By Dave Silva

My Cajun buddy, Rod Melancon, knocks it out of the park with his acoustic version of his tribute to the late Freddy Fender. He just put it on tape today and sent it to me. Thank you and congratulations Rod…love it and the doggie too.

Backstory: A few years ago Rod was being interviewed by a Corpus Christi radio DJ and, before Rod left the radio station, the DJ shared the story of running into Freddy at a local car-wash in the late 1960s’. The DJ asked Freddy why a recording star like him was working at a car-wash?  Freddy responded by saying he was in-between gigs and going to junior college at night. Freddy was never ashamed of working all kinds of jobs to support his family.

Rod Melancon was so impressed by that story that he figured he’d write a song about that car-wash encounter one day. He finally wrote the song and included in his new album “Pinkville” released in 2019.

Presented by Austin, Texas’s KUTX 98.9fm:

According to a PBS special honoring Fender, they recounted the story of Baldemar Garza Huerta aka Fender, who was born in 1937 in San Benito, a remote town in Southeast Texas. The first music he played was called “Conjunto”, a combination of polka from the German and Czech settlers of Texas and traditional Mexican music played mostly by intolerant bands and centered on a button accordion, often accompanied by a 12-string guitar, violin and occasionally, a drum.

“We didn’t have streetlights in San Benito then,” Fender recalled. “I would hear the music and sneak out onto the street and see these little fireflies of light, which were the cigarettes in the hands of the players, and that was where it was happening. These were just home guys who picked cotton or whatever and then come home and play the hell out of those old songs.” During this time Fender was learning the Blues while working alongside African Americans in the fields as a migrant worker, following the crops season by season. The Blues became part of his own musical style.

Ultimately, Fender’s Spanish covers of rock and roll songs were good enough to get local radio play as El Bebop Kid. In 1959, he wrote “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” and the rest is history.

In the early 1990’s Fender and other artists put together a band, The Texas Tornados, and in 1996 he joined Los Super Seven, an all-star lineup of Mexican American artists that included another Tex-Mex legend, Flaco Jimenez, as well as David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of the East Los Angeles rock and roll band Los Lobos. By then Mexican music and Mexican culture had moved to the mainstream behind the Chicano Movement and the thriving Mexican immigrant populations of the Southwest. Los Super Seven was honored with a GRAMMY Award in 1998, playing, among others, Conjunto songs of Freddy Fender’s childhood, from the time he was still known as Baldemar Garza Huerta.

Fender died in 2007, at age 69.

The post Rod Melancon’s Tribute to Freddy Fender first appeared on .

Once upon a time, a beloved Tejano singing sensation, Freddie Fender worked at a Corpus Christi car wash…

By Dave Silva

The late Freddy Fender (real name-Baldemar Huerta) was a native of San Benito, Texas but he had many ties to Mission, Texas. As a young man, he used to play in the beer joints and dance halls of South Mission. One of his first music contracts came from the Falcon Records label in 1957, owned and managed by Arnaldo Ramirez, Sr., who was a Mission native and its former mayor (1973-1981).

In addition, Fender was cast alongside native Mission, TX actor, the late Trinidad Silva in The Milagro Beanfield War, which was directed by Robert Redford and shot in New Mexico in 1986.

Today, singer/songwriter Rod Melancon has just released an album titled “Pinkville,” where one of the songs titled, “Corpus Christi Carwash,” is about the true life of Fender, and produced by Adrian Quesada.

According to Melancon, about ten years ago he was in Corpus Christi to promote his music and visited a radio station where he was interviewed by a DJ named “Daddy D.” After the interview, Daddy D walked him out to the parking lot where his car was at and told him the story about going to a Corpus Christi car wash in the early 1970s. While waiting for his car to be spruced up, he noticed a guy washing his car that looked a lot like Freddy Fender. Turns out it was in fact, Freddy!

He told him that although he was still playing music, he needed to supplement his career with a day job. He had been released from Angola (Lousiana) prison in 1963 and since then had toiled at different jobs.

That story planted the seeds for a song that Melancon would write and now just released.

“Corpus Christi Carwash” is about the Fender’s resurrection after falling into a creative and emotional abyss,” stated Melancon.

Further, according to the Melancon, the song’s lyrics include Freddy’s hometown of San Benito, Texas, Angola prison, and also references lyrics from Fender’s song, “Wasted Days, Wasted Nights” and “Before The Last Teardrop Falls,” among other South Texas notations.

For Rod Melancon’s full NPR Interview, CLICK HERE.

About Rod Melancon
Like the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t yet exist, Rod Melancon’s “Pinkville” whips up a world filled with shellshocked war veterans, gun-wielding rock & rollers, and other down-on-their-luck characters, mixing cinematic details and electric guitars into its own version of greasy, gothic Americana. Melancon, a former actor who was raised by a theater teacher, cranks up the album’s cinematic sweet with help from Will Walden, who pulls double-duty as the album’s lead guitarist and co-producer.
Follow Rod on Twitter @RodMelancon

About Dave Silva
Silva is a 25-year veteran actor of Stage, TV, and Film. He is a native of Mission, Texas and a graduate of the University of Texas-Pan American. His stage credits include Lilies of The Field, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Zorro Live. Recent TV credits: Mayans M.C., Future Man, Shameless, among dozens of others. His current film credits: The soon to be released Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Thirsty Girl, Addicted to Fresno, among others. Silva is also a playwright and director for his work, Saigon, Texas and One Nation Under God. The late Alberto Dominguez and Silva were the co-creators/writers of the original Cafe California on KWHY, circa 1998, which was hosted by Cris Franco.

Readers: If you have stories about iconic Latino performing artists from your neck of the woods, we’d love to hear about it. Please email Elia Esparza at editor@latinheat.com.

The post Freddie Fender Remembered In New Rod Melancon Song first appeared on .