View Full Version : Freddy Fender diagnosed with incurable cancer
Freddy Fender diagnosed with incurable cancer
69-year old, three-time Grammy winner says ‘I’ve had a good run’
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Musician Freddy Fender has incurable cancer, discovered after tumors were found on his lungs, and his wife said they are “hoping for a miracle.”
“I feel very comfortable in my life,” Fender told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for a story published Wednesday. “I’m one year away from 70 and I’ve had a good run. I really believe I’m OK. In my mind and in my heart, I feel OK. I cannot complain that I haven’t lived long enough, but I’d like to live longer.”
Fender started his career in the late 1950s and hit the charts with “Before The Next Teardrop Falls,” “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” and “You’ll Lose A Good Thing.” He has won three Grammy Awards, the most recent in 2002.
He was to have surgery in early January to remove the upper left lobe of his lung because of a fungal infection, but surgeons found two large tumors and left the lobe intact.
Fender underwent chemotherapy in late January but stopped because of its side effects. A scan later found nine more tumors.
He was resting at his home in Corpus Christi, said Vangie Huerta, his wife and manager, adding that she did not ask doctors to estimate how long he might live.
Fender, who has canceled all performances, has decided to resume chemotherapy at a lower dosage.
“We can prolong his life with medication or chemo, but it’s not a cure,” his wife said.
Fender received a kidney from his daughter in 2002 and a liver transplant in 2004. He has had problems with diabetes and hepatitis C.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14159181
I don't kow about him but I feel sorry for him. That kind of cancer is terrible is very bad, and if it's incurable the worst. But like many people can save their lifes even though they have an incurable cancer, maybe he can get well of this bad sick.
Fender moved to San Antonio hospital
, Associated Press
Article Last Updated:10/06/2006 01:54:24 PM PDT
Musician Freddy Fender, who has been receiving treatment for cancer in Oklahoma, was transferred to a hospital in San Antonio because of a blood infection, friends and relatives said.
Fender, 69, was flown late Wednesday from the Cancer Treatment Centers of America Southwestern Regional Medical Center in Tulsa, Okla., to a specialist at University Hospital in San Antonio for treatment, his daughter, Tammy Huerta Mallini, told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said her father will eventually return to Oklahoma.
"We wanted to make sure he was strong and alert before he received any chemotherapy or radiation because that could heal him," she said.
Fender started his career in the late 1950s and hit the charts with "Before The Next Teardrop Falls," "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and "You'll Lose A Good Thing." He has won three Grammy Awards, the most recent in 2002.
He was to have surgery in early January to remove the upper left lobe of his lung because of a fungal infection, but surgeons found two large tumors and left the lobe intact. A scan later found nine more tumors.
He received a kidney from his daughter in 2002 and a liver transplant in 2004. He has had problems with diabetes and hepatitis C.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/music/ci_4452322
Thanks for the new updating.
cftennisnative3
10-09-2006, 10:01pm
Ah, that's sad. I hope he recovers :(
canoilers
10-10-2006, 7:56am
Thats too bad and I wish him and his family the best.
vidaurri
10-12-2006, 2:58am
sad news indeed...what a lousy deal....he says he has had a good run though.i sure remember him and his cowboy outfits back in the day. thanks for bein part of our memories freddie!!!
gg
SevenUp!
10-12-2006, 3:17am
So sad when things like this happen. :(
Freddy Fender Discharged From Hospital
By Associated Press
October 12, 2006, 5:11 PM EDT
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Freddy Fender has been discharged from a hospital and was resting at his South Texas home Thursday, but family and friends said the Grammy-winning musician remained gravely ill.
Fender, 69, had been getting treatment for cancer in Oklahoma but was transferred to a hospital in San Antonio last week because of a blood infection.
He's not doing too good," said his wife, Vangie Huerta. "It's kind of like -- we just got back yesterday and it's kind of breaking us."
Ron Rogers, who has acted as a spokesman for Fender, said the musician had talked about making a public statement but hadn't been able to yet.
"Of course he's ill, gravely ill, and he's at home resting," he said.
Born Baldemar Huerta in 1937, Fender has won three Grammies, the most recent in 2002. He started his career in the late 1950s and hit the charts with "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and "You'll Lose a Good Thing."
He was to have surgery in January to remove the upper left lobe of his lung because of a fungal infection, but surgeons found two large tumors and left the lobe intact. Doctors last month told Fender the cancer had spread from his left lung to his body.
