The Greatest Chicano Classic Oldie of All time

                                                                                    

Rosie and the Originals on Stage

     It was a simple question I posted on my Facebook page, name the greatest oldie ever recorded. 

     Now, I purposely didn’t ask which is your favorite. That would defeat the purpose. I wanted to know what song my FB friends considered the best oldie, regardless of their personal favorite. Here is another way to put it. If my FB friends, which lean heavily on the raza side, could choose an oldie as our Chicano national anthem, which one would it be? 

      For me, I chose at the #1 spot, Rosie and the Originals, “Angel Baby (1961),” not because it was my favorite but because it seemed ubiquitous, everywhere and at all times, and #2, my personal favorite, Barbara Mason’s “Hello Stranger,” (1963), a heartbreaker of a love song. 

     This got me to thinking whether Mexicans across the country listen to oldies like Mexicans do on the West Coast. (I use Mexican to avoid the awkward “Chicano/Chicana”). Or another question, what do we even consider “oldies?” 

     When I was in the army, back in 1966, Chicanos from Texas weren’t especially “oldies” fanatics, not like West Coast Mexicans. They swooned more to the sounds of musica nortena, and a sound I wasn't familiar with, at the time,Tex-Mex, their favorite, Little Joe y La Familia, revered by San Antonio Chicanos. That got me to thinking about raza in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas City, Detroit, and Chicago? For that matter, what are oldies? Are they the same to all of us? 

     Most D-jays agree, a true oldie was recorded between 1953 and 1964, my older cousins' generation, the chop-top, hot rod crowd. The genre originated out of the East Coast doo-wop scene, where kids of all ethnicities hung out on street corners and sang their favorite tunes, voices only, no instruments needed. 

     I know in the 40s, before the war, West Coast pachucos danced to boogie-woogie, big-band music, and a blend of Mexican and jazz, like Lalo Guerrero’s Pacuco Boogie. Puerto Ricans on the East Coast probably listened to an island infused salsa, Willie Colon and Tito Puente. Then in the 50s, gospel, country, and jazz gave way to rock ‘n roll, picked up on the West Coast by the car club scene, mostly white kids (who could afford cars) and Mexicans. 

     By 1965, my generation, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Temptations, the Motown sound, entered and modernized rock, leaving Art Laboe and his oldies extravaganzas at the El Monte Legion Stadium in the dust. What we called "oldies" weren't even that old, maybe ten to fifteen years old, using the Gregorian calendar, but when you compared it to the newer, harder-edged sound of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, Buddy Miles, Leon Russel, the El Chicano, Tierra, and Malo, they really did sound old. 

    For Chicanos in L.A. Thee Midniters was something of a transition band. They gave the oldies sound something of a face lift, but they tried not to show the stretch lines, keeping true to the original look, hence, many of my FB friends voted thee Midniters’ Sad Girl as the best oldie, when, in reality, the true version was written and recorded by Jay Wigging in 1963, a true oldie. 

     As the Baby Boom generation moved on to more modern styles of rock music, the 1960s’70s pachuco/cholo oriented culture stayed true to their oldies, never letting them fade completely. AM radio transitioned to the hip-cool FM rock stations, and oldies got buried into one of the antiquated AM stations. Ah, progress. 

                                                                                 

     However, oldies, as a cultural phenomenon never disappeared from the Chicano/Chicana consciousness. Many Mexicans still had their old vinyl, cassette, and CD collections. Now, with streaming, oldies are just a click away. 

     So, the answers to my FB question about the greatest oldie ever recorded came in fast and furious, some 75 responses in a couple of days, and some good ones, like Duke of Earl (1962), We Belong Together (1958), In the Still of the Night (1956), Earth Angel (1954), Only You (1955), I Only Have Eyes for You (1956), A Thousand Miles Away (1956), Forever My Darling (1956), You’ll Lose a Good Thing (1962), Sad Girl (1963), Daddy’s Home (1961), and so many others, but, like me, most chose Angel Baby as the grand prize winner, the greatest oldie ever recorded.

    This all got me to thinking. Who were Rosie and the Originals, this group that stole the hearts of millions back in 1961 and today, still? Surely, they must have had some big money behind them to have recorded such a monster hit. Record companies paid big money to song writing teams, many who came out of the East Coast.

     Turns out Rosie Mendez Hamlin, was the daughter of Ofelia Juana Mendez and Harry Hamlin, of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Rosies's family moved around a lot. She was raised in Alaska but visited her Mexican relatives in San Diego, whenever she could. In her early teens, her parents decided to move National City, next door to San Diego, where she attended Mission Bay High School. 

     Her dad played guitar and encouraged Rosie to learn to play piano. Something of a tom girl, who loved the outdoors, Rosie fell in love at 13. To prove her love, she sat down on her bed and wrote a poem, the first line, "It's just like heaven/Being here with you." 

     At 14, she got some friends, musicians, from her National City neighborhood together, to put her words to music, an unmistakable first chord, with a basic four-chord progression used in many oldies love songs as its musical foundation. In her unique, high, girlish voice, she continued her poem, “You’re like an angel/Too good to be true/Because I love you/I love you/I do/Angel Baby/My Angel Baby.” 

     At 14, before most girls could even date, had Rosie tapped into a Chicano spiritual consciousness, love as something divine, heavenly and angelic? As Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote in Labrinth of Solitude, on the one hand, love as pure, holy, and blessed, like the Virgin Mary, and on the other side, "When you are with me my heart skips a beat/I can hardly stand on my own two feet," love as visceral, profound, and physical, Dona Marina, the flesh, the sinner, so in love with her master Cortez, she could barely stand, the yin and the yang of Mexican love.

    They called themselves Rosie and the Originals, Noah Tafolla, Gene Romero, Tony Gomez, Joe Yancho, Alfred Barrett, David Ponci, and Carl van Goodat. They practiced until they had the song down perfectly. 

     They found a man who recorded music in a corner of his airplane hangar, out near San Marcos, north San Diego, where they made their record. The sax player, Alfred Barrett, had to cancel. His mom wouldn’t let him get out mowing the lawn, so guitar player, Noah Tafolla, who had played some sax, taught Tony Gomez to play the sax part. Tony wasn’t as good as Alfred, so what you hear on the original recording is Tony trying his best. Ironically, it turned out to be one of the memorable sax lines in oldies history, in less than ten notes. 

     No radio DJ would listen to kids trying to get their song on the radio, so they asked a local department store manager if he’d play their song in the listening booth, where teenagers went to hear and buy music. He agreed, and, before long, kids began requesting Angel Baby. A music scout heard the recording and signed the group to a recording contract. Rosie was too young to receive credit for writing the song, so the oldest member of the group, David Ponci, received songwriting credits (this caused a lot of legal problems later, but eventually, Rosie received credit). 

    From there, everything was like a whirlwind. The group began performing. Rosie and Noah traveled to New York to perform six shows with Jackie Wilson. Angel Baby was a hit. Alan Freed, a K-Day disc jockey, and one of the biggest names in rock radio, heard the song, played it on his station, and it quickly reached #5 on his hit list. Dick Clark heard it and booked the group on American Bandstand. Rosie said she was first Latina to appear on American Bandstand. 

     From there, the song turned up in teenage households across the country. In 1995, Rosie and the Originals received honors from the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. John Lennon said Rosie was one of his favorite singers and recorded Angel Baby for a later album, and Led Zepplin made mention of them in their liner notes. 

     So, now, each time we hear Angel Baby, we know it was recorded in an airplane hangar by a group of Chicano and Anglo kids who were messing around with music, just trying their best, and their best turned out to be one of the greatest Chicano classics of all time.