***This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio***
By Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.
On August 28, 1974, conjunto bandleader Jimmy Garcia was born in Eagle Pass. Conjuntos are often a family affair, and that was the case with Jimmy, who in 1990 at sixteen formed Los Clavelitos de Jimmy Garcia with his brother Joey and father Joe, Sr. The group evolved into Los Hermanos Garcia and finally Los Garcia Brothers.
Rising with the Nineties Tejano wave, Los Garcia Brothers incorporated modern cumbia with traditional polka, as Jimmy Garcia switched between accordion and smooth saxophone as the driving force of the band’s repertoire. Los Garcia Brothers stood out on stage by appearing in zoot suits, a nod to the stylish sartorial borderlands in a genre more closely associated with cowboy imagery. The zoot suits, too, channeled the pachuco, a reference point for the band and a subject of their songs. They are also a reminder that this midcentury fashion so associated with California actually has its origins in Texas, in the streets of WWII-era El Paso.
Los Garcia Brothers established themselves on the Texas circuit with songs such as “El Cometa,” “Imposible Olvidarte,” and “Dos Carnales.” These ranged from covers of classic lovelorn ballads like “Imposible Olvidarte” to the outlaw drama of “Dos Carnales,” a sort of modern comic corrido that may be the only song whose central conflict is a heist of an H.E.B. In both 2001 and 2002, Los Garcia Brothers won conjunto Album of the Year from the Tejano Music Award. They won for Los Garcia de Jimmy Garcia and La Rayita, respectively. It is fitting and fortunate that the brothers collected these laurels, as Jimmy Garcia passed tragically in a car accident at age twenty-seven in July 2002.
This was an unfathomable loss for a music scene that had lost several young artists, and Joey Garcia has honored his brother’s legacy by leading Los Garcia Brothers into the twenty-first century.
Sources:
Teresa Palomo Acosta in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
John Henry Medina, “Joey Garcia of Los Garcia Bros recovering after passing out on stage,” Tejano Nation, April 6, 2019.
