But how beautifully he sang Javier Solis At first a frustrated Pedro Infante impersonatorAnd in the end -soon-, a unique singer… inimitable.
To be real name was Gabriel Syria LevarioOn April 19, 1966, exactly 55 years ago, he died at the age of 34. It happened in room 406 of the Santa Elena hospital, in the Roma neighborhood. Nobody expected it … nobody. Not even he, despite the fact that he always felt that his life would be short. But not that much.
“I could be happy / and I die alive / and live through tears / the most gruesome passage / of this never ending drama … / nothing more shadows / caress my hands … / nothing else shadows / in the trembling of my voice “.
The best performances were achieved with songs touched by grief. He knew how to feel her better than anyone. How much more if it had been a child – the son of an alcoholic father who soon died – who his mother had given it away before leaving some guys. From there, the harsh poverty he grew up with in the Tacubaya neighborhood was the least of them.
In adolescence, the need became small … more. He’s not even finishing elementary school … and he has to transfer to the school of life: Apprentice mechanic, pastry chef in a bakery and before devoting himself to singing, he is a butcher … mainly in a place called Providence, in the colony CondesaHe devoted himself to this profession for ten years… exactly the same as his professional artistic career. Ten years.
Now if to complete the heel -no more congruently said- Build a musical trio with two friends and along the way some mariachis invite him to work in what was then a tourist destination Garibaldi Square… inside – in the Tenampa or on the sidewalk, chasing the wounded of love who didn’t have to get out of their car to order and pay for a song. In the butcher shop he earned 17 pesos in salary. At Garibaldi, 40.
He was an admirer of Pedro Infante’s core and found that he liked it by imitating him. And it was valid: it was about being able to eat and save oneself. It was the best solution … which would later become his biggest problem. He sings tangos, boleros and the hits of the Idol of GuamúchilTake the artistic name of Javier Luquin and it sneaks into slums, medium hair restaurants and important canteens like the Guadalajara at night, where he sings from table to table. That audience is already looking for it. The owner of the place realizes and moves it already with a good contract to Bar Azteca, On St. John Lateran (today Lázaro Cárdenas) and Water jumpedFamous meeting place. There the members of the famous trio Los Panchos will see him and one of them, the Puerto Rican Julio Rodriguez, let two great composers listen to him and at the time bossed on the mighty Columbia record label: Felipe Valdez Leal and Fernando Z MaldonadoBoth discover a unique voice, they record two songs for it. Valdez renames it: from then on it is Javier SolisThey signed a contract for him in 1956, but nothing happens and they can’t get rid of his main defect … he doesn’t understand … he’s camouflaged with his idol and has a tattoo on his forehead. P. (… From Pedro).
April 15, 1957 Infante dies in a plane crash from his own tragedy and that of Solís. Idolatry for that one is gigantic and sales of his records are multiplying. The least required is someone who looks like him. And when they are about to end Javier’s contract … Felipe Valdez brings Rafael Carrión, the arranger and compadre of Infante, so he can remove the impersonator tone for the last time and start his own voice. After a thousand trials with the subject You will cry, you will cry (… my gameaaa / even if you want to tear me out of your being / if you feel the warmth of other caresses / my memory should shine where you are), Carrión let him sing with his voice and that of the best instruction of his life: “imitate yourself to yourself now”. From there and until the end of his days, Javier Solis he manages to exchange the currency he always carried in the bag.
‘You will cry’ … the theme with which he imitated himself and brought it up
So the record industry decided to move it like the king of ranchero bolero… Actually made by many years ago Ruben Fuenteswhen he arranged the song for mariachi Lover and he put it in the voice of Pedro Infante, the true pioneer of the genre that exploded with countless songs. Javier Solís arrived later, but with command of his perfect middle voice that the Sinaloan did not have. and no one else has.
Soon, Javier Solís became a phenomenon as a record seller… With such dimensions that Columbia in New York wanted to take it internationally in 1960. He presented himself to sponsor him Frank SinatraThat he knew something about that company. It had, for the purposes of the world industry at the time, the blessing of God.
Things weren’t the same in the cinema. Upon the death of Infante (… their karma), a decadent and gluttonous industry ‘used’ Solis to replace an irreplaceable one, to expose him by showing him in some 30 cheap movies, as what he wasn’t: an actor. This, to block the locker, of course they climbed that.
The present -for memorable- is what he left behind in songs … three hundred and twenty! Between them Not really! (whatever his battle cry was), The sinner Moonlight You forget Ash Renunciation I knew I loved you Lie lie If God takes my life and the recording of the Spanish suite from Agustin Lara, was left as a gift to the bullfighting culture the inclusion of the pasodobles alone Alexander Algara he was also able to record with that level of perfection (… at least the topics mentioned in this section are homework).
And good, Clown Four Syrians In my old San Juan You will cry, you will cry Crazy… are cooked separately. And above all that he achieved, on his pedestal, he Shades… Whose original title is Only shadows, an old Argentine tango composed in the 1930s, with text Jose Maria Contursi and music through Francisco LomutoHe barely recorded it with an arrangement for mariachi Javier Solis in February 1965, 14 months before his death; Since then, the theme has become the flag that flies in his memory today.
Beyond the ranchero bolero, He recorded many ranchera ballads and was important among other important singers of the local genre. like the huge one Miguel Aceves Mejia Antonio Aguilar The Charro Avitia Y Luis AguilarThis in a decade (that of the 60s) in which they went through the era of rock in the musical and in cinematography, to a golden age of Mexican cinema that he generally didn’t expect them.
On April 12, 1966, Solís was hospitalized with a crisis of abdominal pain.whose attention he had delayed. On the 13th he was operated on the gallbladder and postoperative complications led to heart failure two days before discharge, because of his good evolution: “With the heart we have not counted”, the doctor is said to have said as a final statement to his close relatives. This goes beyond the periodic myth of the time, in that he died from drinking a glass of water that was contraindicated.
“If Juárez had not died, he would still be alive …” says the danzón. In such circumstances, Javier Solis (1931) He would be 90 years old on September 1.
His personal-sentimental-marital-extramarital-paternal life was somewhat complicated to say the least: at the age of 34 … 11 children with five wives in simultaneous relationships. With the accompanying torments… before and after. One of them, the dancer Yolanda mollinedo -with whom he had a daughter- he shot himself in the temple listening to a record by Javier, in April 1967 … a few days after his first mourning anniversary.
Inside he was a man who managed to leave behind his name, his poverty and his past in general, a successful present and a future against the present that we have nurtured his legacy 55 years later … and so far we have sold twice as many catalog albums as Pedro Infante… that character, who he somehow wanted to resemble.
With all the complexities of poverty, hunger, pain, and desolation … that boy had a lot of merit and more strength to get to the top. And to remain as it is preserved in the memory of a people.
If his mother had suspected it … he wouldn’t give it away.