Los Lobos: How the Wolves Survived : For 20 years, they’ve kept their back-yard charm while developing into something far greater than ‘just another band from East L.A.’

This week, Slash Records releases a boxed CD set commemorating the 20th anniversary of Los Lobos. This recollection of their early days is by the co-producer of their first recording, “Just Another Band From East L.A.,” selections from which appear on the CD collection.

Today, Los Lobos are internationally acclaimed--and with good reason. They are uniquely talented and widely popular with audiences and critics.

Their talent and perseverance have made them among the most highly regarded pop-music groups in the United States and beyond. In a subtle, understated way, they are “stars.” But it wasn’t like that 20 years ago . . .

In the beginning, Louie Perez, David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano played for a case of beer and a few bucks to put gas in the van. And they played anywhere: barrio barbecues complete with a goat roasting in a mesquite-fired pit, back-yard birthday parties, weddings and quinceaneras-- those coming-out celebrations for young Latinas entering adulthood.

Very soon, these young East L.A. musicians were demanding to be paid two cases. And it escalated quickly.

Today, Los Lobos pack large venues. But something of the back-yard performance ambiance persists in their concerts and personas. Among other things, they are links between one generation and the next. Continuity. Raices. But they are about discovery and innovation, too. They’ve traveled a long way from East L.A. garage bands to traditional Mexican folk music to the sophistication of their last studio effort, “Kiko.” Among Chicanos (especially if you’re from anywhere near East L.A.), they are a national treasure.

And the remarkable thing is, to those who wouldn’t know a chicharron from a chavala, the guys and their transcendent talent strike a chord deep inside anyway. Audiences in all places, from all places, somehow relate. Good music is good music.

Thinking back on it 20 years after Los Lobos began, there are lots of special moments. We hung out, shared beers. But beyond that, I found myself a fly on the wall at certain pivotal events--big and small--of their journey.

The ‘Mexican Radio’

On the East Side of L.A., where there were sometimes little signs in the windows of restaurants that read “English Spoken Here,” we all knew “those songs.”

Our parents, or maybe our grandparents, were from Mexico, but we were born here. Certainly we didn’t think of it in these terms some 30 years ago, but we were the living embodiment of the distillation of two worlds and cultures.

Some of us knew those songs because our mothers listened to Elenita Salinas every early morning in bright yellow kitchens while it was still dark outside, as black as Bustelo coffee. On KWKW, Elenita dispensed chatty advice--a bit like a mexicana Dear Abby. And she flooded the day with music--the songs we grew up with, just as our antepasados did. The sounds of the “Mexican radio” wafted through the warm room while our mothers made sandwiches for lunch and we sat at the table eating avena and drinking either Chocolate Ibarra or Nestle’s Quik.

And the guys who would become Los Lobos were among those who heard the songs in that way. Or in the evenings, listening to hefty Admiral phonographs. Mostly on 33 1/3 LPs, but some 78s too. The music washed over us without our knowing it, and yet it filtered down into us, distilled and settled in deep recesses of our beings.

Only these particular four young Chicanos somehow had a certain gift that allowed them eventually to mine those experiences in order to make some pretty damn memorable music themselves one day.

Birth of ‘The Wolves’

Even most dyed-in-the-wool fans don’t know this, but when the band first formed in the early 1970s, they called themselves Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, which means “The Wolves From East Los Angeles.”

There used to be a raw norteno band called Los Lobos del Norte. Norteno music, as the name suggests, is from Northern Mexico--along the U.S. border. It is polka-based, gritty, working-class dance music--sort of the C&W; of Mexico. It’s the less risque parent of today’s banda music.

Since those norteno guys were the wolves of the north, then these disheveled, long-haired Chicanos would be the wolves of the East--L.A., that is.

They had all played in garage bands while attending Garfield High School and had been working on “trying to sound just like the record”--stuff they heard on 93 KHJ and then-Top 40 “color radio” KFWB.

Then, around 1975, they put down their electric guitars, picked up acoustic instruments and started fiddling with Mexican folk music. At first gradually, then with more earnestness.

There was actually a fifth Lobo then, and it wasn’t former Blasters sax wizard Steve Berlin, who hopped aboard several years later. It was a talented guy named Frank Gonzalez, who was probably the loudest voice urging the group to learn and reinterpret the traditional music of Mexico. It has been some time since the band parted ways with Gonzalez (who now lives and performs in the Santa Barbara area), but the seed was planted partly because of him.

It was pretty mind-boggling back in the early ‘70s to see these scruffy, hippie-looking Chicanos playing guitarrones, vihuelas and jarocho requintos , and performing the songs of their ancestors. But they did it with a distinctly different, somewhat contemporary tinge--carrying on a legacy of music, but reinventing it as well.

Like a classic ’57 Chevy that’s been restored, the inherent integrity is maintained, but with a little filigree in the paint job just to make it different. And better.

Dashing for Cash

The guys became spectacularly proficient with the folk music of Mexico right away.

Word spread on the East Side and at every college where a Chicano was enrolled. They played every Cinco de Mayo-connected gig between 1975-80, it seemed, and they were becoming something of a cultural phenomenon.

