Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

« BACK

Talk about dark-eyed Latino beauties -- meet Stephanie Urbina Jones.

Tejano artists such as Emilio Navaira have found great success among Hispanic audiences and then fallen flat when they tried to cross over to country. "People don't seem to want to accept it," said Geronimo Trevino, 55, a longtime honkytonk musician from Leakey, near San Antonio. "I'd sure like to see some [Hispanic] guy come up and do well in Texas Music. ... When people get up there with a Hispanic surname, they're different. The white audience views them as kind of peculiar."

Most Hispanic artists aren't inclined to try -- the money is better in other genres, said Creager, a gringo singer from Corpus Christi whose latest c.d. Long Way To Mexico includes a version of "El Rancho Grande."

"Tejano is huge," he said. "I used to be almost jealous of these guys. You'd run into them at the hotels and truck stops, and the really big bands are making a fortune. They've got their own music and it's hot, man. They jam."

A 1990s Latin pop music explosion saw Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, Shakira, and Jennifer Lopez touch the upper tiers of mainstream stardom, easing through doors thrown open by the success and untimely death in 1995 of Tejano queen Selena. White audiences shook their booties to the "Macarena" and rediscovered Santana, who nabbed eight Grammys in 2000. Latinos made strong forays into hip-hop in groups such as Rage Against The Machine and Cypress Hill. Currently, San Angelo's Los Lonely Boys are pegged as budding rock-and-roll stars.

As usual, country music and Texas Music are behind the trend curve.

Now, however, industry insiders have high hopes for a couple of young Texas Hispanics who are creating a definite buzz in Nashville.

One of the buzz-makers is john Arthur martinez, of Marble Falls, who placed second in the "Nashville Star" reality talent contest last year and is recording a new album for Dualtone Records. Martinez said his upcoming c.d. is called Lone Starry Night and will feature country music sung in English with bilingual choruses. He isn't comfortable speculating on why Hispanics have had trouble getting recognition, but he predicts a change.

"For whatever reason, nobody has broken through yet," martinez said (he doesn't capitalize his first and last names). "I don't think there is some sinister reason for that. I'm just praying I'm the one that makes it happen. I've got a foundation to have some success. It's going to be a matter of timing and work ethic. I'm going to have to visit all those radio stations, shake a lot of hands, and autograph a lot of c.d.'s."

Another Hispanic artist sniffing a breakthrough in Texas Music is Stephanie Urbina Jones, who grew up in San Antonio, moved to Nashville and found success as a songwriter, and then two years ago became an indie recording artist. In 2003, she became the first female to hit the No. 1 spot on the online Texas Music Chart with "Shakin Things Up" from her debut album (white males dominate the chart with rare exceptions). Taylor invited her to sing at last year's festival, where about 10,000 people responded warmly to her 45-minute set. The only other Hispanic artist to front a band during the festival's long history was Geronimo Trevino several years ago.

"The reason there is no Hispanics involved in it? I'm not sure," Taylor said. "This time of year we get at least 50 press kits a week from people wanting to play the concerts, and I don't think there is a Hispanic person in the whole group."

Last July, Jones performed at Willie Nelson's July Fourth Picnic and sang a duet with Nelson in front of 20,000 people. "At the end of the song, he took off his hat, kissed me, and flung his hat in the crowd, and then the crowd went crazy," she recalled.

For several years she's been trying to interest major record labels in financing a crossover album of country songs with bilingual lyrics and traditional Mexican instruments. "I've had three or four meetings with major labels, and I hear a lot of, 'Well, Rick Trevino tried it and Emilio tried it,'" she said. "I have a vision for this album of showcasing the beauty of the language but still making it mainstream."

Then, just last week, things started to pick up. A major label (she won't say which one) has expressed interest, she said, and she was named a finalist for this season's "Nashville Star." The winner in that competition gets a Sony recording contract, albeit one stacked heavily in the label's favor. Jones is feeling so confident about the impending breakthrough of Hispanics and her potential to lead the way that she is considering passing up national television exposure on "Star" in favor of signing a more equitable record deal on her own.

Either way, she is determined to get her bilingual country album on the market at a time when millions of Hispanics find themselves straddling two worlds. "I'm third-generation [Texan]," she said. "My grandparents nor my father wanted any of us to speak Spanish so that we would be successful in the world. Now we want to reach back and celebrate our roots. After years of repression, it's nice to be at a time in the world where it's good to celebrate the multi-cultures. That's why I'm really excited about the records I'm making, and I feel I'm going to be a voice to fill that void."

Jones and martinez both have talent and experience. Their clean-cut looks and mainstream material, however, might work against them among a Texas Music crowd drawn to rough and scruffy maverick misfits -- Willie Nelson in the 1970s, Steve Earle in the '80s, Keen in the '90s, and Green in the '00s. After all, martinez wears a tailor-made glitzy jacket like the Nudie suits popularized by old Nashville stars, and his responses were measured and politically correct during an interview for this article. Jones is gorgeous and classy, and it's impossible to imagine her half-drunk on stage, puffing on a joint in between songs, and telling her fans to quit throwing beer cans or she'll kick their asses. Outlaw fans love 'tude as much as talent.

John Gómez' battered 1997 Nissan 240SX eases past an ugly brown house near Avenue D in the Polytechnic neighborhood of southeast Fort Worth where Gómez bought drugs until a couple of years ago. "That house used to be painted white," he said. "I wrote a song about it called 'Little White House on the Corner.'" Sample lyric: "Better stay away from the white house, you'll throw your life away."

Code for heroin was "boy." Cocaine was "girl." Gómez preferred "boy."

He pointed out another drug house, where a teen-age dealer named "Young Thug" used to sell dime bags. Gómez recalled driving by the house to buy heroin one night and seeing several police cars parked outside. Someone had shot and killed Young Thug and stolen his drugs, which wasn't much of an inconvenience for Gómez, who had to drive only a few blocks farther down the road to score.

NEXT »

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5