HISTORY OF TEJANO MUSIC

According to a study describing Mexican and Anglo relations in Texas during the
nineteenth century by Arnoldo de León, Anglos “regarded Mexicans as a colored
people, discerned the Indian ancestry in them, and identified them socially with
blacks.  In principle and fact, Mexicans were regarded not as a nationality
related to whites, but as a race apart.”(1)  Prior to 1935 Mexican Americans
lived in a segmented society based largely upon skin color and ethnicity.  Many
Texas cities separated so-called “Mexican towns” from Anglo areas of cities.(2)

In this socially segregated environment Mexican Americans in South Texas
developed certain traditions that they could call their own.  Food preparation,
the practice of language, the creation of art, and styles of dress signified
their experience as Mexican Americans without much serious threat from
outsiders.  Jim Crow laws forbade Mexican Americans from fully participating in
American society, and in doing so, Mexican Americans took the opportunity to
participate in the creation of a certain style of music—Tejano.

Accordion music found popularity in parts of Northern Mexico and South Texas in
the nineteenth century when Europeans began to settle there.  They brought the
instrument and their music with them and the music quickly spread among
inhabitants of South Texas.  Over time Mexican Americans added their own touches
to the music, and beginning in 1935, large American companies initiated
recordings of well-known accordionists in the region.

During the 1920s large companies outside of Texas began producing “race”
records.  Beginning with the first blues recording by a black singer, “Crazy
Blues” by Mamie Smith backed up by the Jazz Hounds, sales of records in American
ethnic communities proved profitable.  Believing they could repeat the success
that they enjoyed in the eastern U.S., companies set out to record music in
other parts of the country.   During this time recordings of the music of South
Texas started.  Throughout South Texas communities, several reputable musicians
and singers performed.  Vocalists, duos, small string and wind ensembles and
other types of groups provided music for the burgeoning population of South
Texas.  Musicians and ensembles played for various events in the small towns and
cities of the region.  Companies produced recordings of better-known musicians
and promoted them in South Texas.(3)

In 1928, the Okeh Company came to San Antonio to record local talent for two
weeks in March.  With an ad in the Spanish-language paper La Prensa, the company
attracted the Francisco and Leonor Mendoza family.  The family recorded a
handful of songs for Okeh on March 8 and 10, 1928.  The Mendozas’ next
opportunity to record came six years later, when the family recorded at the
Texas Hotel in San Antonio.  The sessions produced the first “star of recorded
Tejano music,” a young Lydia Mendoza. In truth, record companies had actually
started recording Mexican music as early as 1908 in Mexico City.  By 1918, they
were recording here in Texas.  But it was in the 1920s and 1930s that “a virtual
flood of recordings of Mexican American music” took place.(4)  That all changed
with onset of the Great Depression as record sales fell dramatically.  By 1932
companies like Okeh had gone bankrupt and ceased recording in South Texas. 
Later, the Second World
 War compounded this problem as many industries in the U.S. promoted the war
effort, therefore causing a reduction in the amount of shellac available for
pressing records.

By the war’s end, activity in music recording was poised to resume.  One
obstacle remained -- an absence of recording companies in South Texas.  In 1946,
the lack of locally and regionally made records led Armando Marroquín, a movie
and newspaper deliveryman, from Alice, Texas, to begin one of the most important
companies in Tejano music history, Ideal Records.  Marroquín purchased a few
Pianolas and Rock-olas and established a delivery route.  To supply the
jukeboxes Marroquín traveled to Mexico to buy 78 rpm records.  He soon realized
the absence of any recording companies willing to record musicians from the
region and moved toward establishing a local recording company in South Texas. 
So, with his wife, Carmen, he established a record producing company under the
name Four Star Records.  He ordered a record-making machine and made the first
recordings of his wife and her sister in the kitchen of their home in Alice. 
After the recordings were made, he sent them to a company in California,
which pressed the records for them.

Eventually, Marroquín came into contact with a man from San Benito in the Rio
Grande Valley who had been distributing records for RCA and Columbia.  Paco
Betancourt had opened the first movie theater in the Rio Grande Valley, the
Queen Theater in Brownsville and now joined with the Marroquíns in the music
business, changing Four Star to Ideal. The young company recorded artists from
the Alice area, San Antonio, as well as Nuevo Laredo.  Some of the musicians
included: Beto Villa and his orchestra, Narciso Martínez, Chelo Silva, Carmen y
Laura, Valerio Longoria, Paulino Bernal, and others.  According to Carmen
Marroquín, between South Texas and Los Angeles no promoters, dancehalls, or
radio stations catered to Mexican Americans.  She recalled how they served as
promoters for their music as the Spanish language music industry did not
exist.(5)

Marroquín also commented that the few extant radio stations in those days only
gave Mexican Americans one hour per week for Spanish language broadcasting. 
Spanish radio broadcasting began during this period in San Antonio, Texas by
Raoul Cortez.(6)  Cortez, a native of Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, came to the U.S.
at a young age with his parents.  In San Antonio, he worked as a sales
representative for Pearl Brewery and as a reporter for La Prensa, then the most
important newspaper for Spanish speakers in the area.  During the 1930s and
1940s he had his own theatrical company and brought some of the most popular
entertainers from Mexico and Latin America.  He purchased airtime and began
producing “variety” hours in Spanish on KMAC radio in 1940.  By 1944, he applied
for a license to broadcast what would be the first Spanish language radio
station in the United States.  In 1946, Cortez established KCOR-AM, using part
of his last name for the call letters.(7)  From this point forward Spanish language
radio expanded and became important not only for the broadcasting of information,
but also the popularization of local music.



Notes:
1.)  Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes toward Mexicans
in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1983), 104.

2.) David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986
(Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1987), 167.

3.) During those years record companies had been persuaded that there was the
potential for marketing blues records to the black community.  Perry Bradford, a
black bandleader and promoter, first went to Okeh Records in 1920 to convince
record company officials that if he could get the singer and the songs, they
could make a profit.  The record was a hit and the other record companies
followed suit.  Columbia, Victor, Paramount and Gennet Records all had early
successes based on a strategy of sending talent scouts out to different regions,
working with local scouts, and finding out what various tastes were. The
strategy worked and the companies would find that many communities were eager to
buy their records.  See David Evans, “The Birth of the Blues,” in American Roots
Music, ed. Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren, and Jim Brown (New York: Harry
N. Abrams Inc., 2001), 42-49.

4.) Lydia Mendoza, James Nicolopulos, and Chris Strachwitz, Lydia Mendoza: A
Family Autobiography (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993), viii, 359-360.

5.) Carmen Marroquín, interview by author, tape recording, Alice, Tex., 5 April
2005.

6.) Teresa Palomo Acosta, “Spanish Language Radio,” The Handbook of Texas
Online, available from http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/, accessed 12
December 2005.

7.) The station became highly successful and continues today with the same call
letters.  Cortez went on to form KWEX-TV, which became SIN, a precursor to the
Univision Network, and served two consecutive terms as national president of
LULAC.  See Guillermo Nicolas, “Raoul A. Cortez,” Spanish International Network,
available from http://sintv.org, accessed 12 December 2005.