Abelardo Garcia remembers the big steel presses belching steam as they printed the recordings of conjunto music's legendary stars.
"It got to 125 to 130 degrees because of the steam we used to press the records," Garcia, 76, said Wednesday. "We used to work day and night. We used to ship thousands and thousands of records every day all over the country."
Next month, the Texas Conjunto Hall of Fame and Museum will display some of the equipment that the Ideal Recording Co. used to turn the music of stars Narciso Martinez, Freddy Fender and others into history, Rey Avila, the museum's founder, said.
Ideal was a San Benito record company that closed in the 1980s.
"It's been one of our goals to put this on display so present and future generations can get an idea of how it used to be," Avila said. "San Benito played a great part in the development of this genre of American music."
The museum will display two Ampex reel-to-reel tape recording machines that Ideal used to capture the sound of conjunto's pioneers, Avila said.
Legends such as Valerio Longoria and Tony de la Rosa recorded their music in the studio where a young worker named Baldemar Huerta helped ship their records, Garcia said, recalling the man who changed his name to Freddy Fender.
"We made the records and he would count them and put them into sleeves and ship them out," Garcia said of Fender, the Grammy Award-winning singer. "He was a real nice guy and a very good singer."
The museum's display will include a Rek-o-Kut machine used to print records at Falcon Records, a recording company that operated in Mission, and a Finebilt record press that Garcia used to print 45s, 78s and LPs, which Avila said was state-of-the-art equipment in its day.
The artifacts will help tell the story of the Rio Grande Valley's first record companies.
"They distributed all over the United States and Mexico and all the way to Costa Rica," Avila said of the Ideal Recording Co.
The museum's exhibit will feature Ideal's original steel masters that Garcia used to press vinyl into records, Avila said.
In 2009, the family of the late Paco Betancourt, owner of the Ideal Recording Co., donated the two reel-to-reel tape recording machines and three record presses along with artifacts that include vintage recordings, Avila said.
"This was our father's work," Lionel Betancourt, Paco Betancourt's son, said. "There's a lot of history there. Almost every known conjunto artist recorded in that studio."
The museum plans to use Ideal's numerous artifacts to recreate the legendary studio and record factory in a proposed multimillion-dollar cultural heritage center that the city plans to build, Avila said.
"This is the home of conjunto music," Avila said. "This is its birthplace."
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| A portrait of San Benito singing legend Freddy Fender is reflected on a metal record held by Rey Avila on Wednesday at the Texas Conjunto Hall of Fame and Museum in San Benito. Avila, the museum's founder, says the metal disc served as a master copy which was used to create the black vinyl 78s of the musician's album "Interpreta el Rock!" |
Article taken from Valley Morning Star on July 7, 2011
