Chicano

Bassist Jesus Velo wanted to interview one of his idols, El Chicano organist and arranger Bobby Espinosa. I'll hold the microphone, you do your thing, I told Velo.

It was April 23, 2009. Mark Guerrero was on the concert bill at the East L.A. College auditorium, so was Lysa Flores. The concert promoted a new edition of "Land of a Thousand Dances." The book has become a sort of Bible of L.A. Chicano music history. That night, co-author Tom Waldman was hopeful that the new edition would revive a conversation about the contributions of L.A. musicians. "We lose sight of the fact that Chicano bands, Mexican-American bands, Latino bands, whatever term you choose, perform in English a lot and have made a huge contribution to Anglo-American rock and roll, and rhythm and blues. And we wanted to document that story and continue to document that story."

Two bands stand tall from the 1965 - 1975 period: Thee Midniters with their 1965 cover of "Land of a Thousand Dances" (the na, na, na, na, na song) and El Chicano, the band that five years later would also have a national hit with "Viva Tirado," a cover of Gerald Wilson's jazz tribute to a bullfighter. Two of those bands' key musicians would be at the ELAC show: Thee Midniters saxophone player Larry Rendon and El Chicano organist and composer Bobby Espinosa.

Velo's told me some great stories about that time. I've collaborated with him on several music-poetry performances. He was 16 years-old in 1970 when Espinosa's opening organ on "Viva Tirado" made Mexican Americans proud and introduced a catchy conga and timbal revisioning of soul, jazz, and R&B. "He was the first person I remember who was very influential as a Chicano. Nothing against Trini Lopez and those pop singers, they were cool. He [Espinosa] played a jazz that crossed from a jazz territory into Chicano territory. He was an icon for us for that particular reason."

"Viva Tirado" became the soundtrack of the suavecito East L.A. aesthetic and also added the "Brown Sound" corollary to "Brown and Proud" of the blooming Chicano civil rights movement. In one 1971 televised performance, Espinosa sits behind an organ covered with a Mexican serape, a more subtle and in some respects more poignant cultural symbol than the Mexican flag. Before they begin the song, long-haired conga player Andre Baeza tells the ethnically mixed audience, as if not wanting anything to get lost in translation, "By the way, we're all Chicanos."

The idea was for Velo and collaborator Willie Herron to re-interpret some of the instrumental El Chicano songs. Velo and Herron's punk rock band, Los Illegals also signed with a major label, A&M and toured in the mid-1980s after the release of their album, Internal Exile. Velo said he knew at the time Espinosa and El Chicano had paved the way for them. "We had been on tours and everything else, Los Lobos, lots of bands have been on tours but they were the first guys to fly out to New York and play at the Apollo Theater."

In conversation outside the ELAC auditorium Espinosa told Velo he knew the Apollo Theater would be historic. "Viva Tirado hit the R&B charts so they didn't know whether we were black, they thought we were black, so when we came out on stage, we had the long hair, we were Indios to them."

Velo was in shock when he found out Espinosa died on February 27th. "We had made plans to meet again after the touring he was doing this spring, to begin a collaboration on some pieces that we talked about on the night that we met him."

To Velo, Espinosa's organ playing is iconic - remember the film "Viva Zapata" with Marlon Brando - he asks me. "At the end of that movie they talk about whether Zapata is really dead. Is Bobby really dead? No he sort of lives on. He's like a ghost, a legacy, he's going to be throughout the barrios: in San Francisco, in Bakersfield, in the small places like Harlingen, Texas. And every new keyboard player, I don't care who you are, is going to get up, and they're all going to play: pah, pah, pah... pah, pah, pah... pah, pah, pah. It's just a classic piece."