photo courtesy Clay Shorkey, Texas Music Museum (1911-1992) Birthplace: Reynosa, Tamaulipas Genre: Conjunto Influenced: all later conjunto performers, Bruno Villareal to Flaco Jimenez Band Affiliations: duo with Almeida (bajo sexto); accompanist with Carmen y Laura and Lydia Mendoza Other Sites:

Narciso Martinez established a tradition of conjunto that endures to this day, playing a distinctive style of accordion accompanied by the bajo sexto twelve-string guitar. Although his first recordings date to the mid-thirties, his playing influenced scores of other musicians throughout Texas and the Southwest in a career that spanned six decades.

Narciso Martinez, the son of migrant farm laborers, was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in 1911, but his parents moved across the border the same year. The Mexican orquestas of the Valley of his childhood consisted of violin, flute, bass, and guitar, but wandering solo musicians also entertained on the accordion. In 1928 Martinez took up the accordion and began playing at dances to support the family he had just started with his wife, Edwina. About the same time his wanderings brought him into contact with the local German and Czech accordion traditions and Martinez absorbed some of their techniques and specialty dances, such as the schottische and the redowa. In 1935 he acquired a new two-row button accordion and a partner, bajo sexto player Santiago Almeida. He also began to play in a new style, concentrating on the melody and leaving the bass line to the bajo sexto.

The team's first great success was a record for the Bluebird label, "La Chicharronera," which has remained a standard of the conjunto repertory. Before World War II Martinez had recorded scores of songs, including "La Parrita" and "Los Coyotes." After the interruption of the war, Martinez resumed recording in 1946 with Ideal, the first Tejano recording company. He accompanied many of the label's singers, including Carmen y Laura, sisters who were to become the most popular Tejano singers of their day. He became known as "El Huracan del Valle" (the Hurricane of the Valley), a reference to his swift playing. But his audience of poor Mexican Americans could not support him just through the sale of records, so Martinez also served as a caretaker at the Brownsville Zoo. He toured on the dancehall circuit until the mid-1960s throughout the Southwest and as far away as Chicago before retiring from the road.

In 1976 the documentary film Chulas Fronteras gave him proper credit for his pioneering role, in 1982 he was inducted into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fane, and in 1985 a scholarly history of Conjunto style brought him critical attention. Arhoolie Records' 1989 rerelease of some of his music elicited a Grammy nomination. In the meantime, Martinez retired from the Brownsville Zoo in 1977, and enjoyed a new and larger audience in semi-retirement until his death in June, 1992.