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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:45:10 -0500
From: nytab@pipeline.com
Subject: (exotica) [obits] Valerio Longoria, et al
December 19, 2000
Valerio Longoria, Conjunto Musician, Dies at 75
By BEN RATLIFF
Valerio Longoria, an accordion player and a prominent early figure in south Texas conjunto music, died on Friday in a nursing home in San Antonio. He was 75 and lived in San Antonio.
Conjunto is a hard-driving dance music in which the accordion leads a small band that also includes the guitarlike bajo sexto and the drums. In the development of the music, Mr. Longoria was the next major innovator after creators of the form like Narciso Martinez and Santiago Jimenez.
Mr. Longoria was born in Clarksdale, Miss., in 1924, one of nine children of cotton field workers, and spent his early childhood in Kennedy, Tex. He began playing accordion at age 7, and he was soon under the spell of Martinez, the accordionist who in the mid-1930's helped conjunto become a popular, working- class dance music and created a new, more indigenously Texas-Mexican style of playing the accordion, with fewer bass notes and more focus on the melody.
Mr. Longoria played at weddings and parties in Harlingen, Tex., as a teenager, then joined the Army in 1942. Toward the end of his military service, he was stationed in Germany, where he played the accordion in nightclubs.
In 1946 he was discharged and soon made his first recordings, for the Corona label in San Antonio. When he began his career, conjunto was strictly instrumental music, but Mr. Longoria sang with it, and through his influence singing became part of the genre.
He originally played the standard prewar repertory of Texas border music ù waltzes, huapangos and schottisches ù but then began to add new elements. He learned the Colombian cumbia while living among Puerto Ricans in Chicago in the late 1950's, and after he adopted it, it became an important part of Mexican-American conjunto. He popularized, if not pioneered, the practice among south Texas conjunto musicians of playing the accordion while standing up and it is said that he was the first to use the modern trap drum set in conjunto, in 1948.
Mr. Longoria created a different style of playing, improving on that of Martinez ù "a smoother style, with longer extended runs," said Juan Tejeda, a conjunto music historian. He also sang while playing the lead line on the accordion, another innovation.
His voice, more stylized and sophisticated than that of many other conjunto singers, was suited to the romantic bolero; when that style became popular in Mexico, he was among the first to play it in south Texas. He also popularized the canci≤n ranchera, a sentimental song sung in waltz tempo.
"He had a real spark to him," said Chris Strachwitz, who produced some records by Mr. Longoria for Arhoolie Records in the 1980's. "I believe he had one of the best voices of any of the singers from San Antonio."
Mr. Longoria's other innovations involved the accordion. He turned around and retuned the reeds of the instrument to transpose them to other keys. He also customized them in a manner that he called octavaci≤n: changing the reeds so that single notes could be voiced in two octaves at once. Ultimately, he used three accordions in his performances, all in different keys: diatonic accordions in F and G, and a special chromatic accordion that he built himself.
After living for a time in Los Angeles, Mr. Longoria moved back to San Antonio in 1980 and began a 20-year teaching career at the Guadalupe Cultural Center, where he taught beginning and master's-level accordion classes to more than 1,000 students. In 1986 he was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship Award.
Mr. Longoria is survived by his wife, Rebecca; four sons, Valerio III, Alex, Juan and Flavio; two brothers, Steve and Rudy; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The career of guitarist Paddy Chambers, who has died of cancer aged 56, was the stuff of the 1960s rock era. A member of Paddy, Klaus and Gibson, his other bands included Faron's Flamingoes and the Big Three.
The pianist Russ Conway, who was one the most popular stars on television in the Sixties and Seventies, died yesterday after losing his battle with cancer. He was 75.
teacher, Kathy Kidd died early Saturday. She had been diagnosed with cancer
early in October. Kathy was a remarkable woman and a wonderful piano player who had a huge love for jazz, Latin and Arabic music. Kathy released three fine albums with her group Kongo Mambo, "Serious Fun",
Tango singing star of the 1930s who was forced to leave Argentina after a bitter quarrel with Eva Peron
LIBERTAD LAMARQUE, who has died aged 92, was Argentina's first female singing star of tango; but after falling foul of the future "Evita" Peron, she was frozen out of work and moved to Mexico, where she became a popular actress in films and soap operas.
