RIP Flaco Jimenez

"The way I learned to play the accordion was on the wild and happy side, much like Cajun and zydeco music. I like to make my accordion yell and scream and make it happy."

Flaco Jimenez died this week. Just thinking about Flaco—one of my all-time favorite musicians—makes me smile. He was more than a virtuoso on his Hohner accordion, more than a revered figurehead of Hispanic culture, more than a brilliant collaborator with some of the biggest stars in music. Like Louis Armstrong and Stevie Wonder and very few others, Flaco had the rarest and most compelling of musical powers—the ability to convey joy in every note he played. There was no doubt when you listened to him or watched him that the man loved to play music. Elation just rolled right through him and into his music.

Flaco Jimenez was the king of conjunto music. Conjunto is what happened when traditional Mexican ranchera music was blended with the accordion-driven polka music of German settlers in what is now Texas. Flaco’s grandfather was one the earliest conjunto masters; his father, Santiago, took the norteno accordion style to another level and made some of the first norteno recordings; and his brother, Santiago Jr., was also a conjunto star. Flaco’s key contribution was to bring new influences—rock, blues, country and jazz—to conjunto.

In the 1970s Flaco Jimenez broke out as something of a pop star after his work with the likes of Doug Sahm, Ry Cooder, Linda Ronstadt, the Rolling Stones and Dwight Yoakam. The Texas Tornados—a Tex-Mex supergroup with Jimenez, Sahm, Augie Myers, and Freddy Fender—won a Grammy. Flaco would go on to win four more Grammys, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a National Medal of Arts, and be inducted into the National Hispanic Hall of Fame.

The first time I heard Flaco was on Doug Sahm’s “Doug Sahm and Band” album, which came out in 1972. In 1978 and 1979, I lived in Austin, Texas, Sahm’s home at the time, and got to see Flaco many times playing with Sahm and fronting his own band. Those ecstatic shows—some of the best live music I have ever heard—led me to Jimenez’ Arhoolie albums, which in turn pointed me to his truly fabulous 1970s albums for the San Antonio-based D.L.B. label.

I moved back to Seattle, and in 1982 Jimenez made a rare appearance there at a show sponsored by the Seattle Folklore Society and the Concilio for the Spanish Speaking. During a short opening set, Flaco, believe it or not, was pleading with the audience to get on their feet and dance. During a long break, Flaco convinced the organizers to rearrange the tables to make the dance floor larger and to bring the house lights down. When Flaco and his band returned to the stage, he yelled “Hit it, mama!” and launched into a raucous, bluesy number. The next two hours was all about dancing. It was so much fun that I drank far too much.

The next day, around noon—far too early in my wounded condition—I showed up as scheduled at the home of a local Hispanic family who was hosting Flaco to do an interview with him for The Rocket, a Seattle music magazine. Flaco wasn’t up yet, so I nursed a cup of coffee while he roused himself. We finally sat down together in the living room.

I opened the conversation by confessing to Flaco that I had had such a good time at his show the day before that I was really hung over.

“That’s fine,” he said, flashing a brilliant smile, “because I am really hung over, too!”

I asked Jimenez how old he was when he started to play the accordion.

“I was about seven years old,” he said. “I started observing my Dad when he tried to teach the little kids from the neighborhood, so I just caught on to what he was doing. I had a feeling that I could play the accordion without teaching, but, well, the teacher was right there—my Dad. I didn’t play dances with him, but I recorded with him. He had his own band and he didn’t want to put me on the road or on these gigs because I was small.”

I asked him if he knew about Doug Sahm’s Tex-Mex-flavored 1960s hits like “Mendocino” when he started working with him in Austin.

“I was surprised,” he answered. “I was more surprised when he called me from New York and said, let’s blend something—I need some accordion up here. He was recording with guys like Dylan and Dr. John. So I flew up there and he blended in the accordion with what he had. It started right there—the tejano or Tex-Mex accordion—with Doug.”

Ry Cooder had just released an album featuring Flaco on accordion, so I asked Jimenez how that had come about.

“This is the story that Ry told me,” Flaco said. “He was in San Antonio and driving along and all of a sudden he changed the radio station and he heard one of my records. So he said, ‘Golly, maybe I can do something with this accordion, some type of blend.’ So he bought an accordion, and I’m telling you, he can play that three-row accordion! He went back to Santa Monica and started putting things together for this album I did with him—Chicken Skin Music.”

I told Flaco that I heard a country and western influence in his playing and asked him whether that was a fair statement.

“Yes, country music is one of my favorite styles,” he replied, “because it seems like every song that’s being sung has a message. There’s a story behind that song, instead of, like, hard rock. I don’t have nothing against hard rock—it’s okay, and I can play hard rock—but those country tunes are sentimental and they tell a story.”

I told Flaco that I had lived for a while in Austin and that I thought that in central Texas a unique set of musical influences—blues, country, conjunto, polka, western swing, Cajun, zydeco, and New Orleans-style music—had come together.

“I think it’s good to combine music. It doesn’t matter what race or whatever. Just to make it a combination of music. My idea and Ry Cooder’s idea is to combine everything. Make it blues or make it country, make it a polka, make it everything combined. So I think my goal is a combination—to combine with everybody. Music or no music, whatever—just a combination of humanity.”

A wonderful video of a young Flaco recording live in the studio and of his father Santiago playing and talking.