Fender, who has had problems with diabetes and hepatitis C, received a kidney from his daughter in 2002 and a liver transplant in 2004.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/wire/sns-ap-people-freddy-fender,0,5953956.story?coll=sns-ap-music-headlines
Singer Freddy Fender dies at 69
Star hit No. 1 on country charts with ‘Last Teardrop,’ ‘Wasted Days’
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Freddy Fender, the "Bebop Kid" of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," died Saturday. He was 69.
Fender, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2006, died at noon at his Corpus Christi home with his family at his bedside, said Ron Rogers, a family spokesman.
Over the years, he grappled with drug and alcohol abuse, was treated for diabetes and underwent a kidney transplant.
Fender hit it big in 1975 after some regional success, years of struggling — and a stint in prison — when "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" climbed to No. 1 on the pop and country charts.
"Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" rose to No. 1 on the country chart and top 10 on the pop chart that same year, while "Secret Love" and "You'll Lose a Good Thing" also hit No. 1 in the country charts.
Born Baldemar Huerta, Fender was proud of his Mexican-American heritage and frequently sung verses or whole songs in Spanish. "Teardrop" had a verse in Spanish.
"Whenever I run into prejudice," he told The Washington Post in 1977, "I smile and feel sorry for them, and I say to myself, `There's one more argument for birth control.'"
‘The Old Man upstairs rolled a seven on me’
"The Old Man upstairs rolled a seven on me," he told The Associated Press in 1975. "I hope he keeps it up."
More recently, he played with Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez and others in two Tex-Mex all-star combos, the Texas Tornados and Los Super Seven.
He won a Grammy of Best Latin Pop Album in 2002 for "La Musica de Baldemar Huerta." He also shared in two Grammys: with the Texas Tornados, which won in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for "Soy de San Luis," and with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for "Los Super Seven."
Among his other achievements, Fender appeared in the 1987 motion picture "The Milagro Beanfield War," directed by Robert Redford.
In February 1999, Fender was awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame after then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush wrote to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce endorsing him.
He said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press that one thing would make his musical career complete — induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
Mexican-American in ‘Hillbilly Heaven’?
"Hopefully I'll be the first Mexican-American going into Hillbilly Heaven," he said.
Fender was born in 1937 in San Benito, the South Texas border town credited for spawning the Mexican-polka sound of conjunto. The son of migrant workers who did his own share of picking crops, he also was exposed to the blues sung by blacks alongside the Mexicans in the fields.
Always a performer, he sang on the radio as a boy and won contests for his singing — one prize included a tub full of about $10 worth of food.
But his career really began in the late '50s, when he returned from serving in the Marines and recorded Spanish-language versions of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and Harry Belafonte's "Jamaica Farewell." The recordings were hits in Mexico and South America.
He signed with Imperial Records in 1959, renaming himself "Fender" after the brand of his electric guitar, "Freddy" because it sounded good with Fender.
Fender initially recorded "Wasted Days" in 1960. But his career was put on hold shortly after that when he and his bass player ended up spending almost three years in prison in Angola, La., for marijuana possession.
After prison came a few years in New Orleans and a then an everyday life taking college classes, working as a mechanic and playing an occasional local gig. He once said he sang in bars so dingy he performed with his eyes shut "dreaming I was on `The Ed Sullivan Show.'"
"I felt there's no great American dream for this ex-Chicano migrant farm worker," he told the AP. "I'd picked too many crops and too many strings."
A second break
But his second break came when he was persuaded to record "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" on an independent label in 1974 and it was picked up by a major label. With its success, he won the Academy of Country Music's best new artist award in 1975. He re-released "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and it climbed to the top of the charts as well.
Cristina Balli, spokeswoman for the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito, said Fender illustrated the diversity of Mexican-American and Latino musicians.
"We have our feet in different worlds and different cultures," she said. "We have our roots music ... but then we branch out to other things, pick up different styles. I think he was the precursor to Los Lonely Boys."
Fender's later years were marred by health problems resulting in a kidney transplant from his daughter, Marla Huerta Garcia, in January 2002 and a liver transplant in 2004. Fender was to have lung surgery in early 2006 until surgeons found tumors.
"I feel very comfortable in my life," Fender told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in August. "I'm one year away from 70 and I've had a good run. I really believe I'm OK. In my mind and in my heart, I feel OK. I cannot complain that I haven't lived long enough, but I'd like to live longer."
Rogers said Fender will be brought back to San Benito for a funeral and memorial services. Details on the arrangements were pending.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15264334/
Freddy Fender
June 4, 1937 - October 14, 2006
Colourful recording singer in the Tex-Mex style who became a Grammy-winning mainstream success
FREDDY FENDER was one of the most successful musicians to emerge from the large Mexican community resident in the United States. Born and bred in Texas, he sang and played in the hybrid roots style particular to the region known as Tex-Mex or Tejano, but he also crossed over to enjoy success with both country and rock’n’roll audiences.
