Mariachi Tapatío de José Marmolejo

Mariachi Tapatio de José Marmolejo ranked among the foremost mariachi ensembles of the 1930s and 1940s and brought the trumpet into the mariachi tradition for the first time. Few Mexican mariachi groups matched its scholarly rigor; multiple members read music fluently, and two had formally studied music theory. José Marmolejo Ramirez, born in Tecolotlán, Jalesco, Mexico, in 1908, established the band soon after departing his uncle Cirilo Marmolejo’s Mariachi Coculense de Cirilo Marmolejo in 1933. Trumpet player Jesùs Salazar anchored the lineup, and the musicians earned equal renown for their exacting rehearsals and their public performances. Each day they gathered in Ramirez’s single-story tenement apartment roughly ten blocks from Plaza Garibaldi, where aspiring vocalists such as José Negrete, Pedro Infante, and Vicente Fernandez frequently participated in the sessions. After Ramirez died in 1958, Mariachi Tapatio de José Marmolejo remained active for another ten years.