Rosie Flores

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosie Flores (2008)

Rosie Flores (born September 10, 1950 , according to other information September 15, 1955 in San Antonio , Texas ) is a rockabilly and country artist. Their music combines rockabilly, honky tonk , jazz and western swing with traditional influences from their Tex-Mex heritage. She currently lives in Nashville , Tennessee .

Life

Rosie Flores was born in San Antonio, Texas. There are different statements about the date of birth; the website country.de presented in an article the information September 15, 1955 as the most likely. She came into contact with the music styles popular in South Texas - Tex-Mex, Rock 'n' Roll and Country - early on. At the age of six she was already practicing chords on the guitar with her brother . The weekly TV music show American Bandstand was decisive for their musical taste . Her teenage favorites were Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee ; later came the Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens , Tammy Wynette and Creedence Clearwater Revival . When she was twelve, the family moved to San Diego , Southern California . The popular art of pop music also found her interest in the new place of residence - in addition to country, especially country rock , rockabilly, blues , surf and garage rock .

Rosie Flores founded her first band when she was a teenager: Penelope's Children. The rapid entry into the Californian music scene was made possible, among other things, by the non-material and material support of her family. In the late 1960s, for example, she was able to buy equipment worth several thousand dollars - an investment that, in retrospect, Flores said, her father was willingly made. The rockabilly singer Janis Martin , who had her great success in the late 1950s , soon became her great role model . In the wake of the punk wave in the late 1970s, Flores founded the formation Rosie & The Screamers, with whom she switched to hard country and rockabilly. Her name soon rose to prominence in the Los Angeles country scene . For a while she worked as a solo artist with acoustically performed pieces. In addition, she completed appearances in the opening act of well-known artists such as Joe Ely and Bo Diddley . In 1984 an all women punk band, the Screaming Sirens, was founded, which was stylistically versed in a mixture of punk and rockabilly and with whom she released the album Fiesta .

From the mid-1980s, alternative country slowly established itself as a new trend in the country market. Rosie Flores was part of the New Traditionalist scene, a sub-direction from which Dwight Yoakam and Los Lobos emerged . In 1987 she released her first album on Reprise Records , a Warner Bros. sub-label . The producer was Pete Anderson, who also produced Dwight Yoakam. In terms of style, Rosie Flores mainly contained country and Tex-Mex pieces. The publication received recognition from the music scene. However, the album was not commercially successful, so Reprise did not renew the contract with Flores. Part of the reason for the failure was, among other things, a lack of airplay and the fact that the country music industry was reluctant to embrace contemporary, rock music- compatible interpretations.

In the late 1980s, Rosie Flores moved to Austin , Texas. Flores became an integral part of the local old country scene and was soon able to hire more famous musicians such as Junior Brown and Terry McBride for their backing bands. She also found a suitable label for her - Hightone Records, on which her next three albums were released. In terms of sound, the two albums After the Farm (1992) and Once More with Feeling (1993) were kept in a harder, rockabilly style. Rockabilly Filly followed in 1995 - an album that was conceived as a reference to the music of her youth. The album, which in addition to rockabilly and honky-tonk numbers also contained slow ballads in a moderate acoustic sound, featured two songs sung in a duet with Flores' role models Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin. The album resulted in a cross-country tour with Wanda Jackson that had not performed for twenty years.

Their old record company Reprise Records reacted to the level of awareness they had in the meantime. Enriched with bonus material, she brought the debut under the title Honky Tonk Reprise onto the market. Rosie Flores released the album A Little Bit of Heartache on the Austiner label Watermelon Records - a duet project with Ray Campi . Another label change followed in the late 1990s - this time to the manufacturer Rounder Records, which specializes in folk releases . In 1999 Rounder Records released the live album Dance Hall Dreams . With when recording was pedal steel and - slide guitar -Musikerin Cindy Cash dollars. The producer was Ray Kennedy , who had worked with well-known alternative country artists such as Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams . Lyrically the songs dealt with personal things like the death of Flores' father. Others were homages, for example to the legendary rockabilly label Sun Records or Barroom Music Halls .

At the end of the 1990s, Rosie Flores relocated the center of her life again - away from Austin and towards Nashville. The move went on piece by piece and dragged on over several years. In 2001 another album was released - Speed ​​of Sounds . Among other things, it contained a cover version of the Buck Owens classic Hot Dog . Single Rose from 2004, on the other hand, was an acoustic release in which Flores presented a cross-section of her oeuvre . Girl of the Century followed in 2009 - an anniversary album for her two decades long music career. Musically in the rockabilly style, the release also contained a cover version of the well-known Johnny Cash title Get Rhythm . Was taken Girl of the Century with John Langford of the Mekons and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. The new distribution company was Bloodshot Records, an alternative country savvy label . The follow-up work Working Girl's Guitar was also released there in 2012 - an album combining different roots rock styles, for which Rosie Flores created all production and guitar sets herself.