A colourful character, whose non-musical achievements included a stretch in prison and a degree in sociology, he began his recording career singing Spanish versions of Elvis Presley songs in the 1950s. Yet it was not until 1975 that he tasted real success, when he enjoyed a No 1 hit with Before The Next Teardrop Falls. His characteristically overwrought vocal style brought him further solo hits and in more recent years he was a leading member of back-to-the-roots Tex-Mex groups, the Texas Tornados and Los Super Seven.
Born Baldemar Huerta in 1937 in San Benito, Texas, in the Rio Grande valley, his parents were migrant Mexican farm workers. He began working in the fields himself at the age of 10, and later described an early life in which he “worked beets in Michigan, pickles in Ohio, baled hay and picked tomatoes in Indiana . . . when that was over it was cotton- picking time in Arkansas”.
He learnt to play the guitar at an early age, copying the blues, country and Mexican records that he heard on the radio and which would later coalesce into his own unique hybrid style. At 16, he joined the US Marine Corps but three years later was discharged for “bad conduct” — a judgment that 35 years later he succeeded in having revoked. After his discharge, he returned to southern Texas where he played in bars and honky-tonks and built a strong following in the Mexican community, performing rockabilly versions of popular rock’n’roll hits in Spanish.
His local popularity led to his first recording in 1957, a Spanish version of Presley’s Don’t Be Cruel. It was followed by a Latino version of Harry Belafonte’s Jamaica Farewell and both records became hits among the Hispanic communities on both sides of the border. After moving to California in 1959 he recorded his first version of Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, although the song would not be a national hit for another 17 years.
It was around this time that he adopted the stage name by which he would eventually become well known. “I had a gringo manager and started recording in English,” he explained many years later. “Since I was playing a Fender guitar and amplifer, I changed my name to Freddy Fender.”
The immigrant clubs that were his bread and butter were rough-and-tumble places, and a fight in one venue left him with a broken nose and a knife wound in his neck. Worse was to follow when an arrest for possession of marijuana in 1960 led to two and a half years in Angola State Prison, Louisiana. While in jail, he recorded a number of songs on a tape recorder, which would subsequently be released on an album, but when he was paroled in 1963, it was made a condition that he stay away from music. Despite this, he took up a residency in a club called Papa Joe’s on Bourbon Street, New Orleans. By the late 1960s, however, he was back in San Benito, working as a garage mechanic and studying at night for a degree in sociology, with the intention of using the qualification to help other ex-convicts.
In 1974 he returned to recording when producer Huey P. Meaux, who had previously had a big hit with the Sir Douglas Quintet’s She’s About A Mover, took him into a Houston studio to cut the heart-jerking ballad, Before The Next Teardrop Falls. Sung in Fender’s trademark quivering tenor and with one verse delivered in Spanish, it was initially released locally on Meaux’s own Crazy Cajun label. By the following year it had been picked up by ABC for national distribution and topped both the American country and pop charts.
A string of further big hits followed, including Secret Love, Vaya con Dios, You’ll Lose a Good Thing and a rather good remake of Wasted Days and Wasted Nights. However, after waiting so long for success, when it came Fender did not handle fame and attention well. As he sunk into drug and alcohol dependency the hits dried up and in 1985, at his wife’s insistence, he entered a rehabilitation clinic.
When he had recovered, he had a brief fling at an acting career, playing a corrupt mayor in Robert Reford’s 1988 film, The Milagro Beanfield War. Then in 1990, he joined The Texas Tornados, a Tex-Mex supergroup that also included Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers from the Sir Douglas Quintet and the virtuoso accordionist Flaco Jiminez.
Their self-titled debut album, sung in both English and Spanish, was a classic, mixing Mexican, rock, blues, country and R’n’B styles into an intoxicating roots stew. Three further albums followed before Fender, Sahm and Jiminez joined forces in 1998 with Joe Ely and members of Los Lobos to form Los Super Seven, whose self-titled debut album won a Grammy award.
He subsequently resumed his solo career and won another Grammy in 2002 for Best Latin Pop Album with La Música de Baldemar Huerta, before illness intervened. In 2002 he underwent a kidney transplant with an organ donated by his daughter. Two years later he underwent a liver transplant and subsequently had lung cancer diagnosed.
Freddy Fender, singer, was born on June 4, 1937. He died on October 14, 2006, aged 69.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2405378,00.html
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