Freddy Fender

As a vocalist, composer, and guitarist, Freddy Fender earned recognition as a Grammy recipient and a leading country performer whose fusion of country, blues, and rockabilly carried a pronounced Latin character. His emergence as a solo star during the mid-1970s rested on popular singles including "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," and "Secret Love," after which he gained further notice as part of the acclaimed 1990s supergroups Texas Tornados and Los Super Seven.

Baldemar Huerta came into the world on June 4, 1937, within a migrant laborer household in San Benito, Texas. He picked up the guitar during his earliest years, left school at sixteen to enlist in the Marine Corps, and issued his initial Spanish-language recordings under his birth name in 1958.

Although those early releases found favor among audiences in Texas and Mexico, he switched to the stage name Freddy Fender in 1959 and shifted toward a more emphatic rockabilly approach. The next year brought the self-written "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," which became his strongest seller to that point. In May 1960, however, authorities convicted him of marijuana possession and imposed a five-year term at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison, the same facility once home to blues legend Leadbelly. Paroled after three years through the intervention of Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, Fender attempted to resume performing but secured only occasional nightclub dates around New Orleans before returning to San Benito.

Back in Texas he worked for several years as an auto mechanic and later enrolled in college to study sociology. In 1974 he encountered Huey P. Meaux, proprietor of the Houston-based Crazy Cajun label. The two entered a recording agreement, and Meaux steered Fender toward country & western material while preserving the Hispanic elements already present in his sound. When the first Meaux-produced single, "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," drew no major-label interest, it appeared on Crazy Cajun; by the opening weeks of 1975 the track reached the summit of both the country and pop charts, transforming Fender into an instant star. For the follow-up he re-cut his earlier composition "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," securing a second consecutive number-one country hit. Before the year closed he added another chart-topper with "Secret Love" and placed two albums on the market: Since I Met You Baby and a self-titled collection.

Fender maintained strong sales through the rest of the 1970s, highlighted by the number-two single "Living It Down" in 1976. That year also yielded the albums Your Cheatin' Heart and Rock 'N' Country, while 1977 brought the holiday release Merry Christmas/Feliz Navidad. Popularity declined with the arrival of the 1980s; after the final chart entry, 1983’s "Chokin' Kind," he turned toward acting, most visibly with a role in the 1988 Robert Redford film The Milagro Beanfield War. Musical activity remained minimal until 1990, when he joined Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez, and Augie Meyers to form the Tex-Mex supergroup Texas Tornados. The ensemble issued three albums and captured a Grammy for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Performance for the 1990 track "Soy de San Luis" before disbanding. Later in the decade Fender assembled another supergroup, Los Super Seven, alongside country singer Rick Trevino, David Hidalgo and César Rosas of Los Lobos, Flaco Jiménez, Ruben Ramos, and Joe Ely. That collaboration earned Fender a second Grammy in the same category for the 1998 album Los Super Seven.

His third Grammy arrived in 2002 as a solo artist in the Best Latin Pop Album category. The project, La Música de Baldemar Huerta, featured interpretations of boleros from his youth and proved to be his final recording. Freddy Fender succumbed to lung cancer at his residence in Corpus Christi, Texas, on October 14, 2006.