Enrique Franco Aguilar

Short biography

Enrique Manuel Franco Aguilar was born in Mazatlán on December 19, 1938 from M. Eugenio Franco Sojo y Julia Aguilar Osuna. The family moved to Tijuana, Baja California, when the boy was six years old, because his father, who was a musician, found a position there. His father educated his taste for music and taught him theory, relying on the then popular Hilarión Eslava's method.
He started writing music and songs when he was fifteen and soon had his own band La Sonora Orquesta Flamingos de Enrique Franco which became popular at dancing events and at backing popular Mexican artists that went touring in Tijuana. He met there, Los Rockin Devil’s, a rock band (they covered the song "Gloria" of the British band Them) that asked him for a cumbia. They recorded two of his works that became hits : Bule Bule and Cumbia del vestido negro. His works during this period were mostly in Tropical style which was the very popular. But he also provided to the ranchera artist Chelo. the song "Las cuentas claras" that entered the repertoire of banda music thanks to Banda El Recodo which recorded it.
Singer Mike Laure went visiting Tijuana and heard the band that was playing in a cub. He invited Enrique Franco, his brither and singer Lupita Alatorre (she later recorded with Los Tigres del Norte) particpating to his band Mike Laure y sus Cometas in Ciudad de Mexico.
Four years after, when the band split, he created his own band "Los Cometas de Enrique Franco" that recorded fifteen LPs and toured intensively in US and Mexico for fifteen years.
He was hired by Discos Fama, a record label that an English businessman, Arthur Walker, created in San Jose, California, as their artistic director in the US and he moved in this town where he produced several albums of Los Tigres del Norte. Few credits remain during this period because Arthur Walker wanted to be credited everywhere and in any role as "Arturo Caminante".
Enrique Fraco remained the producer of the albums of Los Tigres del Norte after they moved from Fama to Fonovisa. He recorded seventeen LPs with them, including four or five they recorded for Fama. He recorded over 200 songs for Los Tigres del Norte and was the author of fifty of them. He stopped working with band in 1992-1993 because he felt himself too conservative and too much traditionalist to efficiently with the then fashionable Narcocorrido genre. But he remained a friend of the Hernández Angulo brothers and continued writing songs for Los Tigres del Norte until his death that happened in May 6, 2013.

Sources

• Enrique Franco Aguilar biography by SACM (see biography external links in relationships)
• "Todavia es el corrido la voz de nuestra gente?: Una entrevista con Enrique Franco", Juan Carlos Ramirez-Pimienta and Jorge Pimienta, in Studies in Latin American Popular Culture Vol 23, 2004, University of Arizona Press.