EL PARCHE JORDAN'S "LOS DOS CARNALES" EVOKES MEMORIES

By Juan Montoya
It was by coincidence that I was driving by El Mante Bar on 14th Street a little after noon yesterday and I heard music coming through the open door.

It was a somewhat familiar tune that I remember hearing before and out of curiosity I turned left on Southmost Road and went around the block on Coolidge and then parked in front. Don Lupito was still doing the talacha when I walked in.

"Buenas," I told him.  (Good afternoon)

"Buenas, Juan. Que haces a estas horas?"

(Good afternoon. What are you doing here this early?)

"Oi una musica que se me hizo parecida," I replied. "Quien estaba cantando, apa?"

(I heard music that sounded familiar. Who was playing?)

"El Parche," he replied. "Se llama Los Dos Carnales)." ("The Eye Patch. It's called The Two Friends.)

Then I realized where I had heard the song that has recently gained its share of fans of the Garcia Brothers and other Low Rider conjuntos, among others. 

In fact, the first time I heard the song – a Low Rider (pachuco) adaptation of a traditional conjunto song called Los Dos Amigos – was 35 years ago in Saginaw, Michigan when El Parche  played it to me in the group's hotel room during an interview for the Saginaw News.  

El Parche was none other than South Texas accordionist and improviser Esteban Jordan. He was called "El Parche" because of his trademark black eye patch. Jordan and his group – the River Jordan –  were in town to play at a scholarship benefit for the local Hispanic community at a local Auto Workers Union Hall.

There, he recounted how he had picked up his first instrument at the age of 7 playing for fellow cotton pickers when they took a break from the Texas sun under the mesquites that dot the landscape. He was born in Elsa in 1939.

"After that I would play at Sunday dances, then in bars and ballrooms," he said. "I like to play at dances because it allows me to have a dialogue with the audience."

Jordan was recognized for his creativity and improvisation with the squeeze box; he has been included in performances all over the United States, including the Newport Jazz Festival.

"I have played at a lot of universities because I want to be part of the new musical history," he said. "This is the new music, and people like it because to many Americans, the accordion is like the harmonica, it invokes the roots of the old country."

He played his as-of-yet unrecorded version of Los Dos Amigos which he titled "Los Dos Carnales" about two friends who decide to rob an HEB after they left the 1-2-3 Bar as he sat in the hotel in Michigan. In the sing, one of them got caught only to escape from police, something the song credits to his good luck and his mother's prayers. ("Seria por las oraciones, que su jefa le rezaba, seria por su buena suerte que al carnal no le tocaba.")

He hadn't released the song to his record company because the companies had a bad habit of stealing songs from composers and not giving them credit or – more importantly – royalties for their compositions. Today, the more popular version is sung by the Garcia Brothers in their Los Cuatro Batos Locos album and in corrido collections.

During that interview where he gave me a rendition of the song 35 years ago, he gave his philosophy on accordion music which Hispanics adapted from German settlers in Texas way back when.

"To me, my accordion is like a wife, except this one doesn't talk back to me," he said with a laugh. "That's why I love her."

Playing the accordion, he said, has become second nature.

"It's like drinking water," he said. "I know the accordion nail by nail. I can play anything that I play on the other instruments on it."

Today, 11 years after his death, his music lives on in the interpretations by younger, more media-savvy groups and social media. And just as Don Lupito plunks his quarters to play him at El Mante, he is also played in others. He would have liked to know that 35 years after he first played the unrecorded version of the song on his accordion, young conjunto fans in the Rio Grande Valley and nationwide still play his music. 

(Notes: Lowriders in Chicano Culture: From Low to Slow to Show By Charles M. Tatum

Introducing the Master of the Squeeze Play, Juan Montoya, Saginaw News, October 25, 1986)