廠牌:

selena

廠牌類型:

Major

音樂流派:

Latin, Latin, Latin

簡歷:

Selena Quintanilla-Perez was born in Lake Jackson, Texas on April 16. 1971; Easter Sunday. Her parents, Marcella and Abraham Quintanilla Jr. were delighted to have a new addition to their family which already had two children; Abraham Quintanilla III (A.B.) then 8, and Suzette then 4.

Abraham always had a passion for music. In the late 50's and early 60's he was part of the group Los Dinos. When his children were very young, he began to teach them an instrument. A.B. the bass and Suzette the drums. When Selena was just 3 years old, she demanded to know why her father was leaving her out of the music. Abraham simply said she was too young. Right then Selena showed him she was not too young, she showed him her own instrument, her voice. Abraham couldn't believe what a beautiful sound she heard. By the time Selena was 6, she was already singing like a pro in English and in Spanish, even though she didn't speak the language, alongside her brother, sister, and father.

When Selena was 9, her father started the group Selena Y Los Dinos. The group's first performances were in the Quintanilla family's restaurant in 1980. Everyone who saw her, even at that young age, knew she was going to be a star someday.

Soon the restaurant fell and the Quintanilla family went bankrupt, they were out on the streets without a roof over their head. The family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas where they piled into an old bus with all their musical equipment. They played everywhere they could, on streets, at weddings... Soon all the hard work paid off. Selena recorded her first album in 1984 under the Freddie label. This album was not released just then and the original copies were bought by Abraham. However, the album was released in 1995 titled "Mis Primeras Grabaciones."

Because Selena was getting even more popular and the traveling to perform was interfering with school, Abraham pulled her out of school when she was in the 8th grade. Even though she was not attending school anymore, Selena earned a high school degree from a correspondence school in Chicago.

In 1986, Selena's career really began to take off. Her second album, Alpha, was released then. At the Tejano Music Awards, she took the award for Female Vocalist of the Year. Another important thing that happened in 1986 was she was discovered by two huge names in the Tejano music industry; Rick Treviño, founder of the Tejano Music Awards, and Johnny Canales, an entertainer with one of the top Spanish television shows.

In 1988, two more Selena albums were released, Preciosa and Dulce Amor. But it was in 1989 when Selena got her big break. That year, she signed with Capitol/EMI Latin label. By this time, Selena's concerts were drawing thousands of people and her band was expanding. Pete Astudillo joined Selena Y Los Dinos and can be heard on such hit duets as "Yo Te Amo" and "Siempre Estoy Pensando En Ti". A.B. joined Pete and wrote such it songs as "Como La Flor". Pete stayed with the band for 4 years but left in 1993 to go solo.

In 1988, Selena met a guitarist named Chris Perez. Chris had performed with the popular singer Shelly Lares and even had his own band. The Quintanilla family hired him to be in the band in 1990. On April 2, 1992, Selena married Chris Perez.

In 1990, a fan approached Abraham with the idea of starting a fan club. Her name was Yolanda Saldivar. Her wish was granted. She was often referred to as Selena's biggest fan. Yolanda became a very close friend of Selena's, but later on, one of her worst enemies
Ven Conmigo was released in 1990. That album had such hits as "Baila Esta Cumbia".

Another hit album, Entre A Mi Mundo, was released in 1992. Such hits from that album like "Como La Flor" and "La Carcacha" made Selena a star. Her 1993 Live album one her a Grammy award for Best Mexican American Performance. But 1994 was her best year, that was when she truly became a superstar.

In 1994, Selena released Amor Prohibido. An album that even knocked Gloria Estefan's "Mi Tierra" off the number one spot on the charts. By March of 1995, it had sold over 400,000 copies. Amor Prohibido included such hits as "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom," the title track, "Fotos Y Recuerdos", "No Me Queda Mas", and "El Chico Del Apartamento 512". Also in that year, Selena opened her boutique and salon, Selena Etc., in Corpus Christi. It had been her dream since she was a little girl to sell the clothing and jewelry that she loved to design. In January of 1995, another boutique opened in San Antonio, Texas.

