Conjunto Michoacan, the veteran regional Mexican band known for their ranchera and norteño ballads, has released “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela,” about the late Los Angeles Dodgers star Fernando Valenzuela. But the band didn't do it because everyone was doing it — even though, in the early '80s, everyone was doing it. “We knew some other songs, but we weren't really inspired by them, because we were focused on what we were doing,” recalls Alejandro Saucedo Garcia, the group's violinist for 40 years. “He was the king of baseball and everyone in Mexico loved him.”
“El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela,” The group's 1981 single was one of several musical tributes that dominated Mexico and Los Angeles, while “El Toro” racked up hundreds of hits and won the World Series. Among the most popular were the upbeat salsa and disco jam “Go Fernando” by Everardo y Su Flota, a Chicago band whose bandleader died in 2014, and “Cumbia de Fernando Valenzuela,” a more traditional ballad by Los Gatos Negros de Tiberio.
Conjunto Michoacan, one of the few surviving groups to dive into Fernandomania at the time, had a songwriter, the late Magdaleno Oliva, who knew Valenzuela well. “They would have conversations about baseball and stuff,” Saucedo Garcia recalled, through a translator, by phone from his home in Taretan, Michoacán, Mexico. “The song was very famous,” he adds. “On the radio everywhere. We toured Mexico and the US and played the song.”
Valenzuela, who died last week at age 63, was born in the small Mexican town of Etchohuaquila, Sonora, before becoming the only baseball player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. He was magnetic and dominant and something of a folk hero to Latino baseball fans, particularly those of Mexican heritage. Still angry about Dodger Stadium displacing a heavily Latino Los Angeles community called Chavez Ravine in the 60s to bring baseball to the city, many local Hispanics plunged into Fernandomania.
“My parents immediately, you know, started crying. We all cried,” Sergio Juarez, a baseball fan who grew up near Dodger Stadium, said recently. NBC Los Angeles. “It was different because Fernando looked like us. Fernando was someone who was humble and broke barriers that many people couldn't even reach.
“And to see a person who had a Spanish last name, Mexican-American, came from a small town,” he added. “It was very special.”
Corridos represent a 200-year-old tradition of story songs that often deal with David vs. Goliath battles of lone heroes taking on institutions. was an adaptable way of greeting Valenzuela in the 80s. In one Los Angeles Times essay after the Dodgers retired Valenzuela's No. 34, Michael Jamie-Becerra, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside, wrote that the piece by Conjunto Michoacan “you would think that Fernando's success on the field could be attributed in that he had a noble heart, cared for his parents and was a very good person.”
Conjunto Michoacan recorded “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela” for Odeon Records, an imprint owned by the major label EMI now owned by the University of California, Los Angeles. Strachwitz Frontera collection of Mexican and Mexican-American recordings. Although the track only has 1,087 views on YouTube and isn't available on most streaming services, Conjunto Michoacan recently played it live across the US and Mexico. Its fans include a Guatemalan YouTube commenter who posted that he was listening to the group's music “when I went to herd sheep in the field with my radio on clean rayobac batteries.”
Saucedo Garcia says the band plans to release a new version of “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela” with updated lyrics and perform it on upcoming tours. “New things about his achievements and his passing,” he says.
The 65-year-old violinist continues to follow baseball, including the World Series, in which the Dodgers have a 3-0 lead over the New York Yankees. He has a radical interest: “I would like the winners to be Fernando Valenzuela's team,” he says.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/dodgers-legend-fernando-valenzuela-fernandomania-songs/
