Simple Dreams ~ A Musical Memoir (25 page)

I asked Manuel Cuevas, who had designed the cowgirl outfits that Dolly, Emmy, and I had worn for the
Trio
album cover, to design my costumes. Manuel had also designed the suits worn by the Flying Burrito Brothers for Nudie, the iconic Western tailor. Most people don’t realize that the fancy cowboy suits worn famously by movie stars such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, and my childhood hero, Hopalong Cassidy, are of a traditional Mexican design. The yoked cowboy shirts with pearl snaps are worn by working cowboys in the northern Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. American cowboys, particularly in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, adopted the styles. The cowboy hat and cowboy boots are also imported from northern Mexico and are worn regularly today by both working cowboys and gentlemen ranchers in the Sonora desert, where my grandfather was born. In Mexico, you can tell where a person comes from by the regional style of his or her clothing. Manuel, a Mexican national born in Michoacán, knew that my family’s origins were in Sonora, and he dressed me accordingly. That meant ultracomfy, beautifully stitched cowboy boots with fine woolen cavalry twill skirts and embroidered cowgirl jackets. Manuel showed me how he would twist the thread while he was embroidering the design so that the embroidery would catch the lights onstage. When it comes to stage clothes, Manuel is the grand master. His designs for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Glen Campbell, and many others became the definition of the rhinestone cowboy.

The
charro
suit, worn by the mariachi, is also an equestrian costume but comes from the state of Jalisco, where the mariachi itself originates. It is the tuxedo of the wealthy landowner, who
would ride the long distances between ranches to social events on horseback, his suit richly embroidered and his saddle, bridle, belt buckle, and spurs gleaming with sterling silver fittings. When my sister and I were girls, we had giddy notions of being swept away on horseback by such a man, like the heroine being abducted by her hero in the Mexican movies. When we went to balls and picnics in Mexico, my father stood close by to ensure that nothing of the sort would happen. In those days, Mexican mores were still fettered in the nineteenth century, and girls were closely chaperoned until they were married.

After I began touring regularly with the Mexican show, I would sometimes perform at a
charreada
, which is like a rodeo where charros get together to show their skills at handling stock. The charreadas include music, and the singers often perform from the back of a horse. The women riders who compete wear huge sombreros and long dresses with a double-circle fullness in their lacy skirts, and are mounted on sidesaddles. It is not considered ladylike for them to ride astride. They are extreme daredevils, executing complex maneuvers at breakneck speed, both legs draped modestly to one side, sometimes flashing a glimpse of a dainty laced boot.

When I was invited to perform at my first charreada, I knew that I would be expected to sing riding on a sidesaddle. I had never ridden on one, but my sister had, so I decided I’d be able to figure it out when I got there. The first thing I did was check out the horse they had provided for me, a big, handsome quarter horse gelding called Chulo, to make sure he wouldn’t get spooked by the music. I asked one of the musicians from the mariachi to blow a loud trumpet next to his ear. Chulo didn’t blink. I climbed up on his back and settled myself into the unfamiliar sidesaddle. I have ridden horses all my life, but a good comparison to that experience would be to ask a person who has driven a car all his life to drive the freeways while sitting on the steering wheel. I decided
the word
sidesaddle
was an anagram for
suicidal
. I was about to jump off Chulo’s back and sing my songs standing in the mud in the center of the arena when I caught my reflection in a car window. The combination of my big hat and skirt, sidesaddle, and handsome horse created a dashing effect. Vanity carried the day.

I rode into the arena and began to sing. At a charreada, if the people in the crowd like you, they will throw articles of clothing at you. After I sang a few lines, hats, bandannas, and hoodies began to rain on me. I was worried it might frighten Chulo, but he took it in stride. As we rounded the first corner of the arena, the sound system began to feed back. It was loud enough to bother my ears, and there were surely frequencies out of the range of human hearing that were unbearable to Chulo’s sensitive equine ears. He started to jump around, shaking his head, desperate to get away from the high-pitched squealing. I tried to reassure him by talking to him and patting his neck, but I also had to keep singing. I was wearing a body mike that amplified my singing in Spanish, but between lines of the song, it also amplified me pleading with Chulo in English to please not kill me by bucking me off and leaving me in the middle of the arena with a broken neck. I finally solved the problem by steering him to the corner opposite where the feedback was coming from and staying put.

After the show was over, I hugged Chulo and thanked him for not throwing me off. I asked his owner if he would sell him to me, so I could ride him in some more charreadas. The owner responded by making the horse a gift, and Chulo came to Northern California to live with my other horses and Luna and Sweet Pea. Unfortunately, he injured his leg in the trailer during the ride north, and we never got to perform together in any more shows. He spent the rest of his days in retirement, roaming acres of green pasture with other friendly horses. I think it was a happy change for him, as the life of a working charro horse is a tough one indeed.

We played the first show of the Canciones de Mi Padre tour in San Antonio, Texas. We had carefully advertised the show as being all in Spanish, but I didn’t know if people would still be expecting to hear “Blue Bayou” and other English-language hits. The tour was booked into many of the same venues that I had played with my rock band and also with Nelson Riddle. I wasn’t sure whether people would actually show up. Advance ticket sales had not been strong, and we worried it was a bad sign. As I squinted through the bright lights at the audience, I was surprised at what I saw, that night and during the entire tour: the theaters were packed, and mostly with enthusiastic brown faces. I learned that Mexican audiences generally don’t buy tickets in advance but come out the night of the performance and purchase their tickets at the box office. They also bring the whole family, with grandmothers and small children in attendance. The Canciones show had attracted a completely different audience from my previous tours. They knew the songs and sang along, especially the grandparents, who had courted to many of the songs. To my relief, no one yelled for “Blue Bayou” or “Heat Wave.”

