take of the tune in 2013. Tex-Mex singer Trini Lopez gave the song a dreadful, trivial pop treatment that makes it sound childish. And the popular vocal group The Four Aces harmonized on a finger-snapping rendition that’s a throwback to the 1940s swing era.

             The song was also recorded by artists around the globe, such as Cuba’s Issac Delgado and Ibrahim Ferrer, Venezuela’s Alfredo Sadel, as well as European performers Nana Mouskouri (Greece), Andrea Bocelli (Italy), and Paco de Lucía (Spain).

              Of course, since its inception it has also had countless interpreters in its native country. There are Mexican versions by crooners of all eras, including  Elvira Ríos, Javier Solís, and Luis Miguel. By guitar trios, such as Los Tres Caballeros and Los Panchos. The song was even adapted by Mexico’s acclaimed alt-Latino band, Café Tacuba, released on its 1996 album, “Avalancha de Éxitos.” Across the border, U.S. Latin artists also got into the act, including  Freddy Fender, Eydie Gorme, René Touzet, and the aforementioned Linda Ronstadt.

              The earliest recordings of the song were also made by Mexican artists, although there is some debate about who was first. Two notable versions were released on the Victor label in 1939, the year the song was published. Singer Lupita Palomera delivered a heartfelt but elegant performance, released as a 10-inch single backed by none other than the Lira de San Cristóbal, of the Hermanos Dominguez. The image posted with this YouTube video displays the date 1937 in large type on the record label, although it’s almost certainly wrong and is definitely altered because release dates, when cited by record companies, always appeared in much smaller type. The other version recorded in 1939 is by Mexican crooner Juan Arvizú. It was also a Victor 10-inch single, recorded in Buenos Aires in October, and released the following year.

            The Arvizú recording is one of about a dozen versions contained in The Frontera Collection, almost all 78s. Following are brief reviews of some of those recordings, which also represent a wide variety of styles:

• Juan Arvizú (Victor 83748)

            Born in 1900 in the colonial city of Querétaro, Arvizú was part of that early cohort of male singing stars – Jorge Negrete, Pedro Vargas, José Mojica, Alfonso Ortiz Tirado, Pedro Infante – that dominated the early years of the nation’s recording industry. He is credited with discovering a young pianist and composer who accompanied the singer in the early years and emerged as a towering figure in Mexican pop music of the mid 1900s. His name was Agustín Lara. Arvizú’s exquisite version of “Perfidia” was recorded in New York on April 17, 1939, with the accompaniment of the Marimba Pan-Americana, featuring two marimbas played by five musicians. This is a truly sensitive and sophisticated rendition, riding on the singer’s range, control, and finesse. Listen to the high final note that he holds, as if from a cloud, and you’ll see why he earned the nickname El Tenor de la Voz de Seda.

• Pedro Vargas (Victor 76074)

            The smooth, honeyed tenor of the operatically trained Pedro Vargas caresses the lyrics of this classic bolero. Vargas (1906-1989), who later gained fame as a ranchero singer, started his career as a cosmopolitan crooner with early success in Latin American recording capitals, from Havana to Buenos Aires. He displays masterful control and phrasing, without letting technique diminish the feelings of sadness and loss. The arrangement is meticulously tailored, at first restrained behind his vocals, then blossoming during the instrumental break, coming to a very soft landing. The label indicates the song is from the movie, with accompaniment by the accomplished  Cuban group, Orquesta Havana – Riverside (not to be confused with Havana Cosmopolitan discussed below). The orchestra has featured some of Cuba’s top musicians, accounting for its polished and professional sound.

• Pérez Prado (Victor LPM-1459)

             This is a stark example of how a distinctive musical style is not well-suited for all songs. Pérez Prado, crowned El Rey del Mambo, had big hits in the US with his crossover Cuban music, especially high-energy numbers like Mambo No. 5. The bandleader helped popularize Latin dance music, with a brash, bombastic sound, and a showy stage style. On this lovely bolero, however, the Prado sound works against the feeling. The horn section is too cute and bouncy to convey the misery of being left in the dark by the one you love. It makes the arrangement, included here on an RCA 33-rpm album, sound corny and gimmicky. To paraphrase the bandleader’s signature exclamation: “Ugh!”

