Elsa had a bounty of grace. I decided that I wanted to put together a show in which I sang entirely in Spanish, featuring Elsa’s beautiful dancing. I wanted it to be based on little vignettes of different regions in Mexico, much like my Aunt Luisa had done with her presentation of folkloric songs and dances from Spain.
The performance I did of the three songs I had chosen to perform in Tucson was rocky, but unlike my experience in Bohème, I felt that mastering the form was within my reach, and would simply be a matter of time and rehearsal. I found a teacher to show me the dance steps to some of the songs, so that I would be able to break down the rhythms and understand the phrasing better.
I asked Rubén if he would be interested in producing a record for me with the Mariachi Vargas, and he agreed to do it. Remembering my unhappy experience with Jerry Wexler, I decided to hedge my bet and include Peter Asher as coproducer.
When my record company heard my new plans, the people there were certain I had finally lost my mind: Record archaic songs from the ranches of Mexico? And all in Spanish? Impossible! I pleaded with them, arguing that I had sold millions of records for them over the years and deserved this indulgence. Peter was impressively game. He had never even encountered a Mexican song in an elevator, didn’t speak a word of Spanish, and would be coproducing with someone who spoke almost no English. I figured they were both gentlemen, and professionals, and would work it out. I was right.
Rubén Fuentes had been involved with Mariachi Vargas during La Epoca de Oro, the golden era of mariachi, stretching from the thirties through the fifties. I had grown up loving those records, mostly high-fidelity monaural recordings made in the RCA Victor studios in Mexico City. They had a warm, natural sound, and I was hoping to capture some of that tradition on my own recording. Rubén was pushing for a more modern sound with plenty of echo on the violins and a more urban approach to the arrangements. I met with some resistance when I asked him to replace the modern chords with simpler one-three-five triads. Over the years, Rubén had been largely responsible for diversifying the mariachi style and cultivating a sophisticated urban sheen. To go back to a traditional style understandably seemed like regression to him, but I wanted what I had heard and loved as a child.
I had acquired a very nice black-and-white cow, Luna, who was a pet. She produced an adorable calf, Sweet Pea. I brought all the pictures I had of Luna and Sweet Pea, and tacked them up on the wall in the recording studio. I joked with Rubén in my fractured Spanish that I wanted more cows and fewer car horns in my arrangements. Rubén, who was not used to an artist having an opinion—and most certainly not a female artist—was somewhat vexed. To his credit, he made an earnest effort to compromise. I didn’t want to push him too hard, because I knew he understood the audience that would buy this kind of record better than I did.
Learning to sing all those songs in another language with their enigmatic rhythms was the hardest work I’ve ever done. I didn’t get exactly the sound I wanted from the recording, but the record-buying public didn’t seem to mind. Canciones de Mi Padre, released in November 1987, was immediately certified double platinum, sold millions of records worldwide, and is the biggest-selling non-English-language album in American recording history. It won the Grammy for best Mexican-American Performance. I was as surprised as the record company at its success. I have to say that it succeeded on the strength of the material. The songs are strong and beautiful, and are accessible to people who have no knowledge of Spanish. There are many artists who sing the material better than I do, but I was in a position to bring it to the world stage at that particular time, and people resonated to it.
I began to scramble to put together a show. I was friendly with Michael Smuin, who had been artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet for a number of years. A terrific dancer and choreographer, he created a wonderful production of Romeo and Juliet, and an interpretation of Les Enfants du Paradis, with an Edith Piaf score, that I had adored. He choreographed several short dance pieces to tracks from my Nelson Riddle recordings for prima ballerina Cynthia Gregory, and I had the thrilling experience of performing them live with her. I had to keep my eyes closed tight when I was on the stage with Cynthia, because if I watched her, I would become mesmerized by her dancing, stand there with my mouth hanging open, and forget to sing. Michael was married to Paula Tracy, also a ballet dancer, and the ballet mistress for many of her husband’s ballets. She and I were close friends.
I wanted a stage director who knew how to move groups of dancers around the stage but would respect the integrity of the traditional dances and leave them intact. I also wanted a theatrical show with good production values to frame the music and make it more understandable to an English-speaking audience.