The Mexican shows were my favorites of my entire career. I would sing two or three songs at a time, change costumes, and be back in time to watch the dancers. I never tired of them. The musicians were stellar and included a number of powerful singers. I learned from them every night. The members of our touring company became close immediately, and I didn’t feel the loneliness that I had experienced during previous tours. Riding on the bus late at night, I would doze off to the sound of rich voices speaking in a mix of Spanish and English, just like in my childhood. After the surreal experience of being caught in the body-snatching machinery of the American celebrity juggernaut, I felt I was able to reclaim an essential part of who I was: a girl from the Sonoran Desert.

I made a second album, 1991’s
Mas Canciones
, again with Rubén and Peter coproducing. Michael Smuin’s wife, Paula, designed and directed a simpler version of the show, which still included the dancers and yet was flexible enough to perform in Carnegie Hall or at a state fair. I liked the simpler version even more than the elaborate one. With the dancers’ colorful costume changes alone, we had plenty of production value. Mariachi Los Camperos, which became my touring band for Mexican shows for the next twenty years, performed its own section of the show and electrified the audience every night. Of the first-tier mariachis of the time, they were the most traditional, featuring silken vocal trios and sensational solo performances by Ismael Hernández, my favorite singer in the band. His powerful ranchera-style tenor hit the audience like a cannonball and would have me stomping and hollering from the wings. My favorite memory of my career as a touring performer is of sitting quietly next to Paula at the side of the stage, settling my nerves, and waiting for her to cue the lights and start the show.

19

Cry Like a Rainstorm

Photo by Robert Blakeman/Sarah A. Friedman.

A
FTER SINGING EIGHT SHOWS
a week in
Pirates
, struggling with
Bohème
, touring with Nelson Riddle and the orchestra, and spending another year with the Mexican show, I had found strengths and sounds in my voice that I never knew existed. I was preparing for another English-language record, and called some of my songwriter friends who had consistently delivered thoughtful, well-crafted songs. These included Eric Kaz, Karla Bonoff, and Jimmy Webb.

From singing so many drastically different styles of music, I had learned that there are infinite ways to approach the vocal production of sound and that most of the decisions about how to select them are made on an unconscious level. These decisions are constructed at great speed in some back room of the brain. They are informed by the story with the most urgent need to be told and by how that story should be framed. If it happened
on a conscious level, it would be a week before a breath could be drawn to sing the first note. I would simply watch it unfold, often surprised at the result.

When singing classical pieces by composers such as Puccini, the vowels become all-important, and the sound hitches a ride on a big, open
aah
or
o
. With a standard song—for instance Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—one can fly through the vowels at full speed and slam into the consonants without even hitting the brakes. Beginning and ending consonants really matter. The second half of the verse to “Bewitched” is particularly rich in this regard:

Love’s the same old sad sensation [lots of sibilance and alliteration to play with]

Lately, I’ve not slept a wink [more sibilance and a nice hard
k
to slam into]

Jimmy Webb is one of the few modern songwriters comparable to the old masters like Rodgers and Hart in songwriting craft, including the ability to write a pop song with enough musical sophistication for an orchestra to get some traction. Toward the end of his masterful “Still Within the Sound of My Voice,” he provides a chance to pummel an internal rhyme scheme without mercy:

And are you still within the sound of my
voice

Why don’t you let me
know
, I just can’t let you
go

If it’s wrong, then I have no
choice

But to love you un
til
I no longer have the
will

Are you
still
within the sound of my
voice

As a songwriter, Jimmy Webb kills me. His songs are difficult, but the emotional dividend is worth the risk a singer must take in
scaling the tremendous melodic range his compositions explore. The payload of feelings is squeezed into the way his chords are voiced and can provoke a sharp emotional response in the first few measures of the intro, before the singer even begins. Compared to another contemporary master—say, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys—he doesn’t provide words that give easy access to a beautiful vocal sound. It is precisely this quality that lends his songs their cranky charm, whereas Brian writes lyrics that sing beautifully. When I recorded his “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” and “In My Room,” I learned his songs are not easy, either, but they remind me of a beautiful horse that will give you the smoothest ride of your life if you know how to ride it. Jimmy, on the other hand, might buck you off at any turn. The sounds that result from Jimmy’s lyrics are pegged to his own vocal style: a choirboy sweetness fortified by a rich har-de-har Oklahoma farm-boy twang. I love his singing.

When Peter Asher and I began to record the
Cry Like a Rainstorm
album, our best collaboration, in my opinion, Jimmy wrote an orchestral arrangement for me of his wistful song “Adios,” with Brian Wilson singing the complex backing harmonies. I had known Brian briefly in my Troubadour days, when he was separated for a time from his first wife. He was always sweet and friendly, and never pressed any romantic agenda. Several times I discovered him at my back door, studying a little pile of coins he held in his hand, which he said was ten or fifteen cents shy of the price of a bottle of grape juice. He said it was important for him to drink grape juice in order to solve some health problem that was troubling him. He didn’t say what it was, nor did I ask. I would provide the remaining ten or fifteen cents, and we would climb into his huge convertible with the top always down, the back stuffed with a sizable accumulation of Brian’s dirty laundry. As a bachelor, he seemed to have difficulty coping
with his domestic arrangements, so I would suggest a trip to the Laundromat, where we would fill an entire row of machines. (I had lots of quarters.) Afterward, we would sit in my living room, drink the grape juice, and listen to my small collection of Phil Spector records. Brian really liked Phil Spector.