About once a month, I go to lunch with 70-year-old Isidoro Lopez, the voice and host of Fiesta Musical. These lunches stem from his desire to integrate Austin’s Latino music community into the greater music scene the city is known for, and I am totally into this. He points out that for every genre of music known in Austin, there’s a Spanish language equivalent, and then some. And Lopez is quite correct.
Because of Isidoro’s lunches, I’ve met a number of remarkable people in and out of the Latino scene, including the legendary Johnny Hernandez. Johnny has played alongside his brother Little Joe for decades and while that alone provides him with a book’s worth of stories, his own journey of musical discovery is rich and colorful. And that’s why he’s working on a screenplay of his life story.
Hailing from Temple, Johnny was drafted at age 17 to play with his brothers in the Latinaires, one of the best-known Chicano Soul bands, then in the family band known as Little Joe, Johnny y la Familia. By the 1980s, la Familia was one of the top-selling Latino acts in the country, and virtual royalty in Texas. Johnny’s soaring voice made hits of the band’s renditions of songs such as “Las Nubes,” and they’ve collected three Grammys in their illustrious career.
Hernandez is back in Austin after a decade in L.A. and Las Vegas, and has reinvigorated his solo career. With a brass-inflected band and a new CD, This Time (Again), Hernandez updates 1970s favorite “This Time” and adds dancefloor classics such as “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Just a Dream” to go along with his own “Todo Me Gusta De Ti.”
As for the screenplay? You’ll just have to wait for the movie.
This article appears in June 26 • 2009.