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In life, she was the queen of Tejano music. In death, the 23-year-old singer is becoming a legend.
By RICK MITCHELL Copyright 1995 Houston Chronicle

Abraham Quintanilla tried to remember his daughter as she'd looked the last time he saw her, just the day before.

Selena Quintanilla-Perez was a full-grown woman of 23, a budding superstar who dreamed of raising a big family with her guitarist/husband once her music career settled down. She had a smile that could torch up the night, and a figure that turned heads wherever she went.

But the only image that would come into focus in Abraham's mind was that of an 8-year-old girl, standing nervously behind the microphone at the family restaurant in Lake Jackson.

Even back then, Abraham had been convinced that Selena was destined to become a star. A former musician himself, he recognized the rare power and precise pitch in her voice.

He had staked everything on her talent. From the band's early years traveling the South Texas back roads in an old, beat-up van with a foldout bed in the back, to playing for 60,000 rodeo fans in the Astrodome, Selena had become the biggest star in Tejano music. She was a household name in Mexico and much of Latin America and was on the verge of an unprecedented breakthrough to the English-speaking pop audience.

Now, through a tragic turn of events, the dream Abraham had shared with his wife, Marcela, and their three children had been shattered.

That morning, Selena had failed to show up at Q Productions studio. It wasn't unusual for her to be late. Perpetual tardiness was part of her charm.

But on this particular Friday morning, it was surprising that Selena hadn't at least called. She had a 10 a.m. appointment with her older brother, A.B., and sister, Suzette, to cut the vocal tracks for a demo tape of a new song A.B. had written. Selena also was midway through the recording of her first crossover album, with lyrics in English. The album was coming together slowly because of her hectic schedule.

Eleven a.m. came and went, but there was still no word from Selena. A.B. phoned Christopher Perez, her husband, who said she'd left the house that morning at 9, while he was still in bed. Chris didn't know where she'd gone, but he guessed that it had something to do with Yolanda Saldivar, the former president of Selena's fan club.

Abraham and A.B. went to lunch. They returned to the office just as the phone rang. Abraham's sister-in-law screamed that Selena had been in an accident. Her father raced to the hospital emergency room at Memorial Medical Center.

At the hospital, Abraham learned there had been no accident. Selena had been shot in the back and was listed as dead on arrival, a doctor said, but they'd managed to get her heart started again briefly and had given her a blood transfusion.

Abraham, who'd followed his father into the Jehovah's Witnesses faith some years earlier, immediately reacted to the transfusion. "No! She doesn't want that," he yelled.

Only then did the horrible finality of the doctor's words begin to sink in. Selena was dead.

To children growing up in barrios such as La Molina, the working-class Corpus Christi neighborhood where the Quintanillas lived, Selena was la reina del pueblo, a successful entertainer who'd never lost touch with her roots. But to Abraham, she was still his little girl. The one who had bounced up and down on his bed where he lay playing his old guitar and singing the Mexican standards and pop songs he loved.

The beautiful little girl was gone.

The Quintanilla family was not alone in its grief. As word of Selena's violent death on March 31 spread north and south out of Corpus Christi, fans reacted first with disbelief, then with a massive, public display of adoration.

Signs appeared in cars declaring "We love you, Selena!" or "Con tanto amor!" Churches hastily organized prayer vigils. Tejano radio stations played Selena's music around the clock. Record stores sold out of her albums.

On the weekend following her death, thousands of mourners from Texas, Mexico and points farther made the pilgrimage to Corpus Christi to pay their last respects. That Sunday, they filed into the Corpus Christi Convention Center, where Selena's body lay in a black coffin surrounded by white roses. After a rumor circulated that the casket was empty, the family agreed to open it to confirm that the horrible news was true.

The Days Inn motel where Selena was shot became a shrine to her memory, with messages from fans scrawled on the walls of the room where the singer had met with her accused killer, Saldivar, just before her death. Saldivar was suspected of embezzling money from Selena's fan club. Selena had gone to the hotel alone, at Saldivar's request, hoping to obtain documentation that the accusations were untrue.

