{"id":5856,"date":"2025-07-26T08:15:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5856"},"modified":"2025-07-26T09:16:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T13:16:25","slug":"besos-y-copas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/besos-y-copas\/","title":{"rendered":"Besos y Copas (Victor Cordero)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Besos y copas (Victor Cordero)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S-z178m0Jyk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I learned &#8220;Besos y copas&#8221; from the soundtrack album to <em>Chulas Fronteras<\/em>, Les Blank&#8217;s documentary about norte\u00f1o music, which I&#8217;m pretty sure I owned before seeing the film. It was performed by Chavela Ortiz, a fine singer and accordion player, who fronted the <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5859 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?resize=285%2C283&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"285\" height=\"283\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?w=353&amp;ssl=1 353w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?resize=300%2C297&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Chavela-Ortiz-e1752187362926.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 285px) 100vw, 285px\" \/>San Jose, California, group\u00a0Brown Express and was married to <span class=\"x1lliihq x1plvlek xryxfnj x1n2onr6 x1ji0vk5 x18bv5gf xi7mnp6 x193iq5w xeuugli x1fj9vlw x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x1i0vuye xjohtrz xo1l8bm xp07o12 x1yc453h xat24cr xdj266r\" dir=\"auto\">Eduardo Hernandez of Los Tigres del Norte. She only made a few recordings before dying in a freak accident, bucked off a horse during a photo shoot, and that&#8217;s pretty much all I know about her, though I loved the way she did this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The lyric is classic ranchera, the lament of a man whose lover is leaving him:<\/p>\n<p><em>Perdona si te haya molestado<br \/>\nLa voz de un hombre honrado que jur\u00f3 no volver.<br \/>\nBesos y copas he pagado, ya todo ha terminado,<br \/>\nNo hay nada que perder.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>(Forgive me if you have been bothered by the voice of an honorable man who swore never to return. I have paid kisses and drinks, now it is all finished, there is nothing more to lose.)<\/p>\n<p>Until I started researching this post, I had no idea it was written by Victor Cordero, one of the greatest corrido composers of the 20th century and the main influence on Paulino Vargas, Julian Garza, and many of the later masters I wrote about in <em>Narcocorrido.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5860\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Victor-Cordero.jpg?resize=150%2C196&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"196\" \/>Cordero was born in 1914 and grew up during the years of the Mexican Revolution &#8212; he told a story of trying to run off and join Pancho Villa at age seven, confronting the legendary hero and asking for a horse and a gun before being found and dragged home by his aunt, and of Villa commending him, saying, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry, ma&#8217;am, your son has such valor that he will surely become a great Mexican.&#8221; (Along with writing songs, Cordero produced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacm.org.mx\/Informa\/Biografia\/08149\">a lushly entertaining autobiography<\/a> for the Mexican Society of Authors and Composers, which I recommend to anyone who can read Spanish.)<\/p>\n<p>Cordero&#8217;s corridos include the classics &#8220;Juan Charrasqueado,&#8221; &#8220;Gabino Barrera,&#8221; and &#8220;El ojo de vidrio,&#8221; as well as such later topical oddities as\u00a0 a <i>Corrido al Che Guevara<\/i> and <i>Corrido de Elvis Presley<\/i>. He also wrote all kinds of other songs &#8212; his own list of genres included &#8220;ranchero, bolero, huapango, tropical, chotis, vals, polka, cumbia, paso doble, danz\u00f3n, tango, pasillo, cha-cha-ch\u00e1, jocoso, moruno, danza, go-g\u00f3 y los estilos colombiano, franc\u00e9s, espa\u00f1ol, italiano y aut\u00f3ctono,&#8221; and\u00a0 in the 1960s, when most composers of his generation were bemoaning the arrival of rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll, he was inspired by &#8220;el cuarteto m\u00e1s grande de todos los tiempos: Los Beatles,&#8221; and wrote a series of trendy rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll songs&#8230; none of them particularly memorable, but proving he was a pro to the end.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway&#8230; I&#8217;ve generally followed the rule of playing these songs as I remembered them, and not re-listening to refresh my memory, but in this case after I&#8217;d been practicing for a week or so, my wife, Sandrine, got it stuck in her head and I wanted her to hear Chavela&#8217;s version, so put it on and was struck by the way Chavela filled the spaces between each line with accordion fills, apparently improvised and extended as the mood suited her. So I started fooling around with a loosely similar approach, and although the result doesn&#8217;t sound anything like what she did, it&#8217;s a lot of fun to play.<\/p>\n<p>As for what she did, here&#8217;s the clip from\u00a0<em>Chulas Fronteras<\/em>. I strongly recommend checking out the rest of the film, which is full of great music, and I wish she had stuck around to do a lot more. (Incidentally, while looking for this clip, I found that the most popular version of this song online is by Jenni Rivera, another favorite performer of mine who died too young.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Chavela Ortiz &amp; Brown Express - Besos Y Copas En Vivo\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FrVVxdkOmYY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learned &#8220;Besos y copas&#8221; from the soundtrack album to Chulas Fronteras, Les Blank&#8217;s documentary about norte\u00f1o music, which I&#8217;m pretty sure I owned before seeing the film. It was performed by Chavela Ortiz, a fine singer and accordion player, who fronted the San Jose, California, group\u00a0Brown Express and was married to Eduardo Hernandez of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/besos-y-copas\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Besos y Copas (Victor Cordero)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - 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They wouldn't let me across the border without a bus ticket\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Flaco-Jimenez-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1579,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lonesome-7-7203\/","url_meta":{"origin":5856,"position":1},"title":"Lonesome 7-7203 (resisting and singing country)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Growing up where I grew up, when I grew up, I had no understanding or appreciation for country and western music. That may seem strange to a lot of younger music fans, who think of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard as \"Americana,\" along with the Carter Family, and bluegrass, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"18 king-size country hits","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/18-king-size-country-hits.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5865,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/aimee-mcpherson\/","url_meta":{"origin":5856,"position":2},"title":"Aimee McPherson","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 19, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been seeing reviews of a new biography of Aimee Semple McPherson, and they reminded me of this comic ballad, which I hadn't thought about in years, or maybe decades... so I tried to sing it, found I still knew all the words, and here it is. I learned it\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Carmel-Cottage.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Carmel-Cottage.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Carmel-Cottage.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Carmel-Cottage.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":800,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/omie-wise\/","url_meta":{"origin":5856,"position":3},"title":"Omie Wise (Doc Watson\/the murder)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another I got from Doc Watson's first LP, this murder ballad was apparently widespread through much of the South, but Doc seems to have learned it directly from local sources. The murder took place in 1808, in Deep River, North Carolina, and Doc gave the basic story in his songbook:\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Doc-Watson-by-river.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1920,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/leave-pretty-mama\/","url_meta":{"origin":5856,"position":4},"title":"If You Leave Me Pretty Mama (Germany\/Austria)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This was the one Van Ronk original on Dave's first album, and another song I'd brought to Europe on cassette. I don't remember where I took the time to figure out the guitar part, but in my memory it is forever linked to my first performance at a rock festival.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Les Brown LP","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Les-Brown-LP-300x294.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1387,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mamies-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5856,"position":5},"title":"Mamie&#8217;s Blues (219 Blues)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In his notes to this song, Dave Van Ronk wrote, \"Jelly Roll Morton, certainly the greatest jazz composer before Ellington and a singer of incredible subtlety claimed to have invented jazz in 1902. There is little point in argument.\" This was one of Morton's most subtle efforts, and one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BasinSt.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5856"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5877,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions\/5877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}