Jose Alfredo Jimenez looked much older due to the effects of alcohol.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAlthough he spent much of his life with longtime wife Paloma Galvez (they had 2 children), towards the end of his life he also married a young Alicia Juarez who was still a teenager. He actually never divorced Paloma, as he married Alicia in the United States where she lived, more as a formality to appease her parents. In between these two women, he had plenty of other relationships, several of which (including his wives) inspired many of his songs.<\/p>\n
The creative genius of Jose Alfredo Jimenez was not confined only to songwriting, as he was also an avid joke teller, many of them of his own creation.<\/p>\n
But it was another of his passions; his love for alcohol, that brought him to an early end. As with his other passions, he also wrote songs with alcohol as its theme, like “Llego Borracho el Borracho<\/em>“, which brought him a fair share of criticism for idolizing the vice of drinking. And so, with liver cirrhosis consuming his life, he appeared in the famous Mexican TV show “Siempre en Domingo<\/em>” an evening in 1973 to sing his last song “Gracias<\/em>“, with which he showed his appreciation and said his farewell to the public that worshiped him as much as his songs.<\/p>\nThe death of Jose Alfredo Jimenez closed one of the richest chapters in Mexican music history. A singer-songwriter that, perhaps because of his musical illiteracy, was able to write simple poetic songs that reached the essential humanity in all of us!<\/p>\n
Juan Gabriel on Part2:<\/h3>\n In the 2nd part of this blog series on Ranchera Icons, I explore how Juan Gabriel picks up where Jose Alfredo left off.<\/p>\n
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Mexican Ranchera music has enjoyed great popularity for the last half-century, in large part due to the contributions of two artists; Jose Alfredo Jimenez and Juan Gabriel. Between them, they have written over 2,000 songs, and some of them (or perhaps I should say many of them) have become standards of the Mexican songbook. Two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1127],"tags":[990,263,991,25,265],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Latin Music History: Ranchera Icons Part 1 - Jose Alfredo Jimenez - Latino Music Cafe<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n