13/05/2025
Johnny Rodriguez, whose run of chart-topping hits in the 1970s made him the first Latino country artist to achieve mainstream success, died Friday, May 9. He was seventy-three.
Born Juan Raul Davis Rodriguez and raised in the small town of Sabinal, Texas, sixty miles west of San Antonio, he grew up hearing Spanish-language music as well as many kinds of country music. During a troubled period of his youth, Rodriguez wound up in jail, where a Texas Ranger overheard him singing and connected him with a performing gig at the tourist attraction Alamo Village.
Future Country Music Hall of Famers Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare discovered Rodriguez on seeing a performance at Alamo Village. Hall not only recruited Rodriguez as a guitarist in 1972 but also got him an audition at his label, Mercury Records. Mercury released his first single, “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through),” in October 1972, and it became a Top Ten country hit. He followed it with a string of successful recordings that showed him to be an expressive, warm vocalist in the hard-country style of Merle Haggard. Between 1973 and 1975, Rodriguez scored six country including “You Always Come Back (To Hurting Me),” “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” and a version of the Lefty Frizzell and Wh**ey Shafer chestnut “That’s the Way Love Goes.” He scored additional Top Ten singles through the early 1980s, frequently alternating lyrics sung in both English and Spanish in his bread-and-butter honky-tonk songs and love ballads.
Rodriguez continued to record and tour for many years after he stopped having radio hits, though he also faced legal troubles and struggled with addiction. In 1999, he stood trial for murder after shooting and killing an acquaintance he believed to be a burglar, though he was ultimately acquitted of wrongdoing. Rodriguez’s most recent album was 2012’s “Live from Texas,” and he also appeared in the 2019 Ken Burns documentary series “Country Music.”