I called another dear friend, Tony Walton, and asked if he would design my sets. Tony’s movie credits included designing sets and costumes for Murder on the Orient Express, Mary Poppins, and All That Jazz, for which he won an Oscar. He was also the designer for a long list of successful Broadway shows and many of Michael Smuin’s ballets. He and his wife, Gen, were close friends of the Smuins.
I began to assemble images of what I wanted the show to look like, and Michael, Paula, and I spent hours talking and dreaming together. Paula, while on a trip to Oaxaca, a state in the south of Mexico that is famous for its art, had bought a small wooden box hand-painted in black enamel, with a design bordered in pink roses and other multicolored flowers. I thought that the border design could be used for our proscenium. Tony used that idea and added many wonderful ideas of his own, including a huge fan that unfurled at the beginning of the show and a moving train for a section of songs that I sang about the Mexican Revolution. Jules Fisher came on board as lighting designer. Michael added a fogged stage lit with black light for a dance he created for a song about a ghostly ship with tattered sails (“La Barca de Guaymas”), and also came up with the idea of releasing live white doves at the end of the show. Two of the doves were trained to fly to my upraised hands and perch on my fingers. I was instructed by the dove wrangler to praise them extravagantly and tell them they did a wonderful job. They never missed a cue.
I asked Manuel Cuevas, who had designed the cowgirl outfits that Dolly, Emmy, and I had worn for the Trio album cover, to design my costumes. Manuel had also designed the suits worn by the Flying Burrito Brothers for Nudie, the iconic Western tailor. Most people don’t realize that the fancy cowboy suits worn famously by movie stars such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, and my childhood hero, Hopalong Cassidy, are of a traditional Mexican design. The yoked cowboy shirts with pearl snaps are worn by working cowboys in the northern Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. American cowboys, particularly in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, adopted the styles. The cowboy hat and cowboy boots are also imported from northern Mexico and are worn regularly today by both working cowboys and gentlemen ranchers in the Sonora desert, where my grandfather was born. In Mexico, you can tell where a person comes from by the regional style of his or her clothing. Manuel, a Mexican national born in Michoacán, knew that my family’s origins were in Sonora, and he dressed me accordingly. That meant ultracomfy, beautifully stitched cowboy boots with fine woolen cavalry twill skirts and embroidered cowgirl jackets. Manuel showed me how he would twist the thread while he was embroidering the design so that the embroidery would catch the lights onstage. When it comes to stage clothes, Manuel is the grand master. His designs for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Glen Campbell, and many others became the definition of the rhinestone cowboy.
The charro suit, worn by the mariachi, is also an equestrian costume but comes from the state of Jalisco, where the mariachi itself originates. It is the tuxedo of the wealthy landowner, who would ride the long distances between ranches to social events on horseback, his suit richly embroidered and his saddle, bridle, belt buckle, and spurs gleaming with sterling silver fittings. When my sister and I were girls, we had giddy notions of being swept away on horseback by such a man, like the heroine being abdu
cted by her hero in the Mexican movies. When we went to balls and picnics in Mexico, my father stood close by to ensure that nothing of the sort would happen. In those days, Mexican mores were still fettered in the nineteenth century, and girls were closely chaperoned until they were married.
After I began touring regularly with the Mexican show, I would sometimes perform at a charreada, which is like a rodeo where charros get together to show their skills at handling stock. The charreadas include music, and the singers often perform from the back of a horse. The women riders who compete wear huge sombreros and long dresses with a double-circle fullness in their lacy skirts, and are mounted on sidesaddles. It is not considered ladylike for them to ride astride. They are extreme daredevils, executing complex maneuvers at breakneck speed, both legs draped modestly to one side, sometimes flashing a glimpse of a dainty laced boot.