• Xavier Cugat (Victor 26334)

             This is a lush and polished arrangement that evokes the era of big-bands and elegant ballrooms. Though the label doesn’t specify, the rich arrangement was likely written by Cugat, a trained violinist who was born in Spain and grew up in Cuba. After coming to the U.S., the flamboyant bandleader found national celebrity as he helped introduce Americans to Latin dance styles, especially the tango, mambo, and cha cha cha. According to the Discography of American Historical Recordings, Cugat first recorded “Perfidia” in 1939 with the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra (named for the famed New York hotel), which Cugat directed for approximately 16 years, starting in 1933. It soon became a big hit for the band. Cugat’s instrumental performance is highly refined, with piano, percussion, violins, marimbas, guitar, and muted trumpets interlacing their parts in textured layers. It may be considered “easy listening” (the soft, mood music of the pre-rock era), but it is by no means easy to make music at this level. It is lovely and timeless.

• Javier Solis (Columbia ES-1728)

             Taken from an album of Latin standards titled “Javier Solís en New York,” this track was recorded by the Mexican singing star during a tour of the United States. The international repertoire, and the dapper fedora he wears in the cover photo, signal a departure for Solís, who gained famed as a mariachi singer. The delicate arrangement by orchestra director Chuck Anderson seems perfectly tailored to Solís’s breathy and sensuous vocals, punctuated with his trademark bursts of power and passion. That stylistic duality, between country and cosmopolitan, would define the rest of his short career. The so-called “Rey del Bolero Ranchero” died in 1966, just six years after recording his mournful version of this sad song. He was just 34.

• Los Violines De America (ARV Records, ARVLP-1010)

            Although released on a Texas-based label that was part of the legendary House of Falcon, this instrumental recording was licensed from Discos Virrey in Lima, Peru, where it was produced. It’s actually a medley of two songs that starts with another Lain standard, “Siempre en Mi Corazón” (Always in My Heart), written in 1942 by world-renowned Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. Like “Perfidia,” which completes the medley, Lecuona’s tune was also translated to English (by Kim Gannon) and featured in a film of the same title, Always in My Heart (1942), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. The two pieces merge well together in this arrangement featuring occasional accordion touches. This is easy listening par excellence, what some condescendingly call elevator music. Think Lawrence Welk, and you will see the champagne bubbles float before your eyes.

• Orquesta Havana Cosmopolitan (Coast Records 7006)

            This standard instrumental version adds nothing new nor special to the song’s interpretation. The arrangement is pedestrian and the musicianship is just competent. It makes you wonder about the origins of the orchestra, which sounds neither cosmopolitan nor habanera. I searched diligently for information, but found only one reference to the band on a Chicago-based music website, Wholesome, by a blogger who was equally stumped. This group “is basically a mystery,” he writes in reviewing the orchestra’s recording of “Bruca Maniguá,” the flip side of “Perfidia” on the Los Angeles-based Coast label. “It may, or may not, have been recorded in Cuba,” the blogger continues, adding that “the band also had a 78 on the Mexican Peerless label.” He liked the band’s performance – “quite beautiful and powerful!” – a lot more than I did.

• Antonio Vera (Decca 21032A)

            This orchestral version was also recorded in New York in 1939, according to Richard K. Spottswood’s discography, Ethnic Music on Records. It was part of a July 20 Decca session with Vera’s orchestra that included a total of six songs – four boleros, a conga, and a rumba – all featuring vocalist López Prado. Vera (1929-1996) was a famed Cuban composer who wrote dozens of songs with his longtime composing partner Giraldo Piloto, famously credited as the writing team of Piloto y Vera. Vera’s version of “Perfidia” has a distinct, yet subtle tropical feel, with violin accents throughout that are quite unusual. As expected of an accomplished Cuban group, the musicianship is superb, and the tender tenor closes the number with a sustained flourish.

– Agustín Gurza

Among acculturated Mexican Americans, only a handful of Mexican songs have managed to gain wide popularity and a special cultural significance on this side of the border. A few become iconic songs, with lyrics and melodies memorized by the children and grandchildren of immigrants.

