ARHOOLIE FOUNDATION COLLECTIONS:Manuel Peña Collection

In his research late Dr. Manuel Peña (1942 – 2019) conducted many interviews with musicians and others involved in the Tejano music industry. The interviews on this website were originally recorded for research purposes only, and are presented here in their raw state, unedited except to remove some irrelevant sections and blank spaces. They were often recorded in conditions adverse to obtaining good audio quality and often using very basic recording equipment.

All rights to the interviews are reserved by Manuel Peña. Please do not use anything from this website without permission.

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Armando Marroquín Interview – Tejano

Armando Marroquín will always be known as the man who founded the tejano recording industry. A native of Alice, Texas, where he spent his entire life, Marroquín was born in 1912, and he died in 1990.

Audio Interviews

share: [feather_share] Luis Acosta Interviewed by Chris Strachwitz Date: May 19, 1974 Language: English Instrument maker, A&R man in San Antonio in the 1930s. Moses...

Balde Gonzalez Interview

Baldemar (Balde) González was born on May 30, 1928, in Beeville, Texas. Sightless since birth, he attended the school for the blind in Austin, Texas, where he learned to play piano, clarinet and saxophone.

Cameron Randle Interview – Tejano

Former Vice-President and General Manager of the Texas branch of Arista Records talks with Manuel Peña about the Tejano Music Industry.

Don Tosti Interview

Edmundo Martínez Tostado, whose stage name became Don Tosti, was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1923. He exhibited musical talent at an early age, and by his twelfth birthday he was playing violin with a local group, La Orquesta Muro.

Isidro Lopez Interview

Isidro López, “El Indio,” was born in Bishop, Texas, in 1933. He began playing tenor saxophone when he entered Miller High School in nearby Corpus Christi, an instrument he also played during the one year he attended A & I College in Kingsville.

Lalo Guerrero Interview 1989

Lalo Guerrero was without a doubt the most prolific musician-composer that Mexican America has ever produced. In his long and illustrious career, which spanned from the 1930s to the 2000s, Guerrero visited almost every musical genre circulating in the Hispanic Southwest.