Jorge Negrete

Jorge Negrete rose to prominence as the initial ranchera performer to achieve nationwide recognition in Mexico. Across the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s he appeared in three dozen films while committing nearly 200 songs to disc, only to pass away while still at the peak of his popularity. His upbringing took place inside a military household, since his father attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Mexican Army amid the revolution. Following that path, Negrete entered Heroico Colegio Militar—the nation’s equivalent of West Point—in 1925 and enlisted in the armed forces three years afterward.

Alongside his military duties, Negrete cultivated a serious interest in singing. He trained under vocal instructor José Pierson and developed into a skilled opera performer, receiving an offer of a secondary role from New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Yet after radio station XEW engaged him in 1930, he found the shift from operatic technique to the popular ranchera idiom difficult. Four years of steady refinement and mounting recognition later, he traveled to New York for performances and quickly secured a contract with NBC. During that short American sojourn his profile surged: he joined forces with Xavier Cugat, secured engagements at Latin clubs, encountered his first wife—the dancer Elisa Christy—and formed a connection with cinematographer Ramón Peon, who gave him his screen debut in the 1937 picture La Madrina del Diablo.

Four years after that debut, Ay Jalisco, No Te Rajes! cemented his status as “El Charro Cantor,” the singing cowboy. In total he completed 38 films and delivered several major successes, among them “Paloma Querida,” “El Hijo del Pueblo,” “Tequila con Limón,” and the patriotic anthems “Mexico Lindo y Querido” and “Yo Soy Mexicano.” Early in the 1950s he shared the screen with Pedro Infante, one of his chief rivals in the ranchera field, for Dos Tipos de Cuidado. He also married another screen star, María Felix, in a union Mexicans labeled “the wedding of the century”; her first screen appearance had occurred in one of Negrete’s own productions. One year later he succumbed to cirrhosis brought on by hepatitis rather than alcoholism.