Laura Canales

Laura Canales earned affectionate nicknames like the “Barbra Streisand of Tejano music” and “La Reina de la Onda Tejano (Queen of the Tejano Wave)” while becoming one of the border region’s most prominent performers between Texas and Mexico. She collected a dozen Tejano music honors, among them Female Entertainer of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year in 1981, and she has stayed among the genre’s most respected voices. Her 1977 release Snowball And Company climbed to tenth place on Billboard’s “Hot Latin” chart, and the 1990 album No Regrets stayed on the same listing for thirteen weeks.

She began performing right after finishing high school in 1973, appearing first as a guest singer with Los Unicos. For the following two years she continued as a featured vocalist with both Los Unicos and El Conjunto Bernal until Los Unicos dissolved. At that point she joined former bandmates Ramiro “Snowball” de la Cruz, Balde Munoz, and Oscar Soliz to create Snowball & Company. Their opening single reworked Linda Ronstadt’s “Midnight Blue,” and a string of Tejano successes followed.

After de la Cruz departed in 1978 the ensemble adopted the name Felicidad; three years later it became Laura Canales & Encanto. Canales remained with the group until 1985, when she stepped away from the stage to work as a disc jockey at KYST in Houston. She left the station after six months yet kept a low profile until signing a five-year deal with Capitol/EMI Latin in 1989. Over the next three years she toured and recorded with Los Fabulosos Cuatro. In 1992 she paused again to attend Texas A&M University, earning her bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology in 1997 and beginning work toward a master’s. During this period she also trained with choral director Milicent Wiley.