Flowers and cards covered the fence surrounding the house where Selena and Chris lived. Votive candles lined the driveway.

Outside the clothing boutiques Selena operated in Corpus and San Antonio, hawkers sold souvenir T-shirts and ball caps bearing her image. Following Selena's burial in a private ceremony on April 3, her Seaside Memorial Park gravesite also became a shrine. Every evening, the cemetery had to cart away truckloads of cards and flowers.

Abraham expressed surprise and gratitude at the outpouring that followed his daughter's death. He speculated that Selena's appeal went deeper than the music.

"I knew that a lot of people cared for Selena," he said. "I could see it in their faces everywhere we played. But I'm really surprised by the magnitude of this thing.

"I think people are tired of the wickedness of this system. She was a good person, a clean person with morals. They could see that. And there's not too much of that left in this world."

The week after Selena was killed, People magazine put her on the cover in Texas and other Southwestern states. When the issue instantly sold out at newsstands, the magazine decided to do a commemorative issue in Selena's honor -- only the third such tribute in the publication's history.

Yet, even as Selena's Spanish albums topped the Latin charts and entered the mainstream pop charts in the weeks after her death, many were still wondering how the Texas singer could have gained such a large and devoted following. While shock jock Howard Stern joked about the tragedy, others simply asked, "Who's Selena?"

Selena was Tejano music's brightest hope for the future. Had she lived, she might well have been the first international superstar to come out of the Tejano market. A vivacious entertainer who could sing any style of music, her potential was unlimited.

Even after her death, Selena could become the first Tejano artist to break through to the mainstream pop market. In July, EMI Records will release an album including five English tracks, plus remixed and rerecorded versions of her biggest Spanish hits.

"We're going to do our best to give her that English hit she wanted so badly," says EMI vice president Nancy Brennan.

The third child of Abraham and Marcela Quintanilla, Selena was born on April 16, 1971, at the Community Hospital of Brazosport. The family lived in nearby Lake Jackson, where Abraham was employed by Dow Chemical Co. as a shipping clerk.

To Abraham, it seemed as if Selena was born happy.

"She was just full of life," he says. "She was always joking and clowning around."

To their neighbors in Lake Jackson, 55 miles south of Houston, the Quintanillas looked like a loving, patriarchal family.

"They were a very close-knit family," says Carmen Read, who lived with her husband, Ed, and their two sons around the corner from the Quintanillas' house on Caladium Street. "I probably fussed at every other kid in the neighborhood, but I don't think I ever fussed at those kids. They were so well-behaved."

A.B. (short for Abraham Quintanilla III) was eight years older than Selena; Suzette was four years older. But if either ever resented their little sister tagging along, it didn't show.

"They were so close," says A.B.'s childhood friend David Read. "I never recalled them arguing or not getting along when they were out playing. They never had a complaint about anything."

Carmen took special notice of the Quintanillas because they were one of the few Hispanic families in Lake Jackson at the time. They reminded her of her own childhood: She grew up in one of the only Mexican-American families in Silsbee, in East Texas.

"I always felt that (Abraham) was maybe a little too hard on the kids," she says. "He was a typical hard-working, strict Mexican father. He definitely was the head of the household. I was raised in that same kind of household. Maybe that's why I always paid more attention to them. But I think those that lived here knew that they weren't a common, everyday family."

Abraham acknowledges that he was a strict father. He didn't allow his children to sleep over at other kids' houses, and he didn't believe in casual dating. If he was too hard on his kids, he says, it's because he remembered his own wild childhood in Corpus Christi.

"All these years, I knew where my kids were 24 hours a day," he says. "Maybe I overdid it, I don't know. I just didn't want them to go through what I went through. I was a street kid. My parents couldn't control me when I was young."

Early on, Selena began to exhibit an irrepressible personality all her own. Nina McGlashan, Selena's first-grade teacher at O.M. Roberts Elementary School, remembers her as a delightful child.

"She had a very bubbly, positive-type of personality," says the former Nina Smith. "She was eager to please and eager to learn. The type of little kid that you would like to have in a class. I remember, too, that she had a little shyness about her."

All three Quintanilla children showed an early interest in music, their father says.

