Latest news with #FlacoJiménez
Yahoo
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Flaco Jiménez, Global Tejano Music Ambassador, Dead at 86
Flaco Jiménez, the legendary accordion player who was perhaps the foremost ambassador for regional Tejano music in the 20th century, died at 86 on July 31st. According to a statement, Jiménez died surrounded by his family. 'His legacy will live on through his music and all of his fans,' it read. Throughout his career, Jiménez served as a global emissary of conjunto, the 18th-century regional genre born in Texas that merged traditional Mexican music with the accordion-driven polka music from German immigrants. 'What Elvis Presley was to rock, Muddy Waters to blues…Charlie Parker to Jazz,' wrote the Chicago-Tribune in 1992, 'Flaco Jiménez is to Tex-Mex (also known as conjunto or norteño) music.' More from Rolling Stone Jeannie Seely, Razor-Sharp Country Singer Known as 'Miss Country Soul,' Dead at 85 Tom Lehrer, Influential Song Satirist With a Cult Following, Dead at 97 Hulk Hogan, Wrestling Superstar Turned Right-Wing Hero, Dead at 71 Jiménez took pride in expanding, tweaking, and presenting the genre he grew steeped in as a child to the worlds and genres far from the San Antonio of his youth. 'I would consider myself,' Jiménez once said, 'one of the first ones who started sharing cultures.' Throughout his 70-year career, Jiménez brought his accordion playing to a variety of genres through his collaborations with everyone from Doug Sahm, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, the Rolling Stones, Buck Owens, and Dwight Yoakam. 'The versatility of Tex-Mex is what makes it,' Jiménez told the Chicago Tribune. 'We play Cajun, we play rock and roll, we play country, we play blues. What comes to our minds to do, to have fun with. I like to share our cultures.' Leonardo Jiménez was born on March 11, 1939. Like his professional accordionist father before him, as a child he took on the nickname of 'Flaco' (skinny) due to his slight frame. Jiménez grew up immersed in norteño and conjunto music, and in addition to his father, he soon became enamored with accordion players like Valerio Longoria, Narciso Martínez, and Juan Lopez. By the age of 12, Jiménez was playing accordion, the instrument with which he would become synonymous for the remainder of his career. 'I like to make my accordion yell and scream and make it happy,' Jiménez said of his trademark instrument. Jiménez began gigging and singing on the local radio with his teenage band Los Caporales with Henry Zimmerle and Joe Ponce. The band name was one Jiménez would revisit throughout his career, eventually repurposing it as a duo with bajo sexto legend Fred Ojeda. 'When I record under my style, Flaco Jiménez, it's flashier, it's more modern,' Jiménez said in 2012 after reuniting his iteration of Los Caporales with Ojeda. 'This is the old style.' But Jiménez always wanted to transcend the confines of the regional San Antonio scene in which he grew up. 'I wanted to cross over,' he told Texas Highways. 'And I got lucky.' Sometime in the late Sixties or early Seventies, Jiménez began playing with Doug Sahm, the frontman of the Texas rock band the Sir Douglas Quintet. The collaboration changed the trajectory of both musicians' careers, and resulted, many years later, in the forming of the Texas Tornados, the beloved, Grammy-winning Tejano supergroup featuring Jiménez, Sahm, Augie Meyers, and Freddy Fender. Jiménez recorded a number of albums throughout the Seventies and Eighties, many of them for San Antonio's D.L.B. Records as well as the California-based roots label Arhoolie. As his career progressed, Jiménez would go on to collaborate with a who's who of rock, folk, and country legends, including the Rolling Stones, who recruited Jiménez to play on 1994's Voodoo Lounge. He also lent his accordion to the Mavericks' 1995 hit 'All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down,' No. 159 on Rolling Stone's list of the 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time. (Many of the musicians he played with also appeared on Jiménez's 1992 major label debut, Partners.) 'There are musicians. There are great musicians. And then there are musicians that transcend their genre, their place in time as well as cultural and social barriers,' the Mavericks' Raul Malo wrote about Jiménez on social media. 'They create something that generations will study, learn from, and take their own version of that into the world. Flaco Jiménez was such a musician. It's difficult to put in perspective what he managed to do. Simply put, he made a folk instrument (the three button accordion) part of the mainstream.' Throughout his career, Jiménez remained committed to his philosophy of fusion: 'You have to play what's going on in the world,' he said in 1973. 'Starting with polka, and a little rock and roll, or a little cumbia, cha-cha-cha…It's pretty hard just to play polka, polka, polka, polka, or cumbia, cumbia, cumbia. You have to mix it up.' In later years, Jiménez was proud to serve as a representative of his hometown. 'San Antonio is a music city,' he said in 2021. 'Like Nashville is to country and New Orleans is to jazz, San Antonio is to conjunto. The whole city has a musical groove.' Jiménez slowed down in his later years, but continued to perform and remain active. As recently as 2020, Jiménez reunited with the Mavericks and appeared on their album En Español. Asked the following years whether he prefers to communicate in English or Spanish, Jiménez demurred. 'I'm not good at speeches,' Jiménez said. 'People that know me know I let my accordion talk for me.' 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Yahoo
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Country Music Icon Dies After Long Illness
Country Music Icon Dies After Long Illness originally appeared on Parade. Flaco Jiménez, a renowned conjunto musician, has died at the age of 86, reports the San Antonio Express-News. Jiménez died on July 31 at his son's home after a long illness. Jiménez was an acclaimed accordion player who started playing at an early age with his father and grandfather. They were pioneers of conjunto music, which was a Tex-Mex translation of the polkas and waltzes brought to Texas by Europeans. Jiménez's first single was "Hasta La Vista," a local hit released in 1955 when he was just a teenager, according to the Express-News. In a 1973 interview, he told the paper, "I loved it, you know, and I still do. Naturally, now you can't stick just with polka and redova and schottisches. You have to play what's going on in the world. Starting with polka, and a little rock-and-roll, or a little cumbia, cha-cha-cha.'Jiménez would go on to win five Grammy Awards for his work, both as a solo artist and with the band Texas Tornados. He also collaborated with such stars as Bob Dylan, , , Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos and the Rolling Stones. Later in life, Jiménez was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship, a National Medal of Arts, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The Hohner accordion Jimenez recorded and performed with is currently on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. It is part of the museum's exhibition "Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present." "Flaco Jiménez was a paragon of Tejano conjunto music — exemplifying not only its sound, but its culture-blending spirit with his richly melodic accordion playing," said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement. "Whether he was recording with Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt or the Rolling Stones, or working with his own supergroup, the Texas Tornados, Flaco drew millions of listeners into a rich musical world they might not have discovered on their own," Young continued. "'Streets of Bakersfield' by Dwight and Buck wouldn't have been the same without his sparkling touches. Neither will a music community that cherished his towering talent and open heart." 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Country Music Icon Dies After Long Illness first appeared on Parade on Aug 1, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 1, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