One of the guys coined the phrase “the dash for cash.” They would play at the UCLA Chicano students’ celebration at noon, then at Plaza de la Raza on the East Side at 3 p.m., then the Salesian Boys Club at 5, then at the International Institute at 7, then the Variety Arts Center at 10, and finally at Magon’s Restaurant and all-around chisme hangout at midnight as a favor to a guy named “Bugs.”

The guys would pray that they could avoid a flat tire or a busted water hose on Cesar’s green-and-ochre van (they called it “green and ogre”).

And so it went during Cinco de Mayo “season,” which actually lasted the entire month of May. The wolves used to live off the profits of “the dash” for months.

The Abuelito and the Nieto

There was one particular summer night in the mid-’70s. The guys had played a late afternoon back-yard gig, probably for not much more than gas money. But certainly all the mole and carnitas they could eat. And all the beer they could drink.

Anyway, it was a quinceanera , or maybe just a birthday party, in an East Side back yard.

Dust mixed with the sunset several brews into the night. The family was relaxing, recovering from the frenzy of the party. There was a white-haired man who was 70 or maybe even 80. And a little kid was there, too. Might have been the abuelito’s grandson. One thing was certain: They were bookends of generations.

Dave Hidalgo had just recently taught himself to play the violin in less than two months. And he was fiddling away on a huasteco passage that just grabs you by the innards. Something that’s lyrical yet haunting--like laughing and crying at the same time.

The abuelito soaked it in and smiled with the satisfying sense of recollection. The boy, on the other hand, absorbed it with a sense of discovery. They both were into it, in different ways, for different reasons. But the root impression and impulse was the same: “This is good. This is a part of me. I like it.”

That’s the essence of the wolves and their music, whether it’s acoustic or whether they plug the electric guitars back in. No le hace.

The Yellow Album

While in our 20s, a group of us had just started making documentaries and little industrial films, for which we needed soundtracks.

A homey of mine named Rudy Vargas had heard the Wolves play and knew one or two of them casually. I telephoned Louie Perez and we ended up using the band for the soundtracks. And we became friends.

That’s how a tiny community of filmmakers came into contact with these scruffy guys who had voices like Miguel Aceves Mejia and guitar licks evocative of the Trio Los Panchos--men who were high in the pantheon of Mexican music gods.

A few of us put together a shaky little production group. Living grant to grant, it was hardly a Fortune 500 company. But it was a focal point. Some of us decided to ask the Wolves if they’d be interested in recording an actual album. The goal was to use it as a calling card for the guys. Something tangible that would help them get gigs, spread the word of their talent and--ideally and ultimately--to help them land a contract with a “real” record company.

They said, “Hell, yeah!”

One of my partners, David Sandoval, scrounged and scraped and begged and borrowed and was able to come up with some dough for the project. It was probably enough money to buy a new Toyota and it was a fair chunk of change to us back then. What did any of us know about producing records? Next to nothing. And maybe not even that much. But after doing a bit of homework, we all said, “Vamonos.”

An LP emerged in 1978. The yellow jacket boasted the title: “Just Another Band From East L.A.” It was done totally independently and recorded on “down time” at studios so the cost could be slashed. Everything was done on a shoestring, but with decent quality. It was released on our own “label.” New Vista Records the jacket proclaimed proudly. It actually made some money. More importantly, the LP got around, as did word of the guys’ special talent.

On the album is indisputably the most exquisite and eloquent version of the Mexican bolero classic “Sabor a Mi” ever recorded.

Sorry about that, Eydie Gorme.

Oh, yeah. People outside the neighborhood couldn’t possibly know about this. But it’s a curiosity that came with growing up Chicano. At one point, starting from the ‘60s and continuing even until today, almost every Chicano or Mexicano household had a copy of a particular record album. The distinctive blue jacket featured a photo of a stylishly coiffed woman. It was Eydie Gorme, yeah of Steve-and-Eydie.

But on this album she was teamed with the mero mero of romantic bolero music--the Trio Los Panchos. And on the album Eydie belts ‘em out en espanol. And does a superb job of it, too. The piece de resistance on the album was “Sabor a Mi.” Most Chicanos probably learned that song not from Pedro Infante or Vicente Fernandez or any other all-star Mexicano musician, but from Eydie. And her rendition is great. But the Wolves’ version really kills. It’s time-capsule stuff. The total feel is one of tradition, but not of cobwebs or imitation. Only those guys at that particular intersect in the time/space continuum could have done it that way.

And the yellow album served its purpose. It brought the guys to the attention of folks in El Big Time Recording Industry. You might say the Beatles had their white album, but Los Lobos had their yellow one. Just try to get that collector’s item today. It’ll surely cost you more than a case of beer.

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the band was playing every gig humanly possible to play. More people began to listen and more and more were outside the circle of L.A.’s East Side. Among others, Los Lobos caught the ears of the Blasters, who already had a solid following, the respect of critics and the approval of the industry. The Blasters invited the guys to open for them one night at the Whisky.

It rained that night, some 13 years ago. Inside, it was a hurricane of adulation and hoarse-throated cheering from the West Side crowd for a “new” band. But the band wasn’t new at all. It was just that a wider audience had discovered what a few of us from the East Side had been privileged to have already encountered and greatly appreciated: four supremely talented Chicanos who were destined to knock out the music world--from Australia to Zimbabwe. Things fast-forwarded from that night and soon enough they had a contract with Slash/Warner Bros. Records.

The guys certainly weren’t just another band from East L.A.