They came by it naturally. In the 1950s and '60s, prior to moving to Lake Jackson, Abraham led a band in Corpus Christi called Los Dinos. The name was taken from the Italian slang word for los muchachos, the boys.

Los Dinos played a mix of early rock 'n' roll and traditional Mexican music, with three-part harmony vocals and a horn section. But in those days, opportunities were limited in what was known as Tex-Mex or Chicano music. Abraham eventually gave up on the music business and took a job at Dow to support his growing family.

Selena was 6 when Abraham noticed that she had a remarkable voice. He was teaching A.B. a few chords on the guitar when Selena burst into song.

"I always wanted to go back into the music business, but I felt like I was already getting too old, and my kids were growing up," Abraham says. "When I found out Selena could sing, that's when the wheels started turning in my mind. I saw the chance to get back in the music world through my kids."

While many parents have entertained similar fantasies, Abraham was convinced that he had a special talent to work with.

"I felt that Selena had it since she was a little girl," he says. "She had that extra thing that makes an artist. Of course, nobody believed me at that time."

With his wife's support, Abraham converted his garage into a music studio. A friend gave him an old Sears Silvertone bass, and he bought a set of drums. A.B. picked up the bass, and Suzette was assigned to the drums.

"They knew zero about music," Abraham says. "I just placed the instruments in their hands and said, `All right, let's go.'

"At first, they were too young," he says. "They had a short attention span. They would want to go play with the other kids. Then they started getting into the music. They started creating. You know how it is."

The little family band rehearsed almost every day after school.

"We did all the normal kid things together," says David Read. "But they always knew when it was time to go practice. I used to go in there and watch sometimes. Selena always seemed to be having a great time."

It wasn't long before Abraham left Dow to open a Mexican food restaurant, Papagayo, in Lake Jackson. He made sure it had a stage and a dance floor. Selena and the band performed on weekends and developed a local following.

"It was so unusual," says Ed Read. "You wouldn't expect to see a kid get up and sing in a restaurant like that. Her voice was a little higher, but she was on key and she always had a lot of enthusiasm."

Abraham keeps a tape of 9-year-old Selena singing a Spanish version of Rick James' funk classic "Super Freak." While her voice is a bit squeaky, the phrasing is on the money.

"I can see her in my mind," Abraham says. "She was an awesome dancer as a little girl. She had a lot of what black people would call soul. And she could sing any kind of music."

Nineteen-year-old Rena Dearman answered an ad Abraham put in the Brazosport Facts for a lead guitarist and a keyboardist. Her boyfriend (later husband) Rodney Pyeatt played guitar; she played keyboards.

Dearman says she was impressed the first time she heard Selena sing.

"I didn't expect to hear what I heard," she says. "Of course, her intonation was going to be higher. But it's what she did with the notes. This girl had some vibrato on her. She could make it work. Her release from the notes, it wasn't like your everyday little girl singing. She sounded more like a young woman."

Abraham pushed the band hard to improve, Dearman says. Every day they weren't playing at the restaurant, they were in the garage practicing. The repertoire was mostly Top 40 hits sung in English and the occasional pop oldie with Spanish lyrics that Abraham had translated. Then he started writing his own songs in Spanish for the band.

Dearman came to feel like a member of the family, and she looked up to Abraham. He had a temper, but he was fair.

"I respected what he was trying to accomplish. When he would be the way he is, I didn't take it the wrong way. He was taking care of business. The man had a goal. He knew what he was doing. And he was a good daddy. He loved those kids."

As it turned out, Abraham was better at managing a band than he was at running a restaurant.

"I was inexperienced in the restaurant business," he says. "One day I decided that's what I wanted to do. The following week I'm already leasing the place. I had a big overhead. All the money I had saved went into the initial cost of opening."

And when the oil business dried up in the early '80s, the restaurant went broke. Abraham had to borrow money from his brother Hector to move his family back to his hometown of Corpus. The band became the household's sole means of support.

It might have seemed like a desperate situation. But Abraham says he didn't see it that way.

"I always knew that Selena was gonna go. I never had any doubt."

