“Serenata Norteña” (1964) – Los Rancheritos del Topo Chico * LP: Cuando Dos Almas * Label: Del Valle.
I listened to Los Lobos’s How Will the Wolf Survive so much in 1984 (and beyond) that I don’t really even need to listen to it anymore. I can just play it back with accuracy right up there in my noggin. I always wondered about “Serenata Norteña,” though, a grito-peppered polka track sung in Spanish that breaks down into a waltz during the choruses. For me, it unlocked a door for a long-abiding adoration for canciones tradicionales mexicanas, and I’ve wanted to know about the song’s origins. On the label, though, it says “copyright control” where the writers ought to be. This a term that expresses more doubt than the standard “traditional” or “public domain,” as though the artists suspect it has a traceable origin but they just couldn’t figure it out.
Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when a record I found in a San Antonio flea market by Los Rancheritos del Topo Chico (yes, the same part of Monterrey in Northern Mexico where the bubbly water comes from), unrolled the very arrangement, circa 1964, that Los Lobos were to use decades later. This record came out on the Del Valle label in McAllen, Texas, and another group on that same label, called Hermanos Hernandez, happened to record a single with the same name, but it’s altogether different. No writers are credited on the Los Rancheritos record, though, so my dead end is the same one Los Lobos already knew about. Los Rancheritos’ founder and lead vocalist Catalino Leos kept on making music until he passed away in 2024.
Annoyingly, A.I. and its enablers plug in the names of various members of Los Lobos as the writers wherever one seeks.
Awesomely, polka king Frankie Yankovic included a medley of “Corrida #1” and “Serenata Norteña” on his 70 Years of Hits album in 1985.