            One of them, of course, is “La Bamba,” the traditional jarocho tune turned into a 1950s rock hit by Ritchie Valens, and later reprised by Los Lobos for the 1987 biopic of the teenaged Chicano singer from Pacoima, California. Another is “El Rey,” the mariachi classic by Jose Alfredo Jimenez, about a spurned, penniless vagabond who clings to his overblown pride and capricious ways, a monarch in his own mind.

            There is only one song, however, that is so embedded in the bicultural community that it’s been dubbed the Chicano National Anthem. Surprisingly, it’s not a rousing number that stirs some sense of ethnic pride. It’s a beautiful yet sorrowful torch song about the lingering traces of a lost love: “Sabor a Mí.”

            The tune was written in 1959 by Alvaro Carrillo, one of Mexico’s top composers during the golden era of the romantic bolero. Since then, it has been recorded scores of times by an array of stars in multiple languages and a variety of styles.

            A YouTube search yields amazingly diverse interpretations: an instrumental by Cuba’s father/son piano duo Bebo and Chucho Valdés; a version with alternating vocals, in excellent Spanish, by the South Korean boy band Exo-K; a top-selling pop version by Mexican superstar Luis Miguel; a spare and wispy version by the young, Virginia-born Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis; a jazzy/folksy adaptation by the Bogotá-based band Monsieur Periné; an easy-listening rendition by soft-jazz saxophonist Kenny G; an accordion-accented, Tex-Mex version by American roots band The Mavericks; a low-key, bilingual version by 1950s singer and screen star Doris Day; a classic version by Chilean crooner Lucho Gatica with a Latin big-band sound; and a schmaltzy instrumental version by the Baja Marimba Band, from the 1960s Tijuana-Brass era.

            Believe it or not, there’s even a surprisingly tender take on the tune in English (“Close To Me”) by mass murderer Charles Manson, in a vocal style smacking of Willie Nelson.

            The Frontera Collection contains 25 recordings of the song, including a particularly noteworthy rendition by Mexico’s Javier Solis on Columbia (discussed further below).

            “Sabor a Mí” has been recorded in French, Japanese, German, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and the Zapotec language of Oaxaca, the composer’s home state. In the case of English, however, the lyrics lose their lyricism in a straight translation.

            Literally, the title means “a taste of me.” Yet, the word “sabor” suggests much more than “taste,” as one of the five senses. It connotes flavor, style, zest, gusto, and an intangible essence of something or someone. Music made with “sabor” has swing. Those who dance with “sabor” have flair and feeling. And of course, a chef with “sabor” has a passionate touch for tastiness.

            Use of the Spanish article (“a”) in the title also makes a difference. Normally, the word “of” is translated as “de” in Spanish. The song “A Taste of Honey,” for example, could be translated as “sabor de miel,” as in literally savoring the sweet substance. But “sabor a miel” would be less specific, meaning something leaves a hint of honey, or has a flavor that evokes honey.

            So “Sabor a Mí” does not mean you take a bite out of your boyfriend. It is not so much “a taste of me” as it is a sensual trace of a loved one’s ethereal memory, like perfume that lingers in the air, or a missing person’s aroma woven into the threads of their clothing. Sabor is the air of someone, an indefinable essence that triggers a physical yearning, a hunger for their lost love.

            The composer, however, did not sweat over etymology to come up with the famous title. The word choice occurred to him by chance at a dinner party. In his blog, Con Sabor a Mi Padre, Carrillo’s son, Mario Carrillo Incháustegui, gives the following account of how the song was born, as told by his aunt, Guadalupe Incháustegui Guzmán, his mother’s sister.

            In the spring of 1957, Alvaro Carrillo met his future wife, Ana María Incháustegui, through her cousin, who was secretly in love with her. The cousin planned to bring a serenata to Anita for her 24^th birthday but without revealing his amorous feelings. So, knowing that she admired Carrillo’s love songs, he invited his friend, the composer, to help with the serenade. What he didn’t plan on was the outcome: It was love at first sight for the songwriter. By the end of that year, Alvaro and Ana María were engaged.

