Posted by Ham Vicente from Los Angeles
on 8/30/2007, 9:06 am
71.145.129.94
29, 2007 9:53 PM
Subject: Is Little Joe y La Familia too cool for Los Angeles?
Body: This article is a factual and historical statement on the band La Famila of which I was a proud and dedicated member during the real Golden Era of Texas/Chicano Music............Tony Ham
I have been getting invitations and announcements for shows by Little Joe y La Familia everywhere in the next few months. Little Joe is a hot ticket wherever he performs, cities and towns, big and small, but he never plays in Los Angeles.
Raza in San Diego, San Jose, up and down the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys are making plans, getting baby sitters, finding designated drivers, and shinning their shoes for the upcoming Lilttle Joe y La Familia events, but not in Los Angeles.
Little Joe is Chicano royalty, a raza music elder statesman, a living legend, he deserves all the fame, success and recognition he gets. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about his grito, the soulful tone of his voice, and the horn arrangements. Pero que paso con Los?
Before I was truly exposed to authentic Tejano music in the seventies, I used to dismiss this musica as simple basic open chord ranchero music played with electric instruments. But little by little my opinion changed. Once I was working for a famous magazine, Little Joe y La Familia did a show for us at L. A. Convention Center, one of the few times that he has played Los Angeles, that I know of. I was stuck with being the stage manager, no one else was around. Man! Was I blown away! La Familia was made up of the finest musicians I've ever seen. I mean, it was like a jazz fusion band playing Tejano music, the drummer could have been playing with Weather Report or Chick Corea, the guitarist was playing the most complex chords I've ever seen and heard, every musician was tops. Lil Joe explained to me that they had been playing everything for years since the forties as little children working in the fields, el blues, el country and western, el rock'n roll, las rancheras, and everything else, this was the result of all those years. Como dicen unos, el puro colmillo. Those guys were peaking.
Now, in the early seventies I was a Chicano college student. On weekends we used to pack ourselves into cars and drive to the Coachella valley to help organize farm workers for the United Farm Workers. After spending all day in the fields trying to convince campesinos to join la causa, we used to go to a city park in Coachella. Here we were received with bowls of posole, tamales, agua fresca and so on. Tejano music was big in this area, the band played while we ate, and when the sun went down and we finished eating, big old Texas style bailes we had.
Then the city council decided that we couldn't have dances. We could eat, we could listen to the music, but no dancing. Cesar Chavez heard of that ordinance, he came down from Delano next weekend. Pos, after a day of organizing, ahi estabamos todos aguitados, all sad eating our posole and listening to some soulful Tejano music. The band played a clean cover version of Little Joe and La Familia's "Las Nubes." Talk about a fine tune, nice steady Tejano beat, gorgeous melody, and reflective lyrics. When they finished, Cesar Chavez got up and took the microphone. He spoke about that ridiculous and absurd city ordinance. If they want to stop dancing they should close all cantinas, or something like that, he said. Los placas were all around the park, the place was surrounded by cops. Cesar Chavez asked the band to play "Las Nubes" for him otra vez, then he walked over to his wife Helen y la saco a bailar, asked her to dance. Like a couple on their prom night, they walked to the middle of the floor and started to dance. We all expected the cops to rush in, but nada, they stood still. After a minute pause, the entire raza in the house rushed to the dance floor and joined Cesar and Hellen in dancing to Little Joe and La Familia's "Las Nubes." We all danced all night. Needless to say that city ordinance was never enforced. Cesar Chavez and Little Joe saved the day.
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