Lupe Tijerina

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