            In December, the couple attended a Christmas dinner where Carrillo started drinking shots of whiskey. At one point, his betrothed complained that he was over-indulging, but the songwriter stubbornly continued to drink, and lean in for a kiss.  He went on alternating shots and smooches through the night.

            Finally, Ana María remarked that she was getting drunk from so many besos borrachos, drunken kisses. Although she wasn’t drinking, she told her fiancée that he was leaving the taste of whiskey (“sabor a whiskey”) in her mouth. The musician paused and said, “What you have in your mouth is not the taste of whiskey, but the taste of me…sabor a mí.”

            The way the younger Carrillo tells it, a light went on simultaneously above his parents’ heads.

            “Both of them, accomplices in composition, understood at that moment that the phrase arising from the complaint was a poetic expression that should be converted into song,” Mario Carrillo recalled. “My mother wrote it down like a homework assignment for my father. And, breaking her sobriety, she took a drink from his glass, and they toasted to what would become the biggest hit Alvaro Carrillo ever wrote.”

Tanto tiempo disfrutamos de éste amor,

nuestras almas se acercaron, tanto así,

que yo guardo tu sabor

pero tú llevas también... sabor a mí

Si negaras mi presencia en tu vivir

bastaría con abrazarte y conversar

tanta vida yo te di

que por fuerza llevas ya... sabor a mí

No pretendo ser tu dueño

no soy nada, yo no tengo vanidad

de mi vida, doy lo bueno

soy tan pobre, qué otra cosa puedo dar

Pasarán más de mil años, muchos más

yo no sé si tenga amor la eternidad

pero allá tal como aquí

en la boca llevarás... sabor a mí

            Carrillo, a member of Mexico’s composers’ society, Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de México, registered the song on July 11, 1958, with publisher Promotora Hispano Americana de Música (PHAM). The publishing contract indicates the song was already set to be recorded by Los Tres Ases for RCA. In his blog, Carrillo notes his father’s composition was first recorded in 1959 but he doesn’t cite the artist.

            The following year, young Mexican singer Javier Solis had the first big hit with the tune. Some 40 years later, Solis’ 1960 rendition on Columbia was among the inaugural recordings inducted into the 2001 Latin Grammy Hall of Fame, along with other timeless singles such as "Bésame Mucho" by Pedro Vargas (RCA 1941), "El Día Que Me Quieras" by Carlos Gardel (RCA/Victor 1935), "El Reloj" by Lucho Gatica (Odeón Chilena 1959), "The Girl From Ipanema" by Antonio Carlos Jobim (Verve 1963), "Mambo #5" by Pérez Prado (RCA Victor 1950), and "Oye Como Va" by Santana (Columbia 1970).

            Alvaro and Ana María were married on July 21 of that same year. And they stayed together for almost a decade until a tragic car crash took their lives on April 3, 1969. The composer, who was 47, left a legacy of more than 300 compositions, including other enduring gems such as “La Mentira (Se Te Olvida),” “El Andariego,” “Luz de Luna,” and “Sabrá Dios.”

            Today, more than half a century after its debut in Mexico City, “Sabor a Mí” is still popular among young Mexican-Americans, often played at weddings, quinceañeras, anniversaries, or backyard parties. It is one of a handful of Spanish-language tunes that consistently appear among sets of English-language oldies, the Fifties-era rock, doo-wop, lowrider, and R&B tunes so popular among young Chicanos.

            In a 2009 reader’s poll conducted by the culture blog LA Eastside, “Sabor a Mí” was nominated as one of the songs that best “embodies the broad richness and historical flavor” of East Los Angeles. Coincidentally, the poll was published the year the composition marked its 50^th anniversary. The blog was new at the time, launched the year before by Al Guerrero (aka AlDesmadre), an artist and one-time UCLA student who was born in Ciudad Juarez and raised in East L.A. since age two.

            The version picked by Eastside’s readers was recorded in New York in 1964 by Trio Los Panchos and Eydie Gormé. It was included in the album Amor, the first in a series of top-selling Columbia LPs pairing the popular Mexican guitar trio with the Bronx-born pop singer, performing Latin American pop standards.

