José Alfredo Jiménez arrived in Mexico City from Dolores Hidalgo with no formal musical training — by his own producer's account he couldn't name a key or read a score — and became the most influential ranchera songwriter of the 20th century anyway, composing more than a thousand songs by voice and instinct alone. Discovered while waiting tables and singing with the group Los Rebeldes, he turned his own heartbreaks into a catalog — including "El Rey" and "Ella" — that effectively wrote the modern vocabulary of Mexican ranchera. He died in 1973 at 47, already a national icon.

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1971

El ReyJosé Alfredo Jiménez