When I was invited to perform at my first charreada, I knew that I would be expected to sing riding on a sidesaddle. I had never ridden on one, but my sister had, so I decided I’d be able to figure it out when I got there. The first thing I did was check out the horse they had provided for me, a big, handsome quarter horse gelding called Chulo, to make sure he wouldn’t get spooked by the music. I asked one of the musicians from the mariachi to blow a loud trumpet next to his ear. Chulo didn’t blink. I climbed up on his back and settled myself into the unfamiliar sidesaddle. I have ridden horses all my life, but a good comparison to that experience would be to ask a person who has driven a car all his life to drive the freeways while sitting on the steering wheel. I decided the word sidesaddle was an anagram for suicidal. I was about to jump off Chulo’s back and sing my songs standing in the mud in the center of the arena when I caught my reflection in a car window. The combination of my big hat and skirt, sidesaddle, and handsome horse created a dashing effect. Vanity carried the day.
I rode into the arena and began to sing. At a charreada, if the people in the crowd like you, they will throw articles of clothing at you. After I sang a few lines, hats, bandannas, and hoodies began to rain on me. I was worried it might frighten Chulo, but he took it in stride. As we rounded the first corner of the arena, the sound system began to feed back. It was loud enough to bother my ears, and there were surely frequencies out of the range of human hearing that were unbearable to Chulo’s sensitive equine ears. He started to jump around, shaking his head, desperate to get away from the high-pitched squealing. I tried to reassure him by talking to him and patting his neck, but I also had to keep singing. I was wearing a body mike that amplified my singing in Spanish, but between lines of the song, it also amplified me pleading with Chulo in English to please not kill me by bucking me off and leaving me in the middle of the arena with a broken neck. I finally solved the problem by steering him to the corner opposite where the feedback was coming from and staying put.
After the show was over, I hugged Chulo and thanked him for not throwing me off. I asked his owner if he would sell him to me, so I could ride him in some more charreadas. The owner responded by making the horse a gift, and Chulo came to Northern California to live with my other horses and Luna and Sweet Pea. Unfortunately, he injured his leg in the trailer during the ride north, and we never got to perform together in any more shows. He spent the rest of his days in retirement, roaming acres of green pasture with other friendly horses. I think it was a happy change for him, as the life of a working charro horse is a tough one indeed.
We played the first show of the Canciones de Mi Padre tour in San Antonio, Texas. We had carefully advertised the show as being all in Spanish, but I didn’t know if people would still be expecting to hear “Blue Bayou” and other English-language hits. The tour was booked into many of the same venues that I had played with my rock band and also with Nelson Riddle. I wasn’t sure whether people would actually show up. Advance ticket sales had not been strong, and we worried it was a bad sign. As I squinted through the bright lights at the audience, I was surprised at what I saw, that night and during the entire tour: the theaters were packed, and mostly with enthusiastic brown faces. I learned that Mexican audiences generally don’t buy tickets in advance but come out the night of the performance and purchase their tickets at the box office. They also bring the whole family, with grandmothers and small children in attendance. The Canciones show had attracted a completely different audience from my previous tours. They knew the songs and sang along, especially the grandparents, who had courted to many of the songs. To my relief, no one yelled for “Blue Bayou” or “Heat Wave.”
The Mexican shows were my favorites of my entire career. I would sing two or three songs at a time, change costumes, and be back in time to watch the dancers. I never tired of them. The musicians were stellar and included a number of powerful singers. I learned from them every night. The members of our touring company became close immediately, and I didn’t feel the loneliness that I had experienced during previous tours. Riding on the bus late at night, I would doze off to the sound of rich voices speaking in a mix of Spanish and English, just like in my childhood. After the surreal experience of being caught in the body-snatching machinery of the American celebrity juggernaut, I felt I was able to reclaim an essential part of who I was: a girl from the Sonoran Desert.
I made a second album, 1991’s Mas Canciones, again with Rubén and Peter coproducing. Michael Smuin’s wife, Paula, designed and directed a simpler version of the show, which still included the dancers and yet was flexible enough to perform in Carnegie Hall or at a state fair. I liked the simpler version even more than the elaborate one. With the dancers’ colorful costume changes alone, we had plenty of production value. Mariachi Los Camperos, which became my touring band for Mexican shows for the next twenty years, performed its own section of the show and electrified the audience every night. Of the first-tier mariachis of the time, they were the most traditional, featuring silken vocal trios and sensational solo performances by Ismael Hernández, my favorite singer in the band. His powerful ranchera-style tenor hit the audience like a cannonball and would have me stomping and hollering from the wings. My favorite memory of my career as a touring performer is of sitting quietly next to Paula at the side of the stage, settling my nerves, and waiting for her to cue the lights and start the show.