In February of 1995, Selena sold out the Houston Astrodome with her last concert for the Houston Livestock and Rodeo. A record attendance for any Tejano musician. Also in February, trouble started with the Selena Fan Club. People were complaining that they weren't receiving their packets they paid for. The Quintanilla family confronted Yolanda, who by this time was also manager of the boutiques. Money also started to turn up missing from the Selena Etc. account. Yolanda was stealing from them. In early March 1995, Selena fired Yolanda. Although she was fired, Yolanda continued to work because there were papers missing. On March 30, Selena went to where Yolanda was staying in Corpus, a Days Inn motel, to get the missing paperwork. When Selena and Chris got home that night, they found out that some of the papers were still missing.

Early the next morning, Selena got up and went to face Yolanda again. There Yolanda told her she had been raped in Monterrey, Mexico and needed to go to the hospital. Being the kind person that Selena was, she took her. After about an hour, Selena and Yolanda returned to the motel and argued. Selena told her that she just couldn't be trusted anymore.

At 11:47AM, Yolanda took out a gun, and fired at Selena. The bullet struck her in her right shoulder. With all her strength, Selena ran towards the lobby to get help. She collapsed on the floor as the clerk called 9-1-1. Soon an ambulance came to take Selena to the hospital where she was pronounced dead at 1:05 PM.

News of Selena's death spread all over the world. Selena fans mourned the loss of their queen, the queen of Tejano music. Thousands and thousands of fans passed by her coffin. The Friday she died, will always be known as Black Friday...

In July of 1995, her dream of crossing over into the pop market was accomplished. The first single released from her English album Dreaming Of You, "I Could Fall In Love," instantly became a hit and was in heavy rotation all across the US. Dreaming Of You instantly hit the charts at number one, if only Selena was here to see her dream come true. Selena will always be in the hearts of her millions of fans, she will never be forgotten.

April 2, 1995 -- HOUR AFTER HOUR THEY filed past the sturdy steel casket surrounded with thousands of long-stemmed white roses. In life, the 23-year-old pop phenomenon known as Selena, the reigning queen of Tex-Mex music, had enchanted fans with her danceable tunes. Now her tragic and bizarre murder had filled them with an almost inexpressible grief. As many as 50,000 mourners, some from as far away as California, Canada and Guatemala, converged on Bayfront Plaza Convention Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, last week to pay their final respects. Their sense of loss--and denial--was overwhelming. At one point a rumor swept the crowd that Selena Quintanilla-Perez was still alive and that her coffin was empty. Finally, her family ordered the coffin opened briefly to confirm the unacceptable truth. And there she lay, her lips and long nails done in blood red, wearing a slinky purple gown.

The tragedy had begun to unfold just two days before, when, on the morning of March 31, Selena had gone to a room in the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi to confront the former president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, 34. Saldivar, suspected by Selena and her family of embezzling funds, was on the verge of being fired, and she knew it. Soon after Selena arrived, say police, Saldivar shot her once in the back with a .38-caliber revolver. The singer staggered to the motel lobby for help before collapsing and being rushed to a hospital.

Saldivar was quickly cornered in the motel parking lot and for nearly 10 hours kept SWAT teams at bay as she sat in a pickup truck with a gun to her head, threatening suicide. According to Corpus Christi Assistant Police Chief Ken Bung, Saldivar "was expressing remorse all through the incident.'' Finally, police managed to coax her out of the truck and put her under arrest.

For Selena's family, who knew Saldivar well, the rush of events had a surreal quality. "The ultimate sorrow a human can feel is when someone dies,'' her father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr., told PEOPLE. "I felt like this was all a dream.''

For Latin music enthusiasts, the most apt comparison was with the death of John Lennon. Selena was vastly talented, deeply adored. "This was not some sexy babe groomed by a record company,'' says author Enrique Fernandez, one of the nation's most respected critics of Latin music. "We'll never be sure of how far she could have gone.'' Though not yet widely known outside the Hispanic community, Selena was the undisputed superstar of Tejano music, a lively, Spanish-language blend of Tex-Mex rhythms, pop-style tunes and German polka that is hugely popular in Mexico and the Southwest. During the past several years, she had played live concerts to audiences of up to 80,000.

