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He was best known for the 1970s hits “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” and “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” and as the first popular Mexican American country artist.
Livia Albeck-Ripka
Johnny Rodriguez, who became the first Mexican American country music star with a string of hits, died on Friday. He was 73.
His daughter, Aubry Rodriguez, announced his death on social media on Saturday. The post did not cite a cause of death.
Mr. Rodriguez rose to fame in the 1970s and was best known for the hits “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” and “You Always Come Back (to Hurting Me).” He released six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and nine others reached the Top 10.
Ruggedly handsome and possessed of a rich, supple tenor steeped in the verities of down-home country music and Western swing, Mr. Rodriguez made his debut on the chart three years before the other popular Tejano singer of the 1970s, Freddy Fender.
Yet unlike Mr. Fender, who frequently incorporated elements of Tex-Mex music into his arrangements, Mr. Rodriguez tended to work more in the unreconstructed honky-tonk vein of his heroes Merle Haggard and Lefty Frizzell. One of his No. 1 singles from 1973 was, in fact, a cover of Frizzell’s “That’s the Way Love Goes,” a version of which also reached the top of the country chart for Merle Haggard a decade later.
“I was drawn to country music because I could relate more about what they were singing about,” Mr. Rodriguez said in an interview for Ken Burns’s 2019 PBS series “Country Music.”
“Also, it was the music of our people,” he added. “I think that Mexican music and country music said almost the same thing, just in different languages.”
In 2007, Mr. Rodriguez was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, which described him as the “greatest and most memorable Chicano Country singer of all time.”
Juan Raoul Davis Rodriguez was born to Andres Rodriguez and Isabel Davis on Dec. 10, 1951, in Sabinal, Texas, around 65 miles west of San Antonio. Mr. Rodriguez, the second youngest of 10 children, started playing guitar at the age of 7 when his older brother, Andres, bought him one.
Their father died of cancer when Mr. Rodriguez was 16, around the time Mr. Rodriguez formed a band, and the younger Andres died the next year in a car crash. The losses sent Mr. Rodriguez “spiraling,” according to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame.
Mr. Rodriguez had been in jail by the time he was 18 for what is said to be an unpaid fine. He would pass time in the cell by singing and was overheard by Joaquin Jackson, a Texas Ranger, who eventually helped find Mr. Rodriguez a job as a singer and stagecoach driver at the Alamo Village, then a popular tourist attraction in Texas.
The country musicians Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare heard Mr. Rodriguez performing at the Alamo in 1971 and invited him to Nashville. Mr. Rodriguez, then 20, brought just his guitar and $14. Shortly after his arrival, he became a lead guitarist in Mr. Hall’s band.
In 1973, Mr. Rodriguez released his debut single and first Top 10 single, “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through).” His next three singles — “You Always Come Back (to Hurting Me),” “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” and “That’s the Way Love Goes” — all topped the chart.
He was also nominated for the Country Music Association’s male vocalist of the year award in 1973 and won the Billboard Trend Setter Award for first Mexican American to capture a national audience.
In 1979, Mr. Rodriguez parted ways with his record label, Mercury, and signed with Epic. Three more of his songs — “Down on the Rio Grande,” “Foolin’” and “How Could I Love Her So Much” — later reached the Top 10. He continued making music into the 1990s.
In 1999, a jury acquitted Mr. Rodriguez of murder in the killing of an acquaintance he said was a burglar. The acquaintance, Israel Borrego, 26, was fatally shot once in the abdomen in 1998 at Mr. Rodriguez’s home in Sabinal. Lawyers for Mr. Rodriguez argued that he was justified under Texas law to defend himself and his property.
The singer, who was facing life in prison, rested his face in his hands as the verdict was announced. “I’m just sorry that the whole incident took place,” he said. “I don’t want to go through anything like this again.”
In 2010, he received the Pioneer Award from the Institute of Hispanic Culture, and in 2019, he was given the Living Legend Award from the Country Music Association of Texas. He released 35 albums in his four-decade career.
Mr. Rodriguez is survived by his two sisters, Antonia and Eloisa, and by his daughter, Aubry Rodriguez. His marriage to Debbie McNeely ended in divorce.
During an interview in 2019, Mr. Rodriguez advised young artists to write their own material.
“It separates you from everybody else,” he said. “If you’re really honest about it, that’s the hardest part,” he added. “It’s like taking your clothes off in front of somebody.”
Bill Friskics-Warren contributed reporting.
Livia Albeck-Ripka is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering breaking news, California and other subjects.
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Johnny Rodriguez, Country Music Star, Dies at 73 – The New York Times
