José Alfredo Jiménez and the Canción Ranchera
William Gradante has taught mariachi and classic guitar since 1980 in Fort Worth, Texas. He is a scholar in the field of Colombian regional folk music and mariachi history.
This article is excerpted from its full version, which was originally published in the Volume 2, 1983 issue of Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. Reprinted with permission.
When the aficionado of Mexican music thinks of the canción ranchera (ranch song), he thinks of singers like Pedro Infante, Lucha Reyes, Javier Solís, Miguel Aceves Mejía, Amalia Mendoza, Jorge Negrete, Lucha Villa, José Alfredo Jiménez, and others. But when he thinks of the authors of such songs, the name of José Alfredo stands out as probably the greatest of all composers of canciones rancheras.
The wealth of his songs appearing in Mexican cancioneros (song books) and the number of artists who have not only made hit recordings of his songs but have dedicated entire LPs and concerts to his music attest to his importance in the history of Mexican popular music since 1946.
Early Years
José Alfredo Jiménez Sandoval was born on January 19, 1926, in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, the site of the 1810 insurrection of Father Miguel Hidalgo and the local Indian peons against the Spanish rulers. At one time, José Alfredo’s parents entertained hopes that he would eventually study to become a doctor, but his disinterest in his schoolwork and his passion for composing verses about the heroic deeds of his hometown quickly put an end to such thinking. Jiménez had to struggle every inch of the way down the long, hard road to recognition.
His father, Agustín, who owned and operated a small drugstore, died in 1936, leaving the family nearly destitute and forcing them to sell the store and search for other means of sustenance. This soon proved futile and José Alfredo’s mother, Carmelita Sandoval, moved with her four children to Mexico City in 1939.
Having completed his elementary education, José Alfredo began to take on any and all jobs he could find, hoping to help support the family. Heriberto Molina, violinist and vocal soloist of the world famous Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, was a close friend of José Alfredo for many years and regarded him as something of a hero, not only in his role as a well known singer-composer, but as a man who had to struggle every inch of the way down the long, hard road to acceptance and ultimate recognition.
During the early years of his career, José Alfredo worked as a shoeshine boy, truck loader, busboy, and waiter. In his early teens, he peddled ladies’ footwear throughout the Santa María la Ribera section of Mexico City, and in his free afternoons sang with a trio known as Los Rebeldes. This trio became quite popular on a local level after having the opportunity to perform on the radio station XEL. The young composer, however, was not entirely satisfied with local recognition or with the idea of having to limit his musical life to after hours work in the cantinas of his barrio.
Roadblocks
Juan S. Garrido describes the decade 1931–1941 as "La Edad de Oro da le Canción Popular" (The Golden Age of the Popular Canción) in Mexico, an era in which an enormous number of beautiful canciones were written. It was also a time when the increasing importance of the recording industry and the popularity of radio made it extremely difficult for a newcomer to make a name for himself in the steadily more competitive musical arena. Thus, for ten years, José Alfredo was forced to resign himself to his new life in the capital city accompanied by his old acquaintances, poverty, and anonymity.
In 1946 José Alfredo Jiménez participated in Radio XEW’s “Hora del Aficionado” (Amateur Hour), singing songs written by other composers. He himself recalled the experience, saying “me tocaron la campana y el público chifló. Ahora me río pero en aquella ocasión creo que hasta salí llorando” (“They rang the bell on me, and the audience hissed. Now I can laugh about it, but I believe that, that night, I even left in tears”).
“Something Different”: José Alfredo’s Unique Qualities
He possessed an elusive quality that led him to be considered an “angel” by some of his contemporaries. Clearly, José Alfredo Jiménez was not what the Mexican of his day envisioned as a popular singer. Rosmel comments that, although José Alfredo sang nearly all his life, his voice was never that of a singer. Both Heriberto Molina and Pepe Martínez and other members of the Mariachi Vargas agreed that a beautiful voice was not one of José Alfredo’s gifts—an opinion shared by several other lesser-known musicians I have interviewed on this topic.
Jorge Luís Ríos of the popular music magazine La Canción Mexicana (The Mexican Song) points out that the mass public audience is most easily impressed by a singer who not only has a beautiful voice, but is physically attractive as well. The validity of the statement becomes increasingly obvious when one considers that some of the most successful performers of the era were Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Miguel Aceves Mejía, and Pedro Vargas, all of whom, in addition to being popular singers, were top movie box office attractions.
Ríos adds that, although José Alfredo Jiménez, in his opinion, was blessed with neither good looks nor a beautiful voice, he did possess another, more elusive quality that led him to be considered an “angel” by some of his contemporaries. The most important aspect of this unique quality was his ability to bring to each performance the same level of emotional involvement that he experienced at the moment in which he composed the song.
According to all of my informants there was indeed “something different” about José Alfredo Jiménez. José Hernández Díaz, the owner of the internationally famous Tenampa restaurant and bar in Mexico City’s Plaza Garibaldi, fondly remembered him as a humble and very friendly man who was always more at home in the casual working class atmosphere of a cantina than in the company of Mexico City’s wealthier citizenry, whose economic status he eventually attained and surpassed.
Rise to Fame
The first of José Alfredo’s songs to be recorded was the canción ranchera entitled “Yo.” It was first recorded by the Trio de los Hermanos Samperio and later gained more popularity with the recording of Elpidio Ramírez and Los Huastecos. Finally Mariano Rivera Conde of Radio XEQ recorded it with the Conjunto Los Costeños of Andrés Huesca and it became one of the best selling records of 1950 and remained in the Top Ten list from August 1950 through February 1951. The success of “Yo” prepared Mexico for “Ella.”
The success of “Ella” opened the doors to fame for Jiménez. José Alfredo Jiménez had written “Ella” at the age of 18 as a consequence of his first experience of love and deception, and it remained one of his personal favorites for many years. This song was the first of his compositions to be performed in the Mexican cinema, sung by Pedro Infante in El Gavilán Pollero (The Chicken Hawk), and while it was his second major success in Mexico, it was the first to gain widespread popularity in the United States. It was also the first to receive negative comments from the Mexican music critics. It was demasiado cruda (too crude), muy directa (too direct), and poco romántica (not romantic enough).
Heriberto Molina was quite emphatic in his statement that it was the success of “Ella” that definitively “opened the doors to fame” for Jiménez. “Ella” remained among the top ten songs in Mexico from November 1950 until August 1951, when it momentarily slipped off the list, only to reappear in September. As Ayala’s “Desfile de Éxitos” illustrates, during the first six months after its release, it dominated the top two rankings.
Throughout the 1950s, the music of José Alfredo Jiménez maintained a position of dominance in the Mexican popular music scene, with such hit recordings as “La Que Se Fue” (She Who Went Away), “Cuando el Destino” (When Destiny Calls), “Tu Recuerdo y Yo” (Your Memory and I), “El Jinete” (The Horseman), “Serenata Huasteca” (Huastecan Serenade), “Camino de Guanajuato” (Road through Guanajuato), and “Un Mundo Raro” (A Strange World). From 1950 to his death in 1973, he wrote between 400 and 500 songs, over 300 of which were published.
Stay tuned to future newsletters for more historical information about mariachi greats such as Jiménez and the evolution of mariachi genres such as the canción ranchera.