Freddy Fender & Flaco Jimenez – Dos Amigos
It’s difficult to re-create the songs of your youth without coming across as revisionist or overly reverent, but Dos Amigos finds Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez utterly relaxed and a trifle competitive on versions of tunes they heard on the radio and in cantinas a half-century ago.
Producers Michael and Ron Morales wisely restrict the instrumentation to the classic conjunto lineup of accordion, drums and bajo sexto, so while songs such as “Cuatro Vidas” and “Los Ojos Negros” sound like they could have sprung from some collective unconscious, the music itself is sharp and even a little funky.
Their approach is illustrated by the opener, Juan Gaytan’s “Dos Palomas Al Volar”, on which well-placed drumrolls and Jimenez’s deceptively simple accordion commentary combine for a rollicking and intensely swinging performance that makes explicit the connection between conjunto and, say, the forro of northeastern Brazil.
Jimenez’s playing throughout Dos Amigos is superb, restrained and amazingly inventive; a virtuoso of tone and phrasing, he dominates the proceedings without overpowering the songs. When Fender and Jimenez answer each other’s phrases on Gaytan’s tale of sweet memory, “La Borradita”, they almost convince you that the gray-green-eyed girl of the title is right there in the room with them and they’re vying for her attention.
Dos Amigos demonstrates that you can be ruminative and still have something to prove. Maybe next time they could cover a proto-narcocorrido dope ballad from the 1930s like “El Contrabandista”, to disprove all those canards about age and memory loss.