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<\/p>\nOne day in December 2022, Ruben Molina \u2014 DJ, record collector, and community historian \u2014 received a call about a collection of 78rpm records in Azusa. What awaited him weren\u2019t just slabs of fragile shellac, many scarred with scratches: \u201cThese were all from 1953-55, all early rhythm and blues, and the sleeves were tagged up with neighborhood and school club names,\u201d he explained. These tags, left on fading labels and torn record sleeves, can be found on countless singles and albums from the era, informal markers of who people were and where they came from.<\/p>\n
As Molina learned, the collection belonged to the late Julia Juarez, a member of the Rhythm-Aires, a trio of teenage Chicanas from Azusa who threw parties in the early \u201950s. On one yellowed sleeve, he found a hand-drawn Rhythm-Aires logo, surrounded by a roll-call of friends nicknamed after their neighborhoods: \u201cKenny De Ontario,\u201d \u201cVictor De Pomona,\u201d \u201cAnnie-Lara De Chino.\u201d USC journalism professor and longtime record collector Oscar Garza describes these markings as \u201cChicano hieroglyphics\u2026 a reflection of the friends who shared the memories of that song or album.\u201d Molina saw the records and their scrawls as street-level snapshots of Mexican American youth life: \u201cstories from the bottom up,\u201d as he describes. They directly inspired his latest book: \u201cThe Dreamy Side: Rhythm & Blues and Chicano Culture in 1950s Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across its 140-plus pages, the book traces a postwar landscape of Chicano youth culture through personal essays, interview testimonials, and over a hundred vintage photos, party ads, and scans of record labels and album covers, many with those tags. As with Molina\u2019s previous books, including his groundbreaking \u201cChicano Soul: Recordings and History of an American Culture\u201d (2007), The Dreamy Side\u201d offers an alternate approach to local Chicano cultural history. University of Houston historian Dr. Alex LaRotta, who wrote the foreword to the second edition of \u201cChicano Soul\u201d (2017), said Molina excels at telling \u201cthe people\u2019s history of Chicano rock and soul music,\u201d lauding how his work embodies \u201cthe importance of local knowledge and preservations of barrio memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Front cover of \u201cThe Dreamy Side\u201d book<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Ruben Molina)<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Dreamy Side,\u201d Molina chronicles the heady period between the end of the pachuco era of zoot suits and jazz parties in the 1940s, up to the late-1950s emergence of Chicano rock \u2019n\u2019 roll stars like Ritchie Valens and Thee Midniters. Dr. Michelle Habell-Pall\u00e1n, a native of Downey and one of the curators\/authors behind 2017\u2019s \u201cAmerican Sabor\u201d exhibition\/book about Latino music in the U.S., says that while this generation\u2019s \u201cparents were listening to Mexican music, they were listening to rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.\u201d Then-teens like Julia Juarez and her friends came of age dancing to balladeers like Johnny Ace and honking sax players like Chuck Higgins while tuning into radio DJs like KRKD\u2019s Dick \u201cHuggy Boy\u201d Hugg and KGFJ\u2019s Ray Robinson. The book\u2019s title nods to another famed DJ \u2014 Art Laboe \u2014 whose \u201cOldies But Goodies\u201d compilations were split between the ballad-heavy \u201cdreamy side\u201d and dance-centric \u201cjump side.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Molina writes, these records, mostly from Black vocal harmony and R&B artists, \u201cplayed a pivotal role in shaping Chicano culture, particularly within the teen pachuco and cholo subcultures \u2026 songs that became rites of passage.\u201d However, because the artists were not of Mexican descent, Chicano music histories often overlook or underplay this era. LaRotta lauds \u201cThe Dreamy Side\u201d for \u201cestablishing a lost historical connection in Chicano culture,\u201d and Molina wanted his new book to \u201cfill the void,\u201d insisting, \u201cwhat they began in the \u201950s, it stayed. It didn\u2019t leave us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Centering community stories has been Molina\u2019s approach to cultural history for decades. Born in El Paso, Molina was 5 when he and his family moved to Elysian Valley in 1958. \u201cIt was nice, a very mixed working\u2011class neighborhood\u2026. There was always music around,\u201d he recalled. \u201cMy mom was into Motown\u2026 my dad into the Mexican standards and jazz.\u201d In the 1960s, Molina and his friends began calling their neighborhood \u201cFrog Town\u201d after the local fauna in the nearby L.A. River. These memories became the basis for his neighborhood history, \u201cDown By the River: Elysian Valley and the Age of Frog Town\u201d (2024). Molina directly traced his fascination with soul music and similar \u201coldies\u201d to a youth spent in and around Frog Town, \u201csitting on the curb while the older homeboys kicked back with their trunk open, listening to whatever they had on an eight-track player.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hand drawings and inscriptions from Chicano youth on the cover of a 45 collected by Ruben Molina<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Ruben Molina)<\/p>\n
