Castillo: The trailblazing legacy of Manuel ‘Cowboy’ Donley

Manuel "Cowboy" Donley discovered the Fountain of Youth when it is best found — in his youth. He found it in music — his music. It became his lifeblood, his elixir and his passion.

Donley was only 9 when the siren of the guitar reeled him in. Smitten, he rushed to put one on layaway, earning $9 a week washing dishes so he could pay it off. Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to layaways, shall we, because Donley’s music not only fed his soul, it fed ours too.

For the rest of his life, a magical musical journey the likes of which books are written and feel-good movies are made, Donley seemingly always had a guitar cradled in his arms. Still performing strong well into his 80s, he mused that he would keep playing till he could not anymore.

“I’ll put the guitar away when I’m dead,” he said.

When I reminded him of that some years ago, he joked that maybe he would have the guitar buried with him.

By now, you might have heard of the passing Sunday of this musical giant with the gentle soul who as a boy sang for a penny a song in East Austin cantinas and who in 2014 received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In between Donley became an unassuming and unlikely rock star and forged a trailblazing career spanning more than seven decades as a singer, composer, arranger and bandleader. Self-taught, he was so good he created his own genre in the 1950s, an ebullient sonic stew of rock ‘n’ roll, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, Mexican ballads and European-influenced polkas. He stirred it hard, adding the ingredients of horns — always lots of horns — and plugging in electric guitars when no one else was doing it. The new sound — a brassy, big band musical force that came to be known as Tejano for its Mexican American roots — caught fire, and Donley began selling out dance halls across Texas and became a staple on Spanish-language radio around the country.

As word of his death spread, his fans took to social media to mourn the man they considered a legend and to celebrate his legacy. Donley wasn’t just Austin’s own, he was East Austin’s own.

“He was the keeper of our stories,” someone wrote on Facebook.

“He is gone, but his legacy will endure,” someone else said.

Donley helped pour the foundation for the worldwide Latino music scene that enjoys a mainstream following today, music producer Michael Ramos told me for a profile I did on Donley in 2010. For that feature, I sat with Donley for hours at his kitchen table in his modest wood-frame home in the same barrio where he grew up. I considered these visits to be riveting master classes about the life of a musician and Donley’s hard-wired passion for his craft. I wrote:

“Donley steers the conversation as if driven by a musical motor, bursting into song in full-throated tenor to make a point, mimicking sounds — taca-taca-taca or ti-ri-lil, ti-ri-lil, ti-ri-lil — to emulate a beat or a melodic line, strumming an imaginary guitar.”

The feature ran on the front page on a Sunday. A humble, joyful man with a wicked and playful sense of humor that often made him the butt of the joke, Donley was both tickled and disbelieving. He could not fathom that he deserved the attention.

“I don’t know what you were after in writing it, but I’m very thankful and I hope you got what you wanted,” he told me over lunch a few days later.

“I wanted to tell your story, and I feel you’ve never gotten your just due,” I said.

You might be reading this and wondering why you’ve never heard of Donley. That’s not his fault. It’s a failing of this industry and of a society in general that still struggles with acknowledging the breadth of our diversity, relegating those who don’t easily fit into concepts of what is popular and worth our attention to the second-class status of “others.”

We stayed in touch over the years. I could count on seeing Donley at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, where he and wife Herminia had regular aisle seats near the front and well-wishers would come over to say hello when Mass was over. Or I’d drop in on his shows, where he was unfailingly generous. When others were lining up to pay their respects or to get a picture with him, he always made it a point to thank me for coming. I would thank him for keeping the music alive.

Among my prized keepsakes is a signed copy of his 2011 album, The Brown Recluse Sessions, a collection of timeless Mexican standards like “El Rey,” and “Sin Ti.”

“To a very good friend,” Donley wrote.

About those songs, the boleros and rancheras first made famous by Mexican composers a lifetime ago, Donley must have performed them in his signature soaring voice thousands of times, yet he treated each occasion as if it was the first. He was a faithful steward of those classics, and that is another piece of his legacy.

The songs will endure, but Donley’s death is another marker of the end of an era, the passing of a generation of Mexican American trailblazers — proud, hard-working, devoted to family, humble servants to the community. People like Mayor Gus Garcia, John Treviño Jr., Austin’s first Mexican-American City Council Member, and Richard Moya, the first Hispanic Travis County commissioner.

I have many fond memories of Mr. Donley, as I called him. Like this one:

After that feature story ran, he enjoyed a career resurgence, one more extended turn in the spotlight that included more gigs, the lifetime achievement award, a triumphant performance at the Mexican American Cultural Center with an all-star big band, and a sold-out show at the iconic Cactus Cafe, a venue that has hosted many great performers, but I’m betting few octogenarians.

The Cactus audience skewed younger and whiter than most Donley show crowds, and I sensed some were there to see what all the fuss was about the 80-something living legend with Mexican-Irish roots who could sing a tune like he owned it. They were jubilant and cheered Donley throughout. And when younger performers might have wilted in the late hour of a long show, an exultant Donley fed off their energy, growing stronger, smiling broadly and thrusting his fist skyward at the end of songs.

Manuel “Cowboy” Donley was not about to leave anything in the tank. Not that night. Not in his storied, well-lived life. He was drinking from the Fountain of Youth once more.

Castillo is the Opinion page editor and a member of the American-Statesman editorial board.