Music
Wasted Days
Freddy Fender has a world-class voice—and a long history of stubbornness. That’s why San Benito’s favorite son has to keep starting over.
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If Freddy really likes chaos, the next decade-plus must have seemed like one long field day. After getting out of prison, he took a bus to Houston, got roaring drunk, and the next day rode the rest of the way to San Benito with a renewed familiarity with hangovers. He took a job as a handyman at a tejano record company, but he couldn’t perform because as a parolee he was banned from bars; when authorities caught him playing at a club in Mexico, he was ordered to finish his parole in Louisiana. After his parole was up, he began working on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street with local stars such as Joe Barry, and by 1969 he was back in the Valley, where he worked days as a mechanic and a welder and made music on the weekends. Before, during, and after his stint in prison, Freddy recorded whenever he could with whomever he could. He had even cut a pair of albums behind bars. “I’ve prostituted myself tremendously,” he says now with a grimace. “I must have recorded ‘Wasted Days’ twenty times.”
In 1971, after doing his own version of “Wasted Days,” Doug Sahm invited Freddy to Austin for a series of revelatory club dates, and Freddy’s reputation grew. Around the same time, Freddy began working with Houston producer Huey P. Meaux on what he thought would be the swaying Gulf Coast R&B both men helped pioneer. But Meaux had other ideas, and after trying several styles of music, he eventually coaxed Freddy into cutting a bilingual version of a devotional country ballad called “Before the Next Teardrop Falls.” Freddy hated the song—and country in general—but luckily he gave in: The tune went gold and became the Country Music Association’s single of the year. Freddy learned to like country music and began practically living on the road.
The next phase of Freddy’s career was pretty much defined by his drinking and drugging. From January 1975 to the end of 1977, Freddy had twelve straight Top 20 country hits, nine of them in the Top 10, four reaching number one—yet after that, he never climbed higher than number thirteen. “I finally had enough money to get into the heavy stuff, like cocaine,” he recalls, grinning. “I had done it a little bit, but being without money, I couldn’t afford enough to get hooked on it. I began to get real dark. But the main problem was drinking. I had to drink a lot because if I didn’t, I’d have the shakes real bad.” His health problems were exacerbated by his lifelong battle with diabetes, which left him constantly fatigued. Worst of all, Freddy began to fight about money with Meaux, who was his manager as well as his producer. His stardom during that period, he says today, left him $60,000 in debt to the Internal Revenue Service.
Finally, in 1983, he and Meaux parted ways over their financial disputes and Freddy’s drinking. That year, his final single, “Chokin’ Kind,” withered at number 87, and he spun out of control. His last gig was in the spring on “one of those cruiser Love Boats,” he remembers. “They threw my ass out of the boat because I was messing up drunk. We were somewhere near Nassau, and they put me in a little boat like Captain Bligh and sent me away.”
With his career stalled, his debts piling up, and his marriage in jeapordy, he rehabbed in August 1985; this time it stuck. And after smoking nearly three packs a day for 36 years, he finally quit (one reason why The Voice has never been better). But even as he was regaining control of his life, he couldn’t win back his record deal—too many people in the business had come to distrust him, and country was turning into a young man’s game. As Freddy himself puts it, “If you’re not recording, you’re not gonna be promoted. Basically speaking, I was dead.”
The Texas Tornados appeared to be his way out. In concert, Freddy was usually in demand to sing the most songs of the four stars, and it was precisely the R&B-rock-country combo he cherished. But the group has never sold as well as its reputation would suggest; country radio has ignored the singles on which Freddy sings lead and his oldies-flavored R&B and rock have never found the right format. While the Tornados have a great industry buzz and can do no wrong in their home state, in the rest of the world, they are merely cult heroes. Meanwhile, Freddy remains completely detached from the dreaded managers and agents who could do something for his solo aspirations. “Those kinds of people frighten me,” he insists.
And that’s where matters rest, if “rest” is the proper word. As ever, Freddy is keeping busy. From October 12 to October 14 he’ll be back in San Benito for the second annual Freddy Fender HomeFest, which raises money for college scholarships in Willacy, Cameron, and Hidalgo counties. (Last year, one of the streets he grew up on was renamed for him.) He’s still working as much as he wants on the road—with his salt-and-pepper hair and gaudy custom-tailored Western suits, he cuts quite the figure on stage—though he could undoubtedly command a higher fee and open up new avenues if he broke down and got a booking agent. He’s drawing income from the King of Tex-Mex picante sauce developed by Vangie, which has been picked up by several statewide supermarket and convenience-store chains, and he has launched a line of prepackaged Mexican-style cheeses. He has also written a couple of film scripts set in the Valley that he’s trying to get produced.
When he’s not working, he and Vangie happily pad around their house in Corpus Christi (they have two grown sons, a grown daughter, and a teenage daughter who still lives at home). “Vangie and I are doing things as a team now,” he says. “I would always try to hide what I did from her, but not anymore.” Freddy also likes to tinker with his pair of antique Triumphs, and he goes for long rides on his Harley-Davidson to do some serious thinking.
Lately, of course, that thinking is about when he’ll be in the studio next. Always partial to the proverbial bird in the hand, he’ll continue to seek one-shot deals in lieu of that elusive long-term contract. “If I don’t wind up recording for Antone’s, I’ll record for someone else,” he says with a shrug. Arista/Texas still wants Freddy to record; Antone’s still wants Freddy to record; Freddy still wants Freddy to record. But it isn’t happening. Somehow, it never quite happens.
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