In 1994 she won a Grammy for best Mexican-American album, Selena Live. Touted by Latino critics as the next Madonna, she seemed on the verge of crossing over into mainstream stardom. Just this month she was scheduled to complete her debut English-language album, for which she had already recorded three songs. And she appears in the new Johnny Depp movie Don Juan DeMarco as a mariachi singer. But what Selena's core fans found as endearing as her talent was her utter lack of pretension. As one disc jockey told a group of 2,000 mourners at an impromptu memorial service in Corpus Christi, "She was from the barrio. She still ate tortillas and frijoles.''

In fact, her background was not quite so simple. Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas, a blue-collar town outside Houston, the youngest of three children of Abraham Quintanilla Jr., now 55, and his wife, Marcela, 50. Quintanilla had a comfortable job as a shipping clerk at Dow Chemical, but his real passion was music. In his youth he had been a vocalist with a popular South Texas band called Los Dinos. When Selena first sang at the age of 6, he immediately recognized her talent. "Her timing, her pitch were perfect,'' he says. "I could see it from day one.'' She loved all music, everything from Little Anthony and the Imperials to country and western to Michael Jackson. For the time being, though, she confined herself to informal jam sessions with her brother Abraham III and her sister Suzette.

Then the family had some bad luck. In 1980, Quintanilla quit his job at Dow to open his own Tex-Mex restaurant in Lake Jackson, where his three children--Abraham III on bass, Suzette on drums and Selena singing--often performed. A year later the restaurant went under, a victim of the recession caused by the Texas oil bust. Suddenly the Quintanillas had lost their home, many of their possessions and, above all, their livelihood. "That's when we began our musical career,'' recalled Selena in 1992. "We had no alternative.'' And so the band, known as Selena y Los Dinos, began touring all over the back country of South Texas, playing everywhere from weddings to honky-tonks. "If we got 10 people in one place, that was great,'' said Selena, who was 9 when she hit the road. "We ate a lot of hamburgers and shared everything.''

They traveled to gigs in the banged-up family van, with only one concession to comfort--a foldout bed in the back. An excellent student, Selena stopped going to school in eighth grade, though later she did earn a high school equivalency diploma through a correspondence course. Looking back on those hard times, she professed not to mind. "I lost a lot of my teenage period,'' she admitted. "But I got a lot out of it too. I was more mature.''

Slowly, steadily, she and the band were also becoming more successful, graduating to ballrooms and cutting nearly a dozen albums for a small regional label. Their break came in 1987 when 15-year-old Selena won the Tejano Music Awards for female vocalist and performer of the year. There followed six increasingly successful albums, topped by Amor Prohibido in 1994, which had been nominated for a Grammy and sold more than 500,000 copies.

The acclaim was not without its ironies. The first was the fact that Selena, the new princess of Latin pop, could barely speak Spanish. For each of her songs, most written by brother Abraham III, she learned the lyrics phonetically. It wasn't until the early 1990s that she even started taking Spanish lessons, which her father believed were necessary to help her promote her albums on Spanish-language radio and in interviews. Even after several years of practice, though, she still had trouble trilling her r's and spoke English with a classic Texas twang.

Her father, who was her manager, had encouraged Selena to learn Spanish. But he didn't care for Selena's evolving stage presence, which relied more and more on sexuality. Abraham Jr., a Jehovah's Witness, didn't like seeing his daughter dancing onstage in heavy makeup and bare-midriff costumes, but Selena overruled his objections. "I love shiny things and I love clothing,'' she said.

Unknown to her fans, she also loved Chris Perez, the band's guitar player, whom she married in 1992. Quintanilla wanted to hush up the wedding, fearful that it might undermine her youthful image. Instead, her popularity only grew, fueled not only by her talent but also by her rapport with ordinary people. Though she and her family came to be worth an estimated $5 million, all but Suzette continued to live in three adjoining houses in the same lower-middle-class neighborhood of Corpus Christi to which they had moved in 1981. One of the few signs of affluence that Selena allowed herself was the red Porsche Carerra she kept parked in the driveway.

The person responsible for helping to nurture that image was Yolanda Saldivar. In 1991, Saldivar had approached Quintanilla about forming a fan club for Selena. In the past the family had resisted similar overtures from others if only because they wanted to keep a tight rein on such things. In some respects the short, heavy-set Saldivar seemed an unlikely candidate to take on the task. Born to a large family, Saldivar was a loner who lived in a modest house near San Antonio, where she worked as a registered nurse at two nearby hospitals.

