The traces between conventional Mexican music and American nation music have lengthy blurred near the border (and past), every influencing the opposite. But it took many years earlier than Nashville totally accepted a Mexican-American artist into its fold: Johnny Rodriguez, who grew up in South Texas listening to each genres in addition to the complete vary of American pop, turned one of many first within the early Seventies due to each his preternatural presents as a vocalist and the advocacy of the then-massive singer-songwriter Tom T. Corridor.
Beneath are a few of Rodriguez’s finest and most vital songs, defined within the context of his extremely vital story.
Hearken to the very best Johnny Rodriguez songs on Apple Music and Spotify.
Beginnings
Johnny Rodriguez’s origin story made for excellent nation music lore: arrested for goat rustling close to his hometown of Sabinal, Texas, the singer was launched early after serenading the sheriff for a number of hours. A Texas Ranger who heard him sing launched him to the person who would develop into his supervisor, then that man, J.T. “Happy” Shahan, had him play on a neighborhood stage that additionally hosted nationwide stars together with Tom T. Corridor. Corridor heard him and, apocryphally, invited him straight to Nashville.
Rodriguez turned a part of Corridor’s band, and shortly the legendary songwriter was telling anybody who would hear about his new discovery – together with his label, Mercury, who rapidly signed Rodriguez and launched an LP stuffed with songs Rodriguez co-wrote with Corridor. Introducing Johnny Rodriguez was an prompt sensation, a comparatively stripped-down showcase of Rodriguez’s flawless voice and convincing nation songwriting that included each a Spanish-language tackle Jenny Lou Carson’s decades-old “Jealous Heart” and “Easy Come, Easy Go,” a music from then up-and-coming outlaw Billy Joe Shaver.
His pedal steel-laden debut single, 1972’s “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through),” hit No. 9 on Billboard’s nation chart (climbing whereas Corridor’s “Old Dogs, Children And Watermelon Wine” was No. 1) and earned Rodriguez the Academy of Nation Music’s award for “Most Promising Artist.” It solely took yet another single, “You Always Come Back (To Hurting Me),” for Rodriguez to develop into the youngest man ever to prime the nation chart – a report that stood till 2012. His first No. 1, one of many co-writes with Corridor, had a sweetly melodic refrain that made probably the most of Rodriguez’s easy vocals, and made ubiquitous a voice that Billboard declared “may well prove to be the youth shot-in-the-arm that country music has long sorely needed” in 1973.
Using that momentum, in addition to a joint tour with fellow younger star Tanya Tucker, Rodriguez reached No. 1 together with his subsequent two singles, “Ridin’ My Thumb To Mexico” – Rodriguez’ personal composition – and “That’s The Way Love Goes,” the primary hit recording of the now-classic Lefty Frizzell and Sanger D. Shafer tune. “Mexico” was additionally the most important pop crossover of his profession, reaching No. 70 on Billboard’s Sizzling 100.
Johnny Rodriguez’s radio reign
Between 1974 and 1976, Johnny Rodriguez launched 5 extra prime ten nation albums that included a bevy of radio hits. “We’re Over,” the Mann-Weil composition that Rodriguez dropped at nation listeners earlier than Glen Campbell included it on Rhinestone Cowboy, additional proved his pop bona fides. The dramatic ballad employed a piano and string part the place Rodriguez sometimes had a conventional nation band, but it nonetheless sounded simple and pure.
Rodriguez returned to the No. 1 spot on the nation charts for the fourth time in 1975 with the Larry Gatlin tune “I Just Can’t Get Her Out Of My Mind,” a melancholy two-stepper with all of the Texas dancehall trappings. At 23 years outdated, Rodriguez was already dominant, credited with serving to reinvigorate nation music gross sales nationally together with his candy, deep voice. Although his singles weren’t monotone, they largely fell according to the fashionable pop and nation sounds of the period – with hints of stripped-down Texas traditionalism shining by way of.
He adopted “Mind” with two extra chart-toppers – the epic bed room ballad “Just Get Up (And Close The Door),” and the vaguely calypso-tinged “Love Put A Song In My Heart.” The latter was his first single on which he sang in Spanish, regardless of his penchant for reinterpreting nation classics in each English and Spanish on his albums. It was his remaining No. 1.
Rodriguez remained a fixture of nation radio by way of the Nineteen Eighties, although. “Down On The Rio Grande,” a mellow, “Margaritaville”-adjacent tribute to the long-lasting river full with metal pan adornments, reached No. 6 on Billboard’s nation chart in 1979. It was his first launch after shifting to Epic Information, the place he would discover extra success with nation’s neotraditional flip: “How Could I Love Her So Much” and “Foolin’,” written by iconic Bakersfield metal guitar participant Ralph Mooney, each discovered the singer using basic nation sounds again to the highest ten in 1983.
Johnny Rodriguez’s outlaw ties
As Johnny Rodriguez’s Texas friends – particularly Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson – began to show their outsider posturing into main pop gross sales, the singer was generally thrust into the “outlaw” class by advantage of his Lone Star origins (and little extra). However sometimes, he embraced it. Billy Joe Shaver songs remained a fixture of his catalog, and he even launched one – “I Couldn’t Be Me Without You” – as a single within the waning days of his nation radio reign, pushing it to the chart’s prime 5.
One of many excessive factors of his Shaver output was 1973’s tackle the classic-sounding heartbreak music “Good Lord Knows I Tried,” which the songwriter himself would later report. Rodriguez additionally recorded songs by and with Nelson – “The Sound in Your Mind” and “Forgiving Her Was Easy” – and Merle Haggard. His 1977 tackle Haggard’s “The Immigrant” carried specific weight, as did his contributions to the Highwaymen’s model of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos).”
Rodriguez sometimes built-in outlaw-esque stylings into his personal writing, as in “Bossier City Backyard Blues,” an eclectic music a few music that finds him name-checking Tom T. Corridor in the identical approach his outlaw friends continually cited one another.
The singer introduced his Texan and outlaw roots into his later work as effectively, discovering success together with his personal tackle Robert Earl Eager’s newer basic, “Corpus Christi Bay.”
En Español
One of the crucial revolutionary issues Johnny Rodriguez did – apart from merely current as a Mexican-American man in nation music – was to combine singing in Spanish into nearly each album he launched. From his debut on, the singer would reinterpret nation classics in a mix of English and Spanish, insisting with out stating it explicitly that nation music was not only for white individuals, and never only for English audio system.
One of the crucial memorable examples of this type of reinterpretation was his tackle the long-lasting Don Gibson monitor, “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” with Rodriguez singing the refrain in Spanish whereas his background singers sing the chorus in English. One other was “I Really Don’t Want To Know,” which served as an ideal vocal showcase in addition to proof of his nation historical past bona fides.
Rodriguez explored singing in Spanish additional, submitting his tackle the huge Eurovision hit “Eres Tú” to nation radio in 1977. It wasn’t acquired all that effectively, however stays the most effective examples of his skills as a genre-agnostic crooner. He returned to a bilingual method with “Cuando Calienta El Sol,” which, although initially written in Spanish, had already been a success in English stateside. Later in his profession, he labored with Tejano musicians on the 1990 Spanish-language album Coming Residence.
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