Music San Antonio Rosie

Current Choice

Rosie Flores

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

Current Choice Rosie Flores 9:30pm Thu, Apr 14 Casbeers 1719 Blanco 732-3511

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