But how beautiful he sang Javier Solis. At first, a frustrated impersonator Pedro Infante. And finally – soon – a unique singer … inimitable.
His his real name was Gabriel Syria Levario. On April 19, 1966, exactly 55 years ago, he died at the age of 34. It happened in room 406 of Santa Elena Hospital, in the Roma neighborhood. Nobody expected … nobody. Not even him, despite the fact that he always had the feeling that his life would be short. But not so much.
“I could be happy / and die alive / and live through tears / the most terrible passage / of this drama without ending … / nothing more shadows / caressing my hands … / nothing else shadows / in trembling of my voice “.
The best performances were made with songs touched by sadness. He knew how to feel better than anyone. Especially if it was a child – the son of an alcoholic father who died soon – that his mother had given it to him before he left some boys. From there, the harsh poverty with which he grew up in the Tacubaya neighborhood was the lowest.
In adolescence, the need became a little … more. He doesn’t even finish elementary school … and he has to change at the school of life: Apprentice mechanic, pastry chef at a bakery and before dedicating himself to weighing, he is a butcher … mainly in a place called Providence, in the colony Condes. He dedicated himself to this profession for ten years … just like his professional artistic career. Decade.
Now if to complete the chop -it wasn’t said more congruently- Build a musical trio with two friends and on the way some mariachis invite him to work in the tourism of that time Garibaldi Square… in -in the Tenampa- or on the sidewalk, hunting loved ones who didn’t have to get out of the car to order and pay for a song. In the butcher’s he earned 17 pesos in salary. La Garibaldi, 40.
An admirer to the core of Pedro Infante, found that, imitating him, he liked. And it was valid: it was about being able to eat and be able to save yourself. It was the best solution … which would later become his main problem. Sing tango, bolero and hits from Idol Guamúchil. Take the stage name Javier Luquin and sneaks into neighborhood slums, medium-haired restaurants and major canteens as well Guadalajara at night, where he sings from table to table. That audience is already looking for him. The owner of the place realizes and already moves him with a good contract to Aztec Bar, on St. John Lateran (today Lázaro Cárdenas) and Waterfall. Famous hangout. There the members of the famous Los Panchos trio will see him and one of them, the Puerto Rican Julio Rodriguez, get two great composers to listen to him and, at that moment, head on the powerful Columbia record label: Felipe Valdez Leal and Fernando Z. Maldonado. They both discover a unique voice, record two songs for it. Valdez renames him: from that moment he is Javier Solis. They signed a contract for him in 1956, but nothing happens and I can’t remove his main flaw … he doesn’t understand … he’s camouflaged with his idol and has a tattoo on his forehead. P (… Pedro’s).
On April 15, 1957, The infant dies in a plane crash in his own tragedy and that of Solís. The idolatry for this is gigantic and sales of his records are multiplying. The least asked is someone who looks like him. And when I’m about to terminate Javier’s contract … Felipe Valdez brings in Rafael Carrión, Infante’s arranger and compadre, so that, for the last time, he can remove the tone of the imitator and start his own voice. After a thousand attempts on the subject You will cry, you will cry (… my gameaaa / even if you want to snatch me from your being / when you feel the warmth of other caresses / my memory must shine where you are), Carrión makes him sing with his voice and that of the best instruction of life his: “now imitate yourself”. From there to the near end of his days, Javier Solis he manages to change the coin he always carried in his bag.
“You will cry” … the theme he imitated and brought up
So the record industry decided to move it that way the bolero rancher rules… Actually created many years ago by Ruben Fuentes, when he made the arrangement for the mariachi of the song Sweet heart and 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 a command over his perfect middle voice that Sinaloan did not have. and that no one else had.
Soon, Javier Solís has become a phenomenon as a record seller… With dimensions such that, until 1960, Columbia in New York set out to register it internationally. To sponsor him, he introduced himself Frank SinatraThat he knew something about that business. It had, for the purpose of the world’s industry at the time, God’s blessing.
At the cinema, things were not the same. At his death childe (… their karma), a decadent and voracious “used” industry Solis to replace an irreplaceable one, exposing him by exposing him in about 30 cheap movies, like what he wasn’t: an actor. This is to lock the closet which, of course, they locked.
The current – for the memorable – is what he left in the songs … three hundred and twenty! Between them No way! (which was also his battle cry), sinner, Moon’s light, Look, Ash, renunciation, I knew I loved you, Lie to lie, If God takes my life and the recording of the Spanish suite of Agustin Lara, was left as a gift for bullfighting recording the pasodobes that only Alexander Algara he was also able to record with that level of perfection (… at least the topics mentioned in this paragraph are themes).
And well, Clown, Four Syrians, In my old San Juan, You will cry you will cry, Crazy… are cooked separately. And above all, he did it on his pedestal Shades… Whose original title is Just shadows, an old Argentine tango composed in the 1930s, with lyrics Jose Maria Contursi and music by Francisco Lomuto. He just registered it with a mariachi arrangement Javier Solis in February 1965, 14 months before he died; Since then, the theme has become the flag that flies in his memory today.
Beyond the rancher bolero, He recorded a lot of ranchera ballads and was significant among other important singers of the vernacular genre. like the huge one Miguel Aceves Mejia, Antonio Aguilar, Charro Avitia Yes Luis Aguilar. This in a decade (that of the 60s) in which they faced the era of rock in music and cinema, until a the golden age of Mexican cinema that, generally speaking, he did not expect them.
On April 12, 1966, Solís was hospitalized with a stomach ache., whose attention he had postponed. On the 13th he underwent surgery for the gallbladder and postoperative complications led to heart failure two days before discharge, due to his good evolution: “I did not count with my heart”, the doctor said as a final explanation to his closest relatives. This goes back to the periodic myth of the time, in the sense that he had died due to a glass of water contraindicated.
“If Juárez hadn’t died, he would still be alive …” says danzón. In such circumstances, Javier Solis (1931) He was 90 on September 1.
His personal-sentimental-conjugal-extramarital-paternal life was, at least, somewhat complicated: at 34 … 11 children with five women in simultaneous relationships. With the proper torments … before and after. One of them, the dancer Yolanda mollinedo -with whom he had a daughter- he was shot in the temple while listening to a record by Javier, in April 1967 … a few days after his first anniversary of mourning.
Inside was a man who managed to leave behind his name, poverty and the past in general., sculpting against the current a successful present and a future that 55 years later takes care of its legacy … and so far, selling twice as many catalog albums as Pedro Infante… that character, whom, in one way or another, he wanted to liken.
With all the complexities of poverty, hunger, pain and abandonment … that boy had a lot of merit and a greater strength to reach the top. And to remain as it is kept in the memory of a people.
If his mother had suspected her … she wouldn’t have given it to him.