Never married, she had no children of her own but took custody of three of her brother's children after he abandoned them. "She never talked about having any boyfriends,'' says Esmeralda Garza, the former secretary of the Selena Fan Club. "She never had time.'' Other than the fact that she was the aunt of a childhood friend of Selena's, no one in the singer's family knew much about her. Yet her enthusiasm won over the Quintanillas, and in 1991 she was given the unpaid job of founding the fan club.

In an interview shortly after Saldivar was hired, Selena raved about her. "She's doing exceptionally well,'' she said. "Fan clubs can ruin you if people get upset and turned off by them. But she's doing really good.'' Selena showed her gratitude by showering Saldivar with gifts. "Yolanda was crazy about spotted cows,'' says Garza. "So Selena bought an $800 rug with a cow on it. She bought her a cow phone in Los Angeles. They really splurged on her.'' For her part, Saldivar seemed utterly devoted to Selena, almost to a fault. According to one acquaintance, she turned her home into a virtual shrine that included, among other things, a life-size cardboard Selena cutout over which Saldivar draped backstage passes from her concerts.

The two soon became close friends. Then eight months ago, Selena promoted Saldivar to a paid position, putting her in charge of the singer's new business venture, Selena Etc. Inc. The company had opened one shop in Corpus Christi last year and another in San Antonio earlier this year. In addition to selling Selena's signature line of fashions and jewelry, the shops feature salons for hairstyling and manicures. Selena Etc. was also involved in merchandising its products to other stores. Saldivar worked hard, but it wasn't long before she began to have problems with other employees. Designer Martin Gomez had been brought in to help produce the fashion lines. But, says Gomez, 30, "from the beginning there was such tension between Yolanda and myself. She was mean, she was manipulative.'' Finally last January, Gomez quit in exasperation. "I told Selena I was scared of Yolanda,'' he says. "She wouldn't let me talk to Selena anymore. She was very possessive.''

Evidently out of loyalty, Selena did nothing. Then two months ago, her father began receiving calls from some of Selena's fans. They complained that they had sent in their $22 membership fee to the fan club of some 2,000 members but hadn't received any of the promised premiums, such as T-shirts and cassettes. Quintanilla confronted Saldivar about the matter, but she insisted nothing was wrong. "She was just as cool as a cucumber,'' he says.
Then about three weeks ago, Selena was told by several employees of her San Antonio salon that Saldivar appeared to be taking money from the business. The two had a heated confrontation during which Saldivar denied any wrongdoing. She claimed she had documents that would prove her innocence, but she stalled when she was asked to produce them.

Finally, at the end of March, she called Selena to say she had the papers. On Thurs., March 30, Saldivar phoned Selena to tell her she was staying in a Days Inn. She wanted the singer to come to the motel--alone--to discuss the matter. Instead, Selena went with her husband, Chris; they returned home several hours later, apparently after Saldivar claimed she didn't have the needed documents after all.

What happened the next day is unclear. Selena left home at 9 a.m. that Fri., March 31, and at some point dropped by the Days Inn again. At 11:50 police received a 911 call reporting a shooting at the motel. Selena was rushed to the hospital, which alerted her father. Doctors reportedly gave her five pints of blood over the objections of Quintanilla who insisted that such procedures violated the principles of his daughter's religion. Selena died an hour later.

Quintanilla is convinced that Saldivar deliberately plotted to kill Selena. According to the Bexar County sheriff's office, Saldivar, who is being held on $100,000 bond, bought the murder weapon in San Antonio on March 13, just as the Quintanillas were raising questions about her activities. "I know Selena was set up. This was premeditated,'' says Selena's father, Abraham Jr. "Saldivar got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.''

But others aren't so sure that Saldivar was worried about losing her job or her income. Esmeralda Garza and her husband, Ernest, are convinced that Saldivar's motive was less obvious--and perhaps more pathetic. "Saldivar could have been fired by Selena and gone and gotten her old job back. She was doing well as a nurse,'' says Esmeralda. "She probably couldn't accept the fact that she wasn't going to be around Selena anymore.''