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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:49:20 -0800
From: "F. Cobalt" <fcobalt@lycos.com>
Subject: (exotica) Tracking down Italian films
>we're all getting flooded by excellent re-issues of music used in French and
>Italian movies from end sixties/early seventies. But where can we get the
>films themselves ?
Another good place for obscure films is Something Weird <http://www.somethingweird.com/>. They've been offering an ever expanding collection of German and Italian crime films for years. They can be a little pricey though, but they have a lot of odd titles, and often offer box cover art if you find that appealing like I do. Plus plenty of sexploitation too.
Luminous Films and Video Wurks <http://www.lfvw.com> has a ton of Italian films, as well as a lot of Euro Westerns. I've got a catalogue, and I go to the site and look around sometimes, but I've never actually ordered videos from them so I can't vouch for quality.
Keep in mind that if someone doesn't have a title, it's likely someone else does. There are also a number of video dealers that don't have websites. I buy a lot from dealers who you have to do snail mail with. In fact, for example, it took me about six months to track down someone who could dupe me a copy of the original Cat People.
And note that Anchor Bay Entertainment has been doing a lot of legit reissues of Italian exploitation films in the past few years -- though more in the horror/giallo area.
Mr. Unlucky
- ---
Mr. Unlucky presents Shoot To Kill, a weekly set of jazz, crime jazz, free jazz, soundtrack music, and Now Sound, on Supersphere.com, Thursdays 1-2 p.m. (CST).
http://www.supersphere.com
Get FREE Email/Voicemail with 15MB at Lycos Communications at http://comm.lycos.com
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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 15:43:59 -0500
From: cheryl <cheryls@dsuper.net>
Subject: Re: (exotica) Tracking down Italian films
"F. Cobalt" wrote:
>
> Luminous Films and Video Wurks <http://www.lfvw.com> has a ton of Italian films, as well as a lot of Euro Westerns. I've got a catalogue, and I go to the site and look around sometimes, but I've never actually ordered videos from them so I can't vouch for quality.
I've ordered from Luminous - the quality is so-so (I assume he's using
European tapes, and transferring them to North American - PAL to VHS or
whatever), but he has a lot of titles that you'll never otherwise
find...He can take an awful long time to ship things, though.
cheryl
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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 15:50:00 -0500
From: cheryl <cheryls@dsuper.net>
Subject: Re: (exotica) Re: CD vs. LP
The Incredible Bongo Band had two LPs out - you have the first one. The
second is called "The Return Of The Incredible Bongo Band", on GRT - I
can't find a reference to the year on it. It's equally as good as the
first - I think they were just reissued, so you can probably track them
down. I saw a very obvious bootleg copy of the first album a while
back, but I believe Dusty Groove carries the legit reissue (although I
could be wrong...)
And I can't recommend highly enough a compilation called "Kinky Beats"
(how's that for a convoluted sentence?) It's on Lacerba, and has
"Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band on it, along with a whole mix of
old and new beats. Still one of the best compilations I've come across
in the past while...
cheryl
Paul Dean wrote:
> By the way, the Incredible Bongo Band deserves the name. SUPER HIGH
> FIDELITY!!! The production is fantastic, and the music is great. I love it.
>
> On the cover the name Michael Viner is prominent, it was recorded in
> Vancouver, released in 1972, but that's all I know.
>
> I am wondering, does anyone know if there's any more of this out there?
>
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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 12:50:46 -0800 (PST)
From: chuck <chuckmk@yahoo.com>
Subject: (exotica) Dark Side Of A Christmas Tree in the "Disquarium" with CHRISTMAS CDs
Hi Johan
Your site is always fantastic. This new Christmas cds part is
just great! I saw how high you rated Dark Side of A Christmas
Tree! So I clicked on your Arf Arf Records link and emailed the
guy and he said he had 3 copies left and would be happy to send one
out before he got my check in the mail.
In case any other exoticats have been looking for this comp I
suggest going to the link below reading Johan's review and click
on the Arf Arf link.
The guy said the cd has been out of print for years. He also
warned me how wild some of the songs are and I shouldn't let my 4
year old hear them.
Easy listening in the Big Easy
Chuck
--- Johan Dada Vis <radioexotica@yahoo.com> wrote:
> *** new in the "Disquarium": a first special feature list, with
