to try to be pretty English boys. It seemed to me we would be closer to the Negro than to the English, because Mexicans had suffered more, been subjugated, and were not as white. I kept pushing the band into rhythm and blues material. Years later in his book, Blue Suede Huaraches, The History of Mexican Rock 'n' Roll, Federico Arana ("El Monstruo") gave me credit for helping change the group into a "heavier" band.
With the members of Los Sinners calling me a deserter and a traitor, I joined Javier Batiz, who was playing the kind of music I liked, also at the Plein Soleil.
One night during a break, this American guy comes up and tells me he's a drummer with a hot new blues band in Los Angeles named Canned Heat. It was the first time I'd heard of them. His name was Frank Cook.
"Hey, you guys are really great. I never expected a Mexican band to play R&B so well. Mind if I sit in?"
Of course I didn't mind. Allowing visitors to sit in with your band is a common gesture of friendship and respect among musicians. I let Frank jam with Javier and the band on a Jimmy Reed song called "Big Boss Man." He was obviously unfamiliar with the tune and didn't do well. Javier--the dean of the Tijuana Graduate School of Rock Music--demanded top quality in his backup and angrily told me to get back on the drums.
Later that night, Frank asked me to help him find some weed, which I did, even though I didn't smoke it then. To be hospitable I showed him and his wife Myrna to a few clubs around town. I told him how much I loved playing in the States and hoped to return. He gave me his number and told me that if I ever got back to Los Angeles, he would help me. I treasured that number. He was my only real professional musician contact in the U.S.
In spite of my untimely deportation from the States and the distance between us, my relationship with Sonja continued to flourish. On December 20, 1966, the straitlaced Sonja and I married in Mexico City, but the omens for family harmony were not good. Sonja's mother hated Catholics, Mexicans and musicians--in that order. After our honeymoon in Acapulco, Sonja returned to the U.S. to finish her degree and wait for me to join her in California.
Around the same time, Tony married Karen, the Sensational Queen of Watusi and also decided to come to the States with me.
While our U.S. residency papers were being processed, we joined a black group from San Francisco playing in Mexico City. They had a singer named Wally Cox, who sang like James Brown and a saxophone player Snookie Flowers, who later became part of Janis Joplin's Kosmic Blues Band. Their drummer was excellent, but he was either drugged out or crazy so they canned him and hired me.
I was back learning rhythm and blues from people who knew the music. We performed in two of Mexico City's best-known nightclubs, Terraza Casino and Los Globos. Also featured was the legendary Cuban singer Celia Cruz with the original Sonora Matancera. I would lose myself watching them perform. I was barely 20 and felt privileged to be alternating with such superb musicians.
In February 1967, 14 months after being thrown out of the States, I set off with Tony by train for the border to join our new wives in America. Our families were in tears, waving good-bye.
"I know you are never coming back," said my dear grandmother Pilar.
She was right. Oh, I went back often enough, but as an outsider returning for visits, and eventually as an American citizen, a foreigner. That was the last time I experienced the all-embracing warmth of my family's unconditional love as an insider. There in that train station, I yanked out my own roots. From then on, I was going to have to deal with life on my own. I looked forward to the adventures. I didn't know then what a high price I'd pay for them.
When the train arrived in the border town of Mexicali, Sonja was on the platform, looking radiant in a white blouse and pink shorts. As we toted our bags out of the station, she led me up to an old blue Plymouth Valiant.
"How do you like our wedding present from my mom?"
"A car? That's great. And I have my drum kit and $500."
"And we have each other. Welcome to America, Fito."
I got a big long kiss. It was a sweet re-entry to the land of the gods, with all gratitude to my American wife.
Because we didn't have any money, Sonja had to continue to live in the dorm at school, so she asked her best friend's lover, a black philosophy teacher, if I could crash at his house until she graduated.
I bought a drum instruction manual, and while Sonja worked in the college cafeteria, I would spend the day practicing my paradilles, flams, rata ma cues and other exercises. I still wasn't what you would call a formally trained drummer. I just played the way I felt, but about as close to the instruction book as I could interpret it.
Every evening Sonja would come to my little room. With a big grin, she would show me the food she brought me from the college cafeteria. We lived mostly on milk, tiny boxes of Cheerios and love.
One weekend we called Frank Cook and arranged to see him at his condo in Marina Del Rey. He started telling me again what a great band he was in, this Canned Heat, the best in the world. I got interested and wanted to see the Topanga Corral where the group was playing, because it had become such a famous spot in the fast-growing hippie scene, which was so closely tied to the music world. It was more than 100 miles of freeway from our place in Redlands to the mouth of Topanga Canyon, and then another 15 minutes on a twisting two-lane road up into the mountains, the lights of the San Fernando Valley twinkling in our rear view mirror, before we found the Corral in a dark hollow.
I was not impressed. It was a filthy, ramshackle wooden barn lost in the sagebrush hills. The floor was covered with sawdust and the place was full of hippies, most of whom looked like clouds of dirty hair held up by skinny, blue denim bellbottoms. I didn't know that this was becoming a center for the whole L.A. hippie music scene, a hangout for the psychedelic elite, the funky frontier. But I had played the Daisy, and PJs, so I damn well knew what American chic looked like. Hell, I had been in the house band at the Farmhouse, which was desert rustic, but it had more class than this.
It looked like Cook's band was going to be as far short of his brags as he was. I didn't expect much from the evening. I was as wrong as I could be. From the first notes of "Got My Mojo Working," I knew that these guys were a whole new world. They had a great bass player--it was Larry Taylor's first night with them--and the combination of musicians that night was dynamic, with a real feel for the blues.
I sat there with Sonja, entranced, envious, trying to keep my hands from drumming obnoxiously on the table. I kept waiting for Frank to ask me to sit in. I had given him a shot with Javier's band in Mexico City. When we do that, the expected thing is to return the courtesy when the other musician shows up in your joint. He knew I knew the songs--this band was playing blues numbers he had heard me play with Javier.
After the set, we joined Frank and his wife at their table. I waited a while, but there was no invitation, just small talk. This was one of the greatest bands I had ever heard and I really wanted to jam with them. Finally, I just came right out and asked. With Sonja prompting me through my still broken English: "Hey, man, you mind if I sit in for a number?"
"No, we don't do that in this country. We couldn't let somebody sit in or jam on a job because it could create problems with the owner," Frank said.
I sat there trying to keep a smile on my face while I felt like I had been slapped. They don't let musicians sit in for a jam in the United States? Hell, this is where that practice was invented. It goes back to the roots of jazz. Did he think we were so stupid in Mexico that we didn't know that? Did he think I had never played in the United States, never talked to American musicians?
