Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Frankie Caballero y Bobby Pulido



Everyone knows that Bobby Pulido's father is Roberto Pulido. But what a lot of people don't know is who Bobby's mother is. She is Diana Montes, and she happens to be the sister of Mario Montes Jr. of the great Donna, TX band Romance. She also happens to be the daughter of Mario Montes Sr. from Los Donnenos. Bobby Pulido was born in Edinburg, TX and is an alumni of Edinburg High School.

This is Pulido's hit song from his debut album Desvelado in 1995 and he is performing it at the Tejano Music Awards. One of the reasons why I'm posting this is that this video features one of the best accordionists that South Texas ever produced, Frankie Caballero of Donna, TX. To those not familiar with Caballero, he's played with Grupo Mazz, Jessy Serrata, Los Chachos de Chacha Jimenez, Jay Perez, Daniel Sanchez, Ram Herrera and of course, Bobby Pulido. When Caballero was a young kid in East Donna, he would sometimes play songs on his accordion for a neighbor that would give him a quarter or two per song. Over the decades, he has developed into being one of the most versatile accordion players today. He has incredible skills and my favorite thing about Desvelado is the accordion runs Caballero goes through. The world needs more videos of Frankie Caballero playing the accordion!

Michael Cole admits he's from McAllen, TX on television.

Photo Credit - WWE
Jerry Lawler beating up Michael Cole 

I remember years ago reading in Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Michael Cole was living in McAllen, TX because he had married a woman from the Rio Grande Valley. That became a trivia note of mine since the idea of WWE announcer Michael Cole living in McAllen seemed pretty amusing to me. I remember even Jim Ross confirming it saying that Cole lost electricity in his McAllen home for a few days due to Hurricane Dolly in the Summer of 2008.

But even though Meltzer and Ross confirmed it, it still seemed odd since I never heard of anyone seeing Cole around in McAllen. So a few months ago, I was at the McAllen Artwalk and I was at an art gallery that was displaying religious art. I was there with a friend when out of nowhere, a khaki short and polo t-shirt wearing Michael Cole showed up to examine this religious art. I was rather perplexed by what I was seeing!

So now, this past week, WWE has these new gimmicks for the original Mistico (de Juarez) and Haku's son. They are stereotypical Mexican thugs that talk in slang and ride in on a low-rider bicycle. When the match starts, Michael Cole proceeds to give a low-rider bicycle history lesson. Booker T immediately accuses Cole of looking up all that information the night before on Google, but Cole replies back that he knows this culture because he's from McAllen, Texas.