When he was in his early 50s, after decades of collecting records and researching musical histories, Molina self-published his first book, \u201cThe Old Barrio Guide to Lowrider Soul\u201d (2002), a comprehensive yet focused compendium of what he described as \u201cromantic grinders\u201d and \u201cmournful tearjerkers \u2026 long forgotten by the general public [that] have become a mainstay in the barrio, handed down like valuable family heirlooms.\u201d As with his later books, \u201cThe Old Barrio Guide\u201d made it clear that most of the oldies beloved in his community came from African American artists. He recalled when a trio of women asked to return their copies of \u201cThe Old Barrio Guide,\u201d explaining, \u201cWe thought this book was about Chicano music,\u201d to which Molina replied, \u201cAre you trying to tell me that you thought Barbara Mason and Billy Stewart were Chicano? I want you to understand that what we enjoy is Black music.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Ruben Molina holding up a 45<\/p>\n
(B+ (Brian Cross))<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Dreamy Side,\u201d Molina traces the roots of these cross-cultural musical obsessions to the early R&B scene in Los Angeles. Drawing from personal interviews with Mexican American elders, Molina recounts how teens from Maravilla, La Puente, Clover, and other barrios crisscrossed town to shop at Dolphins of Hollywood in South Central or Flash Records downtown when they weren\u2019t flocking to concerts thrown by Art Laboe at El Monte Legion Stadium or Gene Norman at the Shrine Auditorium. He writes of how this generation \u201cfound joy in music that was \u2026 portrayed as improper and immoral by highbrow elites.\u201d However, they weren\u2019t just passively consuming this music, they also left their marks on it, quite literally.<\/p>\n
Inspired by the tags left by Azusa\u2019s Julia Juarez and her friends, Molina sent over two dozen seven-inch record sleeves to friends to use as blank canvases. The super-sized \u201cPlaquiasos\u201d (\u201cmarkings\u201d) chapter ending the book features 60 scans combining original, tagged-up records Molina has come across over the years plus all his commissioned versions. The latter includes Julian Mendoza\u2019s shout-out to the Harbor Area with cities like Lomita and Carson written in stylized block letters while Lionzo Perez celebrates Frog Town with names of friends \u2014 \u201dFausto,\u201d \u201cSleepy\u201d \u2014 plus a hand-drawn frog peering above the edge of the 45 sleeve. Among the vintage examples is a copy of the Orlons\u2019 birthday dedication, \u201cMr. Twenty-One,\u201d with \u201cLA SAD GIRL – PUENTE 13\u201d written on its baby blue label while a faded 78 sleeve for the Hollywood Flames\u2019 \u201cCrazy\u201d bears the names and neighborhood of East Clover\u2019s Louie Berrera and Jimmy Alcala, complete with sketched-in three- and four-leaf clovers.<\/p>\n
For Molina, \u201cEach record serves as a vessel for memories, emotions, and experiences \u2014 preserving stories that might otherwise fade with time.\u201d What he found in the 78s that Juarez left behind was more than a record collection; they were miniature time capsules from a teenage world bound by friendship, community, and music. By documenting them \u2014 and inspiring new markings of his own \u2014 \u201cThe Dreamy Side\u201d ensures this vibrant but overlooked chapter of Los Angeles history doesn\u2019t trail off into silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One day in December 2022, Ruben Molina \u2014 DJ, record collector, and community historian \u2014 received a call…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":772581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[316756,12260,260119,13978,1582,276,316757,29832,316754,1532,316755,472,2961,224,2444,5337,975,20038,316753,316758],"class_list":["post-772580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-78rpm-record","tag-album","tag-azusa","tag-book","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-chicano-culture","tag-dj","tag-dreamy-side","tag-friend","tag-frog-town","tag-history","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-music","tag-neighborhood","tag-ruben-molina","tag-sleeve"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116516366050836962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}