19
Cry Like a Rainstorm
Photo by Robert Blakeman/Sarah A. Friedman.
AFTER SINGING EIGHT SHOWS a week in Pirates, struggling with Bohème, touring with Nelson Riddle and the orchestra, and spending another year with the Mexican show, I had found strengths and sounds in my voice that I never knew existed. I was preparing for another English-language record, and called some of my songwriter friends who had consistently delivered thoughtful, well-crafted songs. These included Eric Kaz, Karla Bonoff, and Jimmy Webb.
From singing so many drastically different styles of music, I had learned that there are infinite ways to approach the vocal production of sound and that most of the decisions about how to select them are made on an unconscious level. These decisions are constructed at great speed in some back room of the brain. They are informed by the story with the most urgent need to be told and by how that story should be framed. If it happened on a conscious level, it would be a week before a breath could be drawn to sing the first note. I would simply watch it unfold, often surprised at the result.
When singing classical pieces by composers such as Puccini, the vowels become all-important, and the sound hitches a ride on a big, open aah or o. With a standard song—for instance Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—one can fly through the vowels at full speed and slam into the consonants without even hitting the brakes. Beginning and ending consonants really matter. The second half of the verse to “Bewitched” is particularly rich in this regard:
Love’s the same old sad sensation [lots of sibilance and alliteration to play with]
Lately, I’ve not slept a wink [more sibilance and a nice hard k to slam into]
Jimmy Webb is one of the few modern songw
riters comparable to the old masters like Rodgers and Hart in songwriting craft, including the ability to write a pop song with enough musical sophistication for an orchestra to get some traction. Toward the end of his masterful “Still Within the Sound of My Voice,” he provides a chance to pummel an internal rhyme scheme without mercy:
And are you still within the sound of my voice
Why don’t you let me know, I just can’t let you go
If it’s wrong, then I have no choice
But to love you until I no longer have the will
Are you still within the sound of my voice
As a songwriter, Jimmy Webb kills me. His songs are difficult, but the emotional dividend is worth the risk a singer must take in scaling the tremendous melodic range his compositions explore. The payload of feelings is squeezed into the way his chords are voiced and can provoke a sharp emotional response in the first few measures of the intro, before the singer even begins. Compared to another contemporary master—say, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys—he doesn’t provide words that give easy access to a beautiful vocal sound. It is precisely this quality that lends his songs their cranky charm, whereas Brian writes lyrics that sing beautifully. When I recorded his “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” and “In My Room,” I learned his songs are not easy, either, but they remind me of a beautiful horse that will give you the smoothest ride of your life if you know how to ride it. Jimmy, on the other hand, might buck you off at any turn. The sounds that result from Jimmy’s lyrics are pegged to his own vocal style: a choirboy sweetness fortified by a rich har-de-har Oklahoma farm-boy twang. I love his singing.
When Peter Asher and I began to record the Cry Like a Rainstorm album, our best collaboration, in my opinion, Jimmy wrote an orchestral arrangement for me of his wistful song “Adios,” with Brian Wilson singing the complex backing harmonies. I had known Brian briefly in my Troubadour days, when he was separated for a time from his first wife. He was always sweet and friendly, and never pressed any romantic agenda. Several times I discovered him at my back door, studying a little pile of coins he held in his hand, which he said was ten or fifteen cents shy of the price of a bottle of grape juice. He said it was important for him to drink grape juice in order to solve some health problem that was troubling him. He didn’t say what it was, nor did I ask. I would provide the remaining ten or fifteen cents, and we would climb into his huge convertible with the top always down, the back stuffed with a sizable accumulation of Brian’s dirty laundry. As a bachelor, he seemed to have difficulty coping with his domestic arrangements, so I would suggest a trip to the Laundromat, where we would fill an entire row of machines. (I had lots of quarters.) Afterward, we would sit in my living room, drink the grape juice, and listen to my small collection of Phil Spector records. Brian really liked Phil Spector.
Simple Dreams ~ A Musical Memoir Page 16