Vicente Fernández, the powerful tenor whose songs of love, loss and patriotism inspired by life in rural Mexico endeared him to generations of fans when “El Rey”, the king of traditional ranchera music, died on Sunday morning. He was 81.
His death was announced in a post on his official Instagram account, which gave no cause or where he died. According to previous reports from the account, he was in the hospital for months after a spinal cord injury he sustained in August.
Accompanied by his mariachi band, Mr. Fernández ranchera music, which emerged from the ranches of Mexico in the 1800s, to the rest of Latin America and beyond. In his signature charro outfit and intricately embroidered sombrero, a celebration of the genre’s rural origins, he performed in some of the largest venues in the world.
He recorded dozens of albums and hundreds of songs over a six-decade career. His enduring popularity has been reflected in a series of industry accolades, including a place in the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Grammy Awards and eight Latin Grammy Awards. He sold tens of millions of copies of his albums and starred in dozens of movies.
He was known for giving epic hour-long concerts, communicating directly with his fans, and taking sips from the bottles of alcohol offered to him. Known fondly as “Chente,” he told his audience that “as long as you keep clapping, your ‘Chente’ won’t stop singing.”
Reviewing a 1995 performance at Radio City Music Hall for DailyExpertNews, Jon Pareles wrote that Mr. Fernández “sang with operatic power and melodrama”, bending his “fiery tenor” to “wonderful crescendos and a vibrato that on the Richter scale.”
He continued to give marathon performances well into his 70s. At a concert at Madison Square Garden in 2008, Mr. Fernández in court for three hours. A lingering tone in his “vibrant, if slightly weathered tenor” could silence the audience, wrote Jon Caramanica in his review in The Times.
Vicente Fernández was born on February 17, 1940, in Huentitán El Alto, Jalisco state in west-central Mexico. His father, Ramón Fernández, was a farmer and his mother, Paula Gómez de Fernández, stayed at home to raise their son.
He grew up watching matinee movies with Mexican ranchera singer Pedro Infante, an early influence. When he was 8, he got his first guitar and started studying folk music. He left school in fifth grade and later moved to Tijuana with his family after their cattle farm collapsed. He told The Los Angeles Times in 1999 that he took everything he could, laying rocks and polishing shoes, and even washing dishes.
“I’ve always said that I didn’t get where I am by being a great singer, but by being stubborn, by being tenacious, by being stubborn,” said Mr. Fernandez.
He went to a public square in Guadalajara called Mariachi Plaza, where he performed for tips, he told The Los Angeles Times. His career took off after he won a competition called La Calandria Musical at the age of 19, he said in a 2010 interview with KENS 5 of San Antonio. He moved to Mexico City, where he sang in a restaurant and at weddings, and pitched unsuccessfully to local record labels.
The labels called shortly after the 1966 death of Javier Solís, one of the most popular Mexican singers who specialized in bolero and ranchera music. Fernández went on to record his first albums, including hits like “Volver, Volver,” which took him to a level of fame he never imagined, he told KENS 5. Other hits, including “El Rey” and “Lástima que seas ‘ ajena”, would follow.
“When I started my career I always had the confidence that I would someday make it, but I never thought I would reach the heights the public has placed me at,” said Mr. Fernández.
His public statements occasionally got him into trouble in his later years, such as when he said in a 2019 interview that he had refused a liver transplant because he feared the donated organ could have come from a homosexual or drug addict. . Earlier this year, he apologized after being seen in a video touching a female fan’s chest without her permission as they posed for a photo.
Fernández married María del Refugio Abarca Villaseñor in 1963. She outlives him, as do the couple’s children, Vicente, Gerardo, Alejandra, and Alejandro, a Grammy-nominated ranchera performer.
When asked if a routine or practice was the key to his longevity as an artist, Mr. Fernández told KENS that he walked and rode horses for an hour every day when he was home at his ranch. But when he was on tour, he said, “I’m not leaving the hotels.”
“Still, that keeps me healthy,” he said. “My voice is well equipped. When I hear the applause from the audience, I don’t know where the voice is coming from, but it does it for three hours. You’ll have to ask God to find out how he blesses me every time.”
