Esteban Jordan died a couple of days ago, I just discovered. That is sad, though he has been headed that way with liver cancer for sometime. I'm glad I got to see him play a couple of years ago. Really a wild player, and his band (which included his supremely talented sons) was great.

He was also a hard-ass, no doubt about that.

Good obit in the SA paper.

In that article, Juan Tejada says :"He was the best, and he knew it. And everybody else knew it. He had a lot of soul and was the epitome of what Chicano music is and what Chicano people are.”

Jordan was working on his ultimate project when he died:

"“He was kind of a Howard Hughes kind of guy. Saluté was his little cocoon,” said Grammy-winning producer Gilbert Velasquez, recalling that Jordan kept his audiotapes in an ammo box. “He was a little out there, thinking people would steal it.”"

Here is a good obit from Austin360.com, which has some good quotes:

""I don't give a damn about the audience," he said in a 2001 interview. "I could be playing for five people or 5,000 — it doesn't make a difference. I'm still gonna kick ass. And if you ain't gonna play because there's nobody there, then get the (heck) out of my band.""

and the way he met Valerioa Longoria is incredible:

"Born in the Rio Grande Valley town of Elsa in 1939, Jordan was the smallest and sickliest of 15 children born to migrant worker parents. But he could play every instrument he got his little hands around. First was the harmonica, then a guitar. One night in a labor camp outside Lubbock, a 7-year-old Jordan was playing guitar and heard a sweet accordion sound coming from the lean-to next door. "I stuck my head out and he stuck his head out and we decided to play together," he said. And that's how Jordan met a teenage Valerio Longoria, who would go on to join Santiago Jimenez Sr. (Flaco's dad) and Narciso Martinez in the holy trinity of conjunto accordionistas."