![]() By the time Doug did his shout-out, Fender was working as a mechanic, attending Del Mar College, and playing bars and cantinas on weekends, mostly for spare change and pleasure. He didn't witness Fender's rapid decline, culminating in an extended term in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes. It turned out that Fender, née Baldemar Huerta of San Benito, was actually in Corpus, living in obscurity and semi-retirement following a string of rock & roll hits recorded in the Fifties, including "Wasted Days" Doug had seen him play a San Antonio drive-in at the peak of his popularity and was mightily impressed. ![]() Freddy, this is for you, wherever you are," before charging into three minutes of South Texas soul climaxing with Rocky Morales' torrid sax solo. Five years earlier, Doug had paid homage to the one-time Elvis of the Rio Grande Valley on his back-to-Texas-roots opus, The Return of Doug Saldaña, with a greasy, soulful version of "Wasted Days, Wasted Nights" that began with three piano chords and the echo-drenched voice of Doug saying, "And now a song by the great Freddy Fender. Look for the artist having a drawing of Sahm with the Grateful Dead appraised on VH1’s new show on rock & roll collectibles airing Thanksgiving weekend.Īnd then there was the night Doug Sahm brought Freddy Fender to Soap Creek in early 1974. In fact, if you look closely on the bumper you can see the inscription, “special thanks to Dave Moriarty and Keith Ferguson.” Priest also points out that Doug Sahm is in the Caddy’s back seat. Listen to new Tejano music first with our Spotify playlists and iHeartRadio podcast.Micael Priest and the Freddy Fender/Doug Sahm show at Soap Creek, 1974: One of the Old Masters of Austin’s old school poster artists, Priest remembers getting precise instructions from T-Birds bassist Keith Ferguson about Freddy Fender’s reflection on the back of the pictured Cadillac. And readers will see that his daughter Tammy has done just that, conveying in honest prose the tale of a child migrant worker with a passion for music who picked cotton, a three-string guitar, and achieved the great American Dream.įollow Tejano Nation on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with everything Tejano. Tammy states that in writing a frank, realistic book that tells the true story of her father’s life, she is honoring her father’s last wish Freddy wanted an authentic, uncompromising book to be written about his life. The story of Freddy’s ultimate healing and hard-won sobriety is a searing story of faith and redemption. The sequel delves into the darkness of the addictions that ravaged his and his family’s lives, forcing Freddy to the realization that he needed divine intervention. The first book explores Freddy’s struggles as he achieves the great American dream. Tammy Lorraine Huerta Fender has divided her father’s autobiography into two books. His voice and charismatic personality also made him a nationwide television celebrity in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He was given a Country Music Association award for “Single of the Year” and an Academy of Country Music award for “Most Promising Male Artist” in 1975. ![]() Instantaneously, his records crossed over the Billboard country charts into the rock and pop charts, each rising to No. In his youth, in 1956, he was the first to record and sing Spanish rock and roll he was known as the “Mexican Elvis” and called “El Bebop Kid.” In the mid-1970s, Fender would become famous literally overnight as a rock ‘n’ country megastar with his first two monster hits “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” and “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” Freddy Fender was known to millions of people across the world as “an ordinary man who had extraordinary God-given talents.”įreddy was a Mexican-American singer who rose from the depths of poverty, breaking free from a life spent picking cotton and rising to a life spent picking guitar. Marine, the shocking arrest and imprisonment of his early 20s, his barrier-breaking singing career as he exploded into and crossed over different music genres, and the alcohol and drug addiction from which he suffered.ĭuring his last 21 years of sobriety, Freddy sought spiritual redemption, practiced forgiveness, and made amends in his daily life he came to lead by example with the aid of his higher power Jesus Christ. “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” takes the reader on a journey that covers Freddy’s early life of brutal poverty as a child migrant worker, his years as a U.S.
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