San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
San Antonio DJ recorded first-ever rap song in Texas
‘The Bounce Rap’ by Disco Al, aka Alberto Calvo, made history
Many remember Alberto
Calvo as Alberto Alegre, an award-winning Spanish-language radio personality known as “el amigo de la raza.” Calvo, who died in 2018 at age 60, spent 40 years on the Texas airwaves; he was hosting a morning show on Norteño 104.1 FM at the time of his death.
Few know that Calvo also made history as Disco Al, who recorded what experts agree was the first rap record in Texas.
Calvo made the 7-inch single “The Bounce Rap” in 1980 with a West Side conjunto group called the Barrio Sound Band. Released on the heels of the Sugarhill Gang’s seminal 1979 single “Rapper’s Delight,” “Bounce Rap” plays like the
New Jersey trio’s hit by way of Alamo Plaza, with Calvo namedropping San Antonio streets, VIA buses and even Spurs great George Gervin.
There have been other candidates for the first Texas rap record, such as “Star Bird II,” an anti-drug B-side recorded in
1981, also in San Antonio, by R&B singer Leroy Franklin. But “The Bounce Rap” appears to have come first.
“I feel that the evidence supports it,” said Rae Cabello, an archivist and executive producer for the Numero Group, an archival record label based in Chicago. “I’ve come across various (rap) records across Texas that were published early on, but they were clearly after 1980 or ’81.”
Cabello, who lives in San Antonio, has collected records for around 20 years. A friend introduced him to “Bounce
Rap” more than 10 years ago.
But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that he started exploring the possibility that it may have been the first Texas rap
record.
After conducting extensive research of Texas album releases and interviewing Roger Hernandez, who produced “Bounce Rap” and owns the song's rights and masters, Cabello is convinced the single can claim that title.
Hernandez, who produces Tejano music videos, television shows and concerts through En Caliente Productions, a San Antonio broadcasting and media company he co-founded in 1982, sings a similar tune.
“Yes, it is the first rap in Texas,” he said.
Hernandez recorded “Bounce Rap” when he ran Music Lovers Records, a label headquartered on Culebra Road just south of Woodlawn Lake. The 45's label has a 1980 copyright and lists Calvo as the songwriter and Hernandez Music as the publisher.
“I still called him Disco Al because he was a very popular nightclub DJ at the time, too,” he said.
Hernandez said he thinks it was either late 1979 or early
1980 when Calvo first told him he had this rap he wanted to record. He sang it to Hernandez, who liked what he heard and hired the Barrio Sound Band to play the funky groove.
For the B-side, the band played a short, swinging instrumental called “The Lowrider Shuffle,” with Calvo simply saying “lowrider” in a deep voice at the beginning and the end of the song.
Music Lovers Records pressed 10,000 copies of “Bounce Rap.” Hernandez guesses they may have sold a few thousand. The label likely gave away records to radio stations, he said. Or maybe Calvo gave out some from the trunk of his car.
“It was not a super mega hit or nothing like that,” Hernandez said.
“Rapper's Delight,” its obvious influence, was a big hit. Released in September 1979, it's credited with introducing hiphop to a mainstream audience. It cracked the top 40 in the United States and sits on greatest song lists by the likes of Rolling Stone and National Public Radio. The Library of Congress
has preserved the song in the National Recording Registry.
Given the song's growing popularity in late 1979 and early 1980, it's no surprise a then 22-year-old Alberto Calvo latched onto that sound of the moment and gave it his own spin.
“He loved groovy stuff,” said Calvo's oldest son, Al Calvo Jr. “He was a backyard DJ when he was coming up back in the day, playing parties. I'm pretty sure he got influenced by the Sugarhill Gang. It kind of sounds the same.”
He notes that on the first line of “Bounce Rap” his dad proclaims, “Now what you hear is not a lie.” The first verse of “Rapper's Delight” by group member Wonder Mike: “Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat.”
Calvo then kicks off “Bounce Rap” with a classic MC intro (“My name is Al, you know me well/ I'm everybody's disco pal”), then breaks into a tale “San Antonio style” of “standing on the corner of Houston and Main/ When a woman drove along and asked my name.”
A hop in her car soon leads to “nothin' but a bore,” so the next thing you know he's riding in a bus and sharing thoughts about San Antonio's long-running public transit: “You know, VIA VIA where the ladies cuss and fuss.”
The track wraps with some nursery rhyme and cartoon character references before fading out with “Gimme boogie, gimme funk/ Gimme George Gervin and the slam dunk.”
Another son, Alan Calvo, a San Antonio artist who created the popular Selena mural at
Alamo Candy Co., said “Bounce Rap's” relatively tame lyrics reflected his father's views on rap: Have fun but keep it clean.
“My dad would tell us, ‘If you're going to do this, if you're going to do a rap song, make it about positive things,' ” Alan Calvo said.
About the only salacious line Disco Al drops in “Bounce Rap” follows a verse about Jack and Jill going up the hill to have a little fun: “Stupid Jill forgot the pill and now they have a son, check it out now!”
“He made a joke that that last line was about me,” Al Calvo said with a laugh.
When the song didn't crack the charts, he added, his father returned to radio and DJ work so he could support his new family.
Born in 1957 in San Antonio, Calvo first fell in love with radio when he was in elementary school. After graduating from Jefferson High School, he started his broadcasting career in 1977 as an on-air personality for a local bilingual radio show aimed at teenagers.
Calvo spent four decades in Spanish and bilingual radio, with stints at Alamo City radio stations such as KCOR, KEDA and KFHM, as well as at stations in Houston, Corpus Christi and El Paso
In 2009, he was named the Spanish-format personality of the year at the National Association of Broadcasters' Marconi Radio Awards. He's the only Hispanic DJ in Texas to ever receive the honor, according to the San Antonio Radio Hall of Fame.
Al and Alan Calvo said their dad never talked much about “Bounce Rap” beyond their living room.
“I just remember my dad would always recite the lyrics when people would come over,” Alan Calvo recalled. “He would play around. But it was never like a public thing.”
That may change. Cabello said he and Hernandez are discussing a possible reissue of “Bounce Rap.”
“I guess it could be perceived as a novelty record,” Cabello said. “But more importantly it could be perceived as significant.”