Music San Antonio Rosie

The final track of Rosie Flores’ 1995 CD Rockabilly Filly languished in the can for quite some time before Flores saw fit to release it: nearly four decades, as a matter of fact. The recording, a brief, a cappella version of the classic “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down,” features a 7-year-old Flores – with a hint of country twang – belting to her heart’s content on San Antonio’s Mistletoe Street. In a sense, not much has changed since then.

Over a career that began in the late ’70s, this SA native has never failed to convey unabashed joy over the notion that she gets to sing and play music for a living. Often called, by her as well as others, the “Queen of Rockabilly,” she’s equally adept at honky-tonk, Western swing, and surf-rock.

She doesn’t possess the feral audacity of her idol, Wanda Jackson, but she ably compensates with authenticity, warmth, and a sweet spirit that permeates even her ostensibly hell-raising rockers. While her earnest ballads don’t always match up to her friskier material (“Little Bit More,” “59 Tweedle Dee”), she’s a skilled songwriter with much the same sense of

blue-collar empathy found in the best work of David Hidalgo and Louie Perez.

Flores’ latest album, Single Rose, captures her in a small Nashville club, primarily playing solo with her acoustic guitar. As such, it finds her getting back to her deepest roots: not Wanda Jackson or Elvis Presley, but the 7-year-old San Antonio girl who lived to sing and knew what to do when the tape was rolling. •

By Gilbert Garcia

This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.