Graham Reid | | <1 min read
One of the pleasures of diving into the vaults is you come across songs you'd forgotten but seem to say so much about an era.
At the same time as Chuck Berry was writing his songs celebrating teenagers, the hop, cars and rock'n'roll itself, this Mexican-American from Daly City near southern San Francisco was exactly the right age to be singing about school blues.
Eddie Quinteros was 13 when he had his first band, joined Bobby (Do You Wanna Dance) Freeman's band and at 16 he was recording under his own name.
He appeared on an Alan Freed rock'n'roll package tour and was on American Bandstand.
He also enjoyed that great Fifties rock'n'roll induction: a shonky manager.
A decade after he first appeared he was working the folk-rock vein a little bit.
A whole bunch of his songs has been released through the Sundazed label (see here for their retro catalogue).
And although many are derivative or within the genre of early rock'n'roll, there is something distinctive about instrumentals like Malaguena.
Malagueña
And also something universal about the previously unreleased School Blues which – despite the genre – probably still speaks to, and for, 15-year olds everywhere.
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For more one-offs, oddities or songs with an interesting back-story see From the Vaults.
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