Around the same time as the production of Working Girl's Guitar , Rosie Flores published a post-mortem album with previously unreleased pieces by her role model Janis Martin. In 2007, Flores persuaded Martin to go back to the studio and record a set of songs. She herself acted as a producer . As problems subsequently arose in finding a label for this release, Flores started a crowdfunding campaign via the web portal Kickstarter.com and raised more than 16,000 US dollars for pre-financing by 2011. The album, entitled The Blanco Sessions , was released on Cow Island Music in 2012.

Style and media coverage

Rosie Flores herself describes rockabilly as her primary style of music. She did both country and rock. In her opinion, however, rockabilly brought these two genres together in an ideal way. Flores: “I was amazed by the energy and look of rockabilly, so I switched to this style.” Sound-wise, she thinks she is a guitar freak. She loves the Hellcasters, old Chet Atkins recordings and those from the Yardbirds . The current favorite, according to her in an interview in 2013, is a Trussart SteeltopCaster. Her car turned out to be the ideal place for developing new musical ideas . For this reason, it is equipped with the necessary audio equipment.

She told the story of how she came across Janis Martin as a role model in the interview quoted as follows: “I was really into rockabilly and I was at a show in San Francisco where I saw a band called Levi and the Rockats . I was talking to a girl who was standing next to me and she asked, 'What songs do you do - do you cover any old classics?' I said, 'Yeah, I'll do a few - Eddie Cochran , Wanda Jackson, and some of the Annette Brothers.' She said, 'This is cool. Are you doing anything for Janis Martin? ' I said, 'By whom?' And she said, 'If you don't know Janis Martin, you don't know anything about rockabilly' and then she left. So I went and bought your record and became a fan from that day on. "

The rockabilly website rockabilly.net viewed the country music industry's dealings with new artists like Rosie Flores in the mid-1980s as a wasted opportunity for the industry. Nashville largely overslept the alternative country trend in the 1980s and thus missed the opportunity to address a young, hip audience with acts like Steve Earle, Kevin Welch , kd lang and Lyle Lovett - and to build up Flores as an artist on an equal footing with George Strait and Reba McEntire . Conclusion of the article: “Flores has always played a variety of roots music styles: rockabilly, western swing, honky-tonk shuffles, blues, zydeco , acoustic folk , Tex-Mex waltz and conjunto - they are all in theirs Music present. "

Discography

Albums

  • 1987: Rosie Flores
  • 1992: After the Farm
  • 1993: Once More with Feeling
  • 1995: Rockabilly Filly
  • 1997: A Little Bit of Heartache (with Ray Campi )
  • 1999: Dance Hall Dreams
  • 2001: Speed ​​of Sound
  • 2004: Single Rose
  • 2004: Bandera Highway
  • 2005: Christmasville
  • 2009: Girl of the Century
  • 2012: Working Girl's Guitar
  • 2012: After The Farm & Once More With Feeling
  • 2019: Simple Case Of The Blues

Singles and EPs

  • 1982: Hit City LA / Oh Heartache
  • 1986: I'm Walkin '/ The End Of The World
  • 1987: Heart Beats To A Different Drum / Somebody Loses, Somebody Wins
  • 1987: Crying Over You / Midnight To Moonlight
  • 1987: Somebody Loses, Somebody Wins
  • 1988: He Cares / One Track Memory
  • 1989: Ronnie Mack - Brand New Heartache

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The information on September 10, 1950 is listed in the English language Wikipedia. The information from September 15, 1955 is taken: What happened to you? - Rosie Flores , Manfred Vogel, country.de, September 18, 2012
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Rosie Flores , James Manheim, biography text at allmusic.com, accessed on November 1, 2017 (engl.)
  3. ↑ a b c d What became of them? - Rosie Flores , Manfred Vogel, country.de, September 18, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Interview: Rosie Flores - Rockabilly Road Doggie , Joe Charupakorn, premierguitar.com, January 9, 2013 (Eng.)
  5. ↑ a b Rosie Flores , biography text on the Bloodshot Records website, accessed November 1, 2017
  6. ↑ a b c Spirited LA singer looks to settle in Nashville , Michael McCall, rockabilly.net, July 8, 1999 (engl.)
  7. ↑ “Rockabilly Filly” Rosie Flores Makes Janis Martin's Sweet Dreams Come True , Georgianne Nienaber, Huffington Post, March 10, 2012 (Eng.)

Web links

Commons : Rosie Flores  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Flores, Rosie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American rockabilly and country singer
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1950 or September 15, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH San Antonio , Texas