From
George Jones
' and
Conway Twitty
's early
rockabilly
sides to
Jerry Jeff Walker
's psychedelic
folk-rock
experiments with
Circus Maximus
, more than a few
country
acts have
rock & roll
skeletons in their closets, and
Freddy Fender
was no exception -- the main difference being that
Fender
was a teenage Texas rocker living in a Hispanic community along the Mexican border, and cut his earliest records en Espanol. Recording under his given name,
Baldemar Huerta
,
earned the nickname El Bebop Kid for his frantic early singles, and in 1961, hoping to make a few extra bucks on the side,
and his band cut an album called
Rock 'n Roll
under the alias
Eddie con los Shades
. Drawing as much from
R&B
as the
sounds that were still making the rounds in Texas at the time,
Eddie con los Shades: Rock 'n Roll
sounds a bit prescient of the
garage rock
sounds that would be all the rage three or four years down the line, though with less grit and a decided
Latin
undertow.
doesn't get much of a chance to show off the luxuriously weepy vocal style that would make him a Nashville star in the mid-'70s, but as a rocker he sounds solid and light on his feet, and if his guitar work isn't always virtuoso stuff, there's a minimalist
Carl Perkins
-style attack in his sharp, meaty solos that sounds both tough and lithe. Not quite the great lost
album,
still proves he was serious about his
, and served it up with style and passion. ~ Mark Deming