La Historia de Esteban Jordan (Entry 4)

For decades, The Johnny Canales Show was one of the best platforms for Tejano and Conjunto musicians to showcase their skills. Eventually, after being on the air for three different decades, the program starting being more Norteño based, which was very upsetting to many Tejano and Conjunto fans. This is something that was controversial earlier in the aughts, and something that still continues to be a controversial topic as evident by this recent article by The Monitor's Crystal Olvera. That's a topic that could be explored in a much more austere and extensive manner, but I don't have the writing chops to do it. 

So, back to the topic at hand, these are two great clips from The Johnny Canales Show that feature Esteban Jordan doing his thing. These clip emanate from the year 1986, the same year when Jordan appeared in David Byrne's (Talking Heads) cult classic True Stories. The first song is "Donde Andara" (aka "Donde Estaras"), I believe this song was first released by the Corpus Christi-based Freddie Records label in the 1970's:



Jordan has an impressive list of memorable polkas to his resume, and this polka is one of his most famous ones, "Polkaplex":



The one unfortunate thing about these videos is that the Canales TV filming style at the time had the studio track laid on top of the video, so this is not a live musical performance. Around this time, when Canales was discussing Jordan with David Bennett, Johnny Canales said the following: "I said it on my show last week: Steve Jordan is the greatest accordion player we've seen in our time, and that's no bull."

Broken Hearted Lady

Earlier this summer, I picked up this compilation set of the McAllen, Texas music scene of the late 1960's. It features a variety of different acts, but the main act that anchors this set is Christopher and the Souls. This group became well known in the Valley after a famous eBay auction and an article by The Monitor. That article talks a bit about their song, "Broken Hearted Lady", which I uploaded on my YouTube account here (which I acquired thanks to this neat compilation):

Here is an interview they did right before they were set to perform at SXSW 2010. 

Spinner - Christopher and The Souls Interview

If you want to read more about this band, check out this great page about Christopher and The Souls over at Garage Hangover.