Chicano Rock Will Add Spice to Holiday Fiesta : Music: Cannibal & the Headhunters, who pioneered the East L.A. sound of the ‘60s, will be at Mile Square park tonight.

Los Angeles has been the host city to as many musical movements as just about any burg in the world, and the history of that scene has been exhaustively reported and recorded.

But East L.A., with its colorful Latino culture and cross-pollination of rhythms and melodies, was the birthplace of one of the most vigorous and interesting, if most underappreciated, sub-genres in rock ‘n’ roll: Chicano rock.

Ritchie Valens was the first Chicano rocker to come to popular recognition, and through his “La Bamba” biopic of a few years ago, he remains the best known.

But an explosion of Chicano rock groups from East L.A. in the mid-’60s now seems all but forgotten by everyone except the locals who populated the scene and a few hard-core archivists.

Even the otherwise comprehensive “Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” with its 96 chapters and 700 pages, ignores what was once a vital era in L.A. music.

Cannibal & the Headhunters, through its 1965 recording of “Land of 1000 Dances,” was perhaps the leading light in the East L.A. scene. The song, written by New Orleans stalwarts Chris Kenner and Fats Domino and originally recorded in 1963 by Kenner, became one of the true standards of rock ‘n’ roll: Wilson Pickett scored his biggest career hit with the song, taking it into the Top 10 in 1966.

But Cannibal & the Headhunters beat Pickett to the “naaa-na-na-na-naaa” punch with a recording that peaked in Billboard at No. 30, more than a year before Pickett’s.

The original Cannibal, Frankie Garcia, quit performing some time ago, but his stage name has been appropriated by Eddie Serrano, who, along with brothers Bobby and Joe Jaramillo, were the original Headhunters.

Serrano, 47, is the only member of the original group in the current lineup, which appears tonight at Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley as a featured attraction of the city’s 11th annual Fourth of July Fiesta.

“It was a lot of fun in those days,” Serrano said in a recent phone interview. “It was great. There’d be dances every weekend, and we’d hit three or four dance halls a night. There was the Big Union, the Little Union, Kennedy Hall, the Paramount Ballroom, the CYO in East L.A. . . .

“You went around from dance to dance, did your half-hour, packed up your stuff and went on to the next room,” he said. “You’d pass a lot of people on the way--one band would be heading in while the other was heading out. The Premiers, Thee Midnighters, Little Ray & the Progressions, the Blendells, the Romancers--there were a lot of groups running around there.

“Before the (“Land of 1000 Dances”) record hit, we were just one of those bands, hanging around. It was a battle-of-the-bands kind of thing. Whenever you played onstage with another band, it was always to see who was gonna be better.”

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Cannibal and company, originally just a group of friends who sang together for fun, officially became a performing unit in early 1964. Eddie Davis, who owned the small Rampart and Pharaoh record labels, heard Garcia sing “Land of 1000 Dances,” and wanted to cut a record of it.

“We weren’t really a group until Eddie heard Frankie sing,” Serrano said. “He really got the group together. He also produced the Premiers and the Blendells. He’s the only white man who went into East L.A. and got talent out of there.”

As for the group’s menacing handle, Serrano laughed shyly while explaining the origin.

“ ‘Cannibal’ was Frankie’s placa (street name),” he said. “His older brother was Big Cannibal, and he was Little Cannibal. The Headhunters were from the Hazard area--they were, ah, a social group.

“We were the kind of people who were raised in the neighborhood. None of the guys were really into any heavy gang activity, but you couldn’t help being around it. Cannibal was from Primera Flats, the Jaramillo brothers were from Hazard, and I was from East Side Clover.”

The sound of East L.A. was black soul music strained through Chicano musical roots. Latin rhythm, melodic phrasing and vocal inflection crossed with proto-punk energy levels made the East L.A. sound an easily identifiable groove.

“A lot of people have tried to categorize what Chicano music sounded like when it came out,” Serrano said. “It started out as soul and came out as Mexican soul or R & B. There was definitely an East L.A. sound at the time--you couldn’t mistake it.

“There’s always been a group to represent the Chicano. The Premiers, the Blendells, us, Ruben & the Jets, El Chicano, Santana. There’s never been a whole bunch of us, but always at least one group doing something.

“I guess Los Lobos have done the best,” Serrano added, pausing for a thought. “Part of that is they never left their basic roots of, you know, Chicano sound.

“I’ll tell you a story about Los Lobos. One time, we were doing a show with them at Club Lingerie, right? And there was a table of about 10 white people there, and there’s this one couple telling everyone, ‘Wait until you hear this group. They’re called Los Lobos, and they play the best salsa music!’

“I just cracked up. ‘Salsa’--they really thought it was salsa. That’s the conception: Every Chicano band is either a salsa band or a mariachi band. They had no idea what it’s all about.”

* Cannibal & the Headhunters perform tonight at 7 and 8:15 at the 11th annual Fourth of July Fiesta at Mile Square Park, Heil Avenue and Brookhurst Street in Fountain Valley. Also featured are the Justice Band and Smokin’ Armadillos, as well as carnival rides and a fireworks display. $5.95. (714) 668-0542.