The phrase “The Man. The Myth. The Legend.” has been overused to the point of powerless parody, but if ever there were a single figure who could restore the truth to the phrase, it would be Rosalino Sánchez Félix.
The late Mexican singer known simply as “Chalino” lived a life and career that endures more than three decades since he was murdered. His story will continue to grow, thanks in part, to the re-release of his final album, “Nieves de Enero,” this Friday.
The album was originally released in 1992, months before Chalino was found dead in Sinaloa, hours after what would tragically become his final concert. Many of his classic songs, such as the title track, “Prenda Del Alma,” “Los Chismes,” “El Pitallón,” “El Navegante,” and others are found on the album, which features his collaborations with Nacho Hernandez and Los Amables del Norte.
The re-release is remastered thanks to the talented hands at Craft Latino, the “Latin repertoire arm of Craft Recordings,” and will be available only on vinyl. The remastered recording sounds incredible. Not only does each instrument sound more vibrant and clearer, but Chalino’s vocals, which he self-deprecatingly described as “barking,” come out so clearly that you’d swear he’s in the room or car singing just for you.
Chalino’s life is worthy of the corridos he helped popularize during his brief career as a musician. Born in poverty in the Municipio de Culiacán, Sinaloa, a number of wild events led him to flee to Tijuana and, eventually, into the U.S. Those events helped cement the man he would become, but also feed into the myths that would shape his life and death.
Did he flee Sinaloa after a shootout with a local narco? Or because he shot a man for assaulting his sister? Or both? Apocrypha abounds.
How did he survive getting shot during one of his concerts in Coachella, California, and have the wherewithal to fire back? Did he really work for a narco with two prosthetic arms, much like a villain from a 1930s Dick Tracy comic strip, when he lived in Inglewood?
Put another way: Johnny Cash sang about shooting a man in Reno “just to watch him die.” Chalino would’ve sung the same had he actually done so. Yet despite this larger-than-life figure and all the stories, there is something relatable, even familiar, about him.
“Chalino wrote folk songs about my community; not directly, but it felt that way,” says Erick Galindo, producer of “Ídolo: The Ballad of Chalino Sanchez” podcast and author of the liner notes for the 2023 remaster of Chalino’s “15 Éxitos 15” album. “He feels gigantically iconic, but at the same time, he feels like someone that I met at a family reunion or a quinceañera.”
Galindo’s family is also from Municipal de Culiacán and the figure of Chalino as a man, a myth, and a legend always loomed large in his personal life. In 2022, he published “Ídolo” on Sonoro Media, an eight-episode podcast in English and Spanish that delves into the life of Chalino and dissects some of the myths that are part of his legacy.
“It took doing the show to understand why I was obsessed with telling this story and also just to see who he really was,” explains Galindo. “I think, at the end of the day, who he really was, was this immigrant, this father, this husband who was just trying his best to operate in a really shitty circumstance almost all the time.”
The power of Chalino’s story is not found in how extraordinary he was, but in how ordinary he actually was: an average guy who repeatedly found himself in extraordinary circumstances and dangerous situations. It’s the immigrant story with the added danger of narcos and revolvers.
“Being from Sinaloa is like being from Sicily; it’s the golden triangle,” says Galindo. “There’s a lot of narco shit that happens there, but there’s also these humble, down-to-earth people who get caught up in these crazy cycles that have a lot to do with the war on drugs.”
“I think [Chalino’s] story is powerful in that it helps a lot of us realize that we’re in those [dangerous] cycles and hopefully try to get out of them,” Galindo continues. “You see someone like fucking Snoop Dogg at the Olympics and you’re like: ‘When I was a kid, you were on trial for fucking murder! And now you’re a flag bearer!’ From ‘Murder was the Case’ to carrying the torch at the Paris Olympics.”
“I would’ve loved to have seen Chalino get to somewhere like that, but like I said, when shit got real, it got real,” Galindo says. “Destiny had a different path for him and he wound up becoming this big legend and starting this incredibly popular genre.”
“Nieves de Enero” will be available on August 30, which would have been Chalino’s 64th birthday, via Craft Latino and Discos Musart.