            The enduring appeal of their version among second- and third-generation Mexican Americans may be due to the binational and bicultural quality of the act itself. Los Panchos represented the strong Mexican identity of the generation that came of age in Mexico during the 1940s and ’50s. And Eydie Gormé, the daughter of Sephardic Jews who came from Italy and Turkey and spoke Ladino at home, represented the acculturated immigrant still tentatively tied to ancestral roots. Chicanos may have perceived the faint hint of an Anglo accent in her pronunciation of Spanish lyrics, making them both sympathetic and simpatico. The singer became so closely identified with Latinos that she earned the affectionate nickname, La Gormé.

            During the 1970s, “Sabor a Mí” gained new fans as a young generation of L.A. bands recorded fresh versions with modern inflections. This came during a turbulent era of the Chicano Movement, when Mexican Americans were demanding their rights and reclaiming their cultural roots. This one bolero was embraced as part of that cultural resurgence, which also produced Santana’s Latin-rock style and the brown-eyed soul explosion spearheaded in L.A. by bands such as Tierra and Thee Midniters.

            Los Lobos, the most critically acclaimed Chicano band of that era, recorded “Sabor a Mí” for their 1978 debut album, Just Another Band From East L.A. Except for a guitar solo with jazzy touches, and some cool background harmonies, they delivered a mostly traditional, trio-style treatment, sung competently by Cesar Rosas. This was the early, folk-oriented phase of Los Lobos, who would go on to experiment with rock, blues, and Latin fusions in the 1980s.

            But by far the most emblematic version for Mexican Americans was the one by an East L.A. band whose name represented both the people and the movement – El Chicano. The bolero appeared on the group’s second album, Revolución, released in 1971. Once again, the lead vocalist was a woman, Ersi Arvizu, a former boxer and FedEx driver, also raised in East L.A.

            In his book, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles, UCLA musicologist Steven Loza writes that this recording by El Chicano “is still remembered as one of the most important musical legacies of its period in East Los Angeles.”

            Evidence of that enduring legacy appears on the Internet, where the group’s version of the song has tallied almost 6 million views on YouTube, and more than 1,600 comments. The video was posted in 2007 on a Chicano oldies channel that has racked up almost half a billion views in 12 years.

            One of the commenters is none other than Arvizu herself.

            “When I learned this song by Eydie Gormé and recorded it with El Chicano, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this would become my ‘signature song,’ ” the singer wrote, when the video had half its current views. “Here it is over 3 million plays, WOW!! I'm truly humbled by your love and support of this song. I'm no longer with El Chicano, but realize that it took everyone in the group to make this song what it is today. Peace, love and music.”

            The question remains: Why did this specific song, above all other boleros, strike a chord with Chicanos?

            Dionne Espinoza, professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cal State Los Angeles, argues that El Chicano’s rendition with Ersi Arvizu is not simply a romantic song. She calls it “a representation of the politics and aesthetics of the Chicano Movement in East Los Angeles,” as she wrote in an essay that borrows the song’s opening phrase, “ ‘Tanto Tiempo Disfrutamos…’ Revisiting the Gender and Sexual Politics of Chicana/o Youth Culture in East Los Angeles in the 1960s.”

            “In the case of  ‘Sabor a Mí,’ the reclaiming of the bolero connected its listeners historically to the music that had been the background to their parents’ and grandparents’ daily lives. Yet the song’s rendering by El Chicano as a hybrid music spoke to the community’s cultural complexity,” writes Espinoza in her essay, published in 2003 in the collection Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Tomas Ybarra-Frausto.

            Almost four decades later, as I recount in my story for the Los Angeles Times, Arvizu was coaxed out of retirement by roots-music musician Ry Cooder, best known for his work with Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club. In 2008, Cooder produced the singer’s first solo album, Friend for Life, mostly featuring songs she wrote. Arvizu was 59 at the time.

            Cooder was impressed by both the timeless quality of Arvizu’s style, and the enduring nature of the song that had first made her famous.  

             "They never forgot that song, that 'Sabor a Mí,’ ” he said in a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. “It was a million-seller, ferchrissake. In East L.A., they don't forget. The tune is still there for them.”

– Agustín Gurza