The band traveled all over the state, from Lake Jackson to Laredo to El Paso, playing little clubs, wedding dances and quinceaneras. There were seven people in the old van. Abraham was the manager and sound engineer, and Marcela served as light technician.

Selena enrolled in junior high school in Corpus. But the band's schedule often forced her to miss Friday and Monday classes. After a few months, she dropped out and continued her education through correspondence courses. She earned a GED at 17.

Not everyone approved of the family's unusual lifestyle. Abraham says his father and brother told him, "You're going to ruin your kids. They'll be surrounded by drinking and drugs. It's going to have an effect on them."

But Selena did not seem at all upset about missing out on a normal adolescence, Dearman says.

"The only thing I knew is that she loved what she was doing. She was having fun. I don't think she'd have been as happy doing something else if she wasn't singing. When she was onstage, she was into doing her thing. If the people responded, so much the better."

While Selena was the star of the show, she remained unaffected by the attention she received onstage.

"She never got haughty with us. She never changed," Dearman says. "She was as fun-loving back then as she would be later."

Dearman's most vivid memories from the early years of the band are the long conversations she shared with the family members in the back of the van. While Pyeatt and Abraham sometimes engaged in intense religious discussions -- Pyeatt was a Baptist, Abraham a Jehovah's Witness -- the kids talked about more personal things.

"I know how they got to be the way they are," Dearman says. "It's because of their parents. Selena grew up to be a good girl. They were taught work ethics, compassion and how not to snub people. They believed that if you treat people good, it'll come back to you in the end."

Dearman left Selena's band when Pyeatt decided to form his own country band. She really didn't want to quit, but she felt she had to follow her husband. The pair divorced several years later.

"I was willing to back up Selena for as long as it took," she says. "I had so much confidence in Abraham. He was going to make the world see what he saw in Selena. I know A.B. felt the same way. They knew they had something special there."

But for all his pride and conviction, Abraham admits he had an eye-opening experience when he booked the band to open for Mazz at the fairgrounds in Angleton. It was 1983. Mazz was the hottest thing in the Tejano market at the time.

"When we got to the hall, their road crew had already set up," Abraham says. "When I saw all their equipment, I freaked out. When I was playing, this kind of equipment didn't exist, like crossovers and equalizers. On one side, they had a stack of about 30 speakers and 30 more speakers on the other side.

"I told my son A.B, `You know what? I think we're at the wrong place. I think this is a rock 'n' roll dance or something.'

"We started walking out, and the promoter came in. I said, `Is this the place where we're gonna play tonight?' He said, `Yes.' I said, `Whose equipment is that?' He said, `Mazz.' "

"That night, after Selena opened up the show for them, they came on. It totally scared me. That kick-drum was so powerful it shook my shirt, and I had never seen smoke and lights like that.

"On the second set, I didn't want my kids to go back on. I was embarrassed. We had a little rinky-dink sound system. I found out that night that things had changed from the last time I'd been in the music business."

Selena made her commercial recording debut with Los Dinos when she was 12. Her first full album, "Mis Primeras Grabaciones," was released in 1984 on Corpus Christi's Freddie label, one of the oldest and most established independent Tex-Mex outfits.

Rick Longoria, who engineered the session for label owner and producer Freddie Martinez, recalls that Selena cut the vocals in just a few takes.

"She was very professional," Longoria says. "She'd be sitting there while the session was going on, doing little girl things. It was kind of hard to believe that she was the vocalist.

"But when she started to sing, it was no problem. I've done sessions with people twice her age where we'd be there doing things over and over because they couldn't get it right."

A single from the album, Ya Se Va, generated some airplay, but the album didn't sell well. Selena y Los Dinos promptly left Freddie for the Cara label, then moved on to the Manny label.

"Right from the start, we thought she had some good talent," says Longoria, who now handles marketing and promotion for Freddie. "But she still needed to develop. We thought it would take about three or four years before she came into her own, and that's exactly what happened."

While Selena emerged as a recording artist, A.B. developed as a songwriter and producer. He was motivated by the need to provide Selena with strong, original material.

"We had no songs. We were constantly looking for m

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