This Week in Texas Music History, we hear how one man helped the South Texas record industry take flight.
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On April 9, 1918, record label owner and producer Arnaldo Ramírez was born in Mission, Texas. Movies and radio fascinated Ramírez as a child, and he soon found work at radio stations in both Harlingen and across the border in Reynosa. In 1948, Ramírez founded Falcon Records and eventually created several other aligned labels, including Bego, Impacto, ARV, and Bronco. His work in radio and the recording industry helped spread the emerging sounds of conjunto, ranchera, and Norteño throughout the Southwest.
Ramírez worked with a who’s who of Tejano and Norteño music, including Chelo Silva, Carlos Guzman, Los Alegres de Teran, Lydia Mendoza, and a singer from San Benito named Baldemar Huerta, also known as Freddy Fender. Fender’s “No Seas Cruel” on Ramírez ’s label, a Spanish-language take on Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” topped the charts in Mexico and throughout Latin America.
In 1964, Ramírez created the syndicated television program Fanfarria Falcón, which further helped to popularize Tejano music in cities across the country. Ramírez used his platform to inform as well as entertain, as shown in the Falcon album Porque Estamos en Vietnam compiling Tejano artists’ topical songs on the Vietnam War. He was even involved in city politics. Ramírez’s hometown of Mission elected him mayor in 1973, an office he held until 1981. Further, he worked with the Good Neighbor Commission, a state agency strengthening relationships among Texas, Mexico, and other Latin American nations, a logical extension of his lifelong labors bringing people together around the music of the borderlands.
Sources:
Justin Brummer, “The Vietnam War Songs Project: A Texas Discography,” The Journal of Texas Music History. November 2024. https://www.txst.edu/ctmh/publications/journal/issues/jtmh-vol-24/vol-24-vietnam-war-songs.html
Jaime Espensen-Sturges 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.
Falcon Records, Discogs, accessed March 20, 2025, https://www.discogs.com/label/87902-Falcon-Records.
