Here's a nice clip of Emilio & Rio

Wishing a speedy and healing recovery to Emilio Navaira III and others involved

Yes accidents happen everyday but I always hate hearing about them when people are hurt. Read this on the Click 2 Houston news site. I hope all those who are still in the hospital will have a speedy recovery.

Singer-Songwriter Emilio Injured In Bus Crash

Famous Tejano Singer Hospitalized In Critical Condition

HOUSTON -- Emilio Navaira III, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, was critically injured in a major bus crash in Houston Sunday, police said. The band's bus slammed into traffic barrels just after 5 a.m. on Interstate 610 northbound in the Houston suburb of Bellaire, west of downtown Houston, said Bellaire police Sgt. Daniel Kerr. Based on video from traffic cameras at the scene, previous news reports said three vehicles were involved. Kerr said only the bus was involved, however.

Navaira, 45, was one of eight people injured in the crash, said Houston Assistant Fire Chief Omero Longoria. He was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition and receiving treatment in the intensive care unit, said hospital administrator Lisa Lagrone. Two others were transported to Memorial Hermann with less severe injuries, Longoria said. Both were from the bus, treated for minor injuries and released, Lagrone said. The other five were taken to Ben Taub Hospital, where two were listed in critical condition, Longoria said. Navaria's brother, Raul Navaria, was one of those injured in the crash -- he was discharged but remained at the hospital, awaiting the outcome of his brother's hospitalization. Emergency crews were still trying to remove the bus from the scene at midday and traffic was moving slowly, Kerr said. Navaria, known as Emilio to his fans, and his band Rio played at the Hullabaloo club Saturday.

We say goodbye to Lydia Mendoza

While reading my Sunday Los Angeles Times I've discovered the recent passing of Lydia Mendoza. Thoughts and prayers to her family, friends and fans.

Here is a small part of the write-up from today's Times:

Lydia Mendoza, 91; Singer was in the vanguard of Tejano music

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By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 30, 2007

Lydia Mendoza, an early star of Mexican American music whose passionate, despairing songs about working-class life on both sides of the border made her a trailblazer for the Tejano genre, has died. She was 91.

Mendoza, whose singing career spanned more than 60 years, died Dec. 20 of natural causes in San Antonio, Texas, according to media reports.

Texas Monthly magazine called her the "greatest Mexican American female performer ever to grace a stage" in a 1999 story that named her "the voice of the century" in Texas.

Lupe Saenz, president of the South Texas Conjunto Assn., told The Times that Mendoza was a "pioneer of our musical heritage."

"She was a rebel, in that she did what no other woman artist singer had done before her; that is, she sang about the 'machismo' culture in a way that set the course for many women today," Saenz said in an e-mail.

The words for her first, and most enduring, hit came from her girlhood collection of gum wrappers that contained song lyrics. She put the words from one wrapper to a tune she had heard in concert in Mexico and first performed "Mal Hombre" (Evil Man), a song about false-hearted lovers, when she was 10.

After Mendoza recorded the song -- a tango -- in 1934, it became a major hit throughout the Spanish-speaking community and launched her career.

Accompanied by her signature 12-string guitar, Mendoza often sang about hardship and rejection in a powerfully sincere style that reflected the music developing along the U.S.-Mexican border. Her trilling voice earned her the nickname "La Alondra de la Frontera," or Lark of the Border.

In 1935, she married shoemaker Juan Alvarado and continued to perform in an era when wives usually gave up their careers. By 1940, Mendoza had recorded more than 200 songs in a wide variety of musical styles that included boleros, rancheras and cumbias. She wrote many of them herself.

"People say I'm the mother of Tejano music," Mendoza told the Chicago Tribune in 1996, "but I don't think I even heard the word, knew what it was, until many years after I started. . . . People watched what I was doing -- singing and playing guitar -- and that inspired them."


please check out the complete obituary here.

-AnOldieButAGoodie