May 12, 1985-San Antonio Express-News

Rodarte plays blues San Antonio style

It is sometimes very dangerous to sit with a musician on a bench at Brackenridge Park

It is dangerous when the musician is that wild, crazy Jalapeño saxophonist "el numero uno" Frank Rodarte, and, while he is regaling you with stories of his youth, you are being bombarded by cooing birds.

Might just be that those who ply their talents via song are in cahoots with one another.

Whatever the case, the moment was enjoyable, even though we got wrenched necks from both having to dodge those artful crooners way up in the trees. The price that some of us must pay in order to write!

A visit with Frank Rodarte is well worth the price, and his words reflect the sensibility of his music.

Rodarte has traveled much in the course of his music-making. He began his career at 14 and by the following year was the leader of the Dell-Kings, a '50s oriented rhythm and blues group.

A few years passed. He graduatued from Central Catholic High School in 1960, and he then took the band on the road with intermitten stops in San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento. From there, it was a record setting 280 week engagement at the Casbar Lounge at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Along with those engagements, the once newest and youngest member of the Dell-Kings, the Jalapeño jazzman changed the name of his group to Los Blues in 1972 and landed them a recording contract with United Artists Records for "Los Blues: Volume 1."

"Musicians devoted more time, more feeling and more heart and soul to their music," he said. "Today's music is more gimmick oriented."

So many of today's songs are negative," Frank continued. "Their lyrics are destructive. Songs that shout out kill all the children, children are no good can hurt the very young when they hear them."

East Side

Frank was born in San Antonio, and he was raised in the heart of the East Side - a "ghetto" upbringing that gave him an indepth knowledge and appreciation of the blues, rhythm and blues and early rock and roll.

Additionally, he attended school in what was mostly an Anglo environment, and his earliest contact socially was with a non-Mexicano "musical" world of sounds and symbols.

"I play blues and American music, but have a lot of trouble playing Mexican music," the Jalapeño music-maker said, "and I love Mariachis and get sad and p--d when I cannot sing Mariachi music. Love it a lot, listen to it all the time, but cannot sing it.

"I love country and sing it all the time, as well as being able to play other music I love a lot, like jazz, R & B, and early rock.

Brother's sax

An older brother left home for the service and left his saxophone behind. When Frank decided to play with his school band, his mother suggested that he take up the saxophone.

He did and went as far as taking one formal lesson. He enjoyed the instrument but did not at all relish learning to read music. The music was in his senses already; so Frank quit any formal instruction and began playing by ear.

Frank joined the Dell-Kings and was able to pay for his school costs through his earnings. He was a professional at 15, a youth who had absorbed his ambiance and its symbols.

His was a world of music with a human message, songs that spoke of love, pain and the possibility of living through the hurt in order to love again, to be wholesome and not cynical.

Influences

Many great black musicians inspired him, gave him a sense of beauty and meaning, and he responded by bonding himself to their sounds. He also learned about the inequalities in the recording industry.

"Little Richard is the king of rock and roll," Frank said, "but he got ripped off, just as Bo Diddly was. So many great black musicians were ripped off."

"Artists had very little knowledge of the recording industry," he continued, "and they were ripped off. That is why others like Bill Halley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis - to name a few - made it big on the backs of blacks. The recording companies bought the right to songs and then built up white musicians on a staple of black music."

"The 1980s are a different world, one where black artists command respect and big money, the same will be true of Latino - Chicano, Puerto Rican - artists," he continued.

New album

To a great extent, Frank Rodarte has retained the feeling of his music and within a month will realease an 11-song album of R & B, blues, jazz and country that is powerful, yet entertaining and danceable. The idiom and intonation of that period are there.

It's title is to the point: "Frank Rodarte Plays Some of Your Favorites--San Antonio Style!" He is backgrounded by the Alamo All-Stars, an array of some of the best musicians in the area.

The album is earthy at times, and the songs take one back to another era, to an innocence that spoke of intimacy as an expression of belief, joy and the promise of life being a resolvable equation that could deliver an enjoyable sense of life to anyone.

The preview cassette recording is rich in its tone. It runs much of the gamut of the music that made the 1950s a remembrance that still dances in our minds, Frank Rodarte has paid ample tribute to those musicians of our youth.

He has also made a transcultural statement that will be loved by those who enjoy diversity and musical richness, who appreciate the idiom of jazz, R & B, and the travail and realization of human love.