On June 21, 1917, songwriter and guitarist Lonnie Guerrero was born in Manor.<\/p>\n
As a young man, Guerrero made the move to Austin and began to travel throughout Central Texas as a self-taught musician. Guerrero was particularly interested in the corrido tradition of epic narratives and folk ballads composed in reaction to community events \u2014 a living newspaper in song, of sorts.<\/p>\n
These ballads were not only passed on as a part of anonymous folk tradition like the \u201cCorrido de Kiansis<\/a>\u201d on the classic 1800s cattle drives or \u201cCorrido of Gregorio Cortez<\/a>\u201d about the legendary turn-of-the-century fugitive. They continued to interpret current events, a way of processing the flow of history in the moment.<\/p>\n In this vein, one of Guerrero\u2019s most poignant compositions was \u201cLa Tragedia del Presidente Kennedy\u201d on the 1963 assassination of JFK in Dallas, a figure whose stature in Texas Mexican circles is symbolized by the \u201cViva Kennedy\u201d campaigns that had mobilized Latino voters in the Southwest.<\/p>\n Most of Guerrero\u2019s working life involved day jobs with the Austin Independent School District, the Internal Revenue Service, and the East Austin Chicano Economic Development Corporation. All the while, he continued as a performing guitarist and songwriter, with his compositions recorded by the likes of Isidro L\u00f3pez, Little Joe, and Guerrero\u2019s nephew, pioneering singer and guitarist Manuel \u201cCowboy\u201d Donley of East Austin.<\/p>\n Donley recorded a range of Guerrero\u2019s compositions, including \u201cDos Corazones,\u201d \u201cLa Tiniebla,\u201d \u201cSombras de la Noche,\u201d and many more.<\/p>\n Further, music was a family tradition beyond Lonnie Guerrero and nephew Cowboy Donley, as Lonnie\u2019s son and bandmate Louie Guerrero also composed the Latin standard \u201cLa Cacahuata\u201d or \u201cPeanuts,\u201d made famous as a crossover hit by Herb Alpert\u2019s Tijuana Brass.<\/p>\n Tejano roots run deep in Austin as a family affair, and Lonnie and Louie Guerrero were the first father and son to be inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n Sources<\/p>\n Jennifer Cobb in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.<\/p>\n Manuel Pe\u00f1a. Musica Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999.<\/p>\n If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it\u00a0here<\/a>. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on\u00a0texasstandard.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0radio.KTTZ.org<\/a>. Thanks for donating today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On June 21, 1917, songwriter and guitarist Lonnie Guerrero was born in Manor. As a young man, Guerrero…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-345995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}