Los Lobos
Los Lobos was founded in 1973 by David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Louie Perez and Conrad Lozano, who met as students at Garfield High
School in East L.A. They became a popular fixture in East L.A. playing prolifically at barrio restaurants, parties and weddings.
In 1977 the band released Just Another Band From East L.A. an LP of traditional material. Los Lobos made their first fateful foray outside their home base in May of 1980, when they got an opening slot at the local debut of Public Image Ltd at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown L.A. The punk rockers in the crowd were unprepared for the sight of four longhaired Hispanics performing acoustic folk songs and pelted the band with everything they could lay their hands on.
Ironically in 1982, Los Lobos were signed to Slash Records founded by L.A.'s punk-rock house organ Slash Magazine.
An EP, And A Time To Dance, recorded with Steve Berlin now on board as a member, was released in 1983 with a prophetic cover of Ritchie Valens’ Come On Let's Go and the traditional two-step Anselma. The latter song put Los Lobos on the national map in 1984 when it received a Grammy Award. Their Slash albums How Will The Wolf Survive? (1984) and By The Light Of The Moon (1987) reached the national top 50 and topped critics year-end lists. They toured nationally and abroad, and their concerts at L.A.'s Greek Theater became an annual summertime event that found punk rockers and East L.A. homeboys dancing in the aisles side-by-side.
In 1987, Los Lobos found unprecedented commercial success after director Luis Valdez asked the band to supply the soundtrack for "La Bamba," his feature about the life and tragic death of Ritchie Valens. The film became a box-office smash and the soundtrack album was an even bigger hit, selling two million copies. The Lobos’ version of the title track reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hit 100 Singles chart (trumping Valens’ original, which only went as high as No. 22 in 1958.)
In 1988, the band returned to the foundations of their music with La Pistola y El Corazón, an album of acoustic traditional music which won the group a second Grammy Award. In 1990, they released the all-electric album The Neighborhood, which summed up their major musical and thematic concerns.
In 1992, Los Lobos rose to new musical challenges with the release of Kiko. The album took their music into head-spinning new sonic realms. This style deepened and widened on 1996's Colossal Head. By the time that album was released, Los Lobos had contributed to the movie scores of such major Hollywood productions as Desperado (resulting in a third Grammy), From Dusk 'Til Dawn, The Mambo Kings, and Feeling Minnesota.
In 1999, Los Lobos continued to stake out fresh creative territory both as a band and in outside projects. They again defied expectations. If anything, they upped the artistic ante on their Hollywood Records debut This Time, its bilingual track Cumbia Raza found this extraordinary band forging an altogether unique and prescient music for a new musical millennium.
Los Lobos also greeted the new century with a 4CD box set from Rhino Records, El Cancionero—Mas y Mas: A History of the Band From East L.A. Los Lobos returned to the studio and began the next chapter in the Los Lobos story with the release of Good Morning, Aztlán in 2002. The band who has famously not changed their line-up in nearly three decades, invited musicians to join them in the studio for The Ride. It was followed a few months later by Ride This: The Covers EP where the band repaid their guests by giving their songs the Los Lobos treatment. They toured non-stop in support of both albums and celebrating their 30th anniversary as a band. Their latest Hollywood Records release The Town And The City uses music built on the blues, rockabilly, jazz, Latin and their own Mexican- American heritage.