Sept. 26, 1976 review: Freddy Fender and Tom T. Hall at Kleinhans Music Hall

 


Ah, the good old days, when you could go to the late show, leave after midnight and still have enough time to write a review. 

Sept. 26, 1976

Freddy Saves Day

After Tom T.’s Patter 

          Country music, despite its church-social homogeneity, has always been willing and, yet, proud to embrace outsiders who respect its etiquette.

          Black singer Charlie Pride is one. Another is Texas-based Chicano Freddy Fender, whose first appearance in Buffalo Saturday night brought more than 4,500 fans out for two shows in Kleinhans Music Hall.

          Fender, who adopted his name from his guitar during two decades on the Lone Star State’s dancehall circuit, is one of country music’s surprise successes of the ‘70s. What’s more, it’s not strictly a country success.

          With a quavering, throat-catching tenor that sprinkles Mexican romance with a misting of tears, Fender has crafted a string of hit records that have tickled not just Nashville sensibilities, but also middle of the road pop tastes and ‘50s revival nostalgia.

          This mixture was as striking in the audience – pants-suited women and leisure-suited men sprinkled with denimed ‘50s punk survivors – as it was on the rudimentary stage with its naked cluster of small-scale amplifiers and tinny column speakers under a satin, star-spangled radio station banner.

          Fender, coming on well past midnight after storyteller Tom T. Hall’s tedious second show, observed the rules but reworked them enough to emerge as his own man.

* * *

HIS BACK-UP band did the obligatory 20-minute warm-up, but they were a well-disciplined country-rock aggregation in white jumpsuits who played things like Charlie Daniels’ “The South’s Gonna Do It Again.”

          Fender’s leisure suit was brown and big-collared. With his busy, gray-flecked hair and big moustache, he could’ve passed for Tony Orlando’s uncle.

          Clearly his peppery band and the emotional perk of his tunes – alternately heartful (“Today I Started Loving You Again”) and honky tonk (“Wild Side of Life”) – were just the recipe for recovery after Hall’s feed-store homilies and an intermission in the crowded lounge.

* * *

HIS FINALE produced the late show’s only spark of spontaneous combustion – the applause for “Secret Love” and “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” building higher as the first notes of his classic “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” hit the air.

          By comparison, Tom T. Hall was stock-from-the-shelf country in front of a polymorphous seven-man band that included everything from a big good-old-boy guitarist to a bearded New York mandolinist.

          Hall’s a comfy entertainer who reassures assumptions instead of challenging them. Trouble is, he also talks a lot.

          He ought to have the good manners to stop cracking bad jokes and sing a few more songs like “Pamela Brown” and “The Day Clayton Delaney Died.” After all, that’s what put him in front of the mike in the first place.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Freddy Fender in the mid 1970s.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: What’s not to love about Freddy Fender? Not only did he have some great songs, but he also was a trailblazing Tejano artist and a guy who finally was rewarded with acclaim after many years of coming up the hard way. This date found him at the peak of his popularity. He went on to lend his talents to Los Super Seven and the Texas Tornados. His real name? Baldemar Garza Huerta. He died in 2006.

          Second-billed Tom T. Hall was a pretty big star himself. The man who wrote “Harper Valley PTA” had a string of hits from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, notably “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine.” He died in 2021.      

 

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