![]() Any steam Fender’s career had picked up in 1960 was shot, but he joined the New Orleans music scene. Jimmie Davis, a successful blues, country and gospel recording artist in his own right-famous for composing “You Are My Sunshine”-paroled Fender. ![]() He and a bandmate were each sentenced to five years in prison. Shortly into the tour, Fender’s career was curtailed by his arrest for possession of marijuana in Louisiana. Soon after, he was separated from his wife for a time, and one evening at the Starlight Lounge in Harlingen, he immortalized his feelings in a song called “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” It became a regional hit in 1960, and Fender began touring. He had failed to reach a broader audience in the United States, so he changed his name to Freddy Fender, taken from the brand of his favorite guitar. In 1959, Huerta signed with Imperial Records. He “was the first one to cross the bilingual line,” says Joe King Carrasco, the current “king” of Tex-Mex rock ’n’ roll who looked up to Fender while growing up in Dumas. His first session produced “No Seas Cruel,” a Spanish version of the Elvis Presley hit “Don’t Be Cruel.” The B-side was a Huerta original called “Ay Amor.” Falcon marketed Huerta as El Bebop Kid, and “No Seas Cruel” became a hit in Mexico and South America. He auditioned for Falcon Records in McAllen in 1956 and was offered a contract. When he returned to Texas, he married and threw himself into his music, playing beer joints and honky-tonks throughout the Valley. In 1953, Huerta began a three-year stint with the Marines. Huerta mastered it quickly and began entering and winning talent shows in the Valley. His mother, recognizing Huerta’s passion, bought him a new guitar. He was given a busted guitar when he was 10 and practiced tirelessly, so much that he soon made his first public appearance, singing “Paloma Querida” on KGBT-AM in Harlingen, a city near San Benito. Besides the hard work, what he remembered most about the period was the soulful music of African-American field workers. His father died of tuberculosis when he was 7, and he and his mother became migrant workers.Īt an age when most kids were navigating grade school, Huerta was harvesting beets in Michigan, picking cucumbers in Ohio, baling hay in Indiana and picking cotton in Arkansas. His clear, emotive tenor was unmistakable, and his Chicano Afro and mustache were instantly iconic.įender was born Baldemar Huerta in the El Jardin barrio of San Benito in the Rio Grande Valley on June 4, 1937. His “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” later that year was a bit of eight-track tape gold that helped carry AM radio during its last stretch of musical relevance. ![]() 1 on Billboard’s “The Hot 100” on May 31, 1975. His rendition of “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” hit No. If you stopped at a café or bar with a jukebox on any stretch of road in any corner of the state, an hour could barely pass without Fender earning it a quarter. If you were listening to your car stereo in Texas in the mid-to late 1970s, you could hardly drive 30 miles in any direction without hearing Freddy Fender.
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