Trinidad "Trini" López III (born May 15, 1937) is a American singer and actor who had 16 Top 40 songs on the charts from 1963 through 1968.
Trini Lopez was born in Dallas, Texas, son of Trinidad Lopez II (who was a singer, dancer, actor, and musician in Mexico) and Petra Gonzalez, who moved to Dallas from Mexico. Lopez has four sisters (two are deceased) and a brother, Jesse, who is also a singer. He grew up on Ashland Street in the Little Mexico neighbourhood of Dallas and attended grammar school and N. R. Crozier Tech High School. He had to drop out of high school in his senior year because he needed to earn money to help support the family.
Lopez formed his first band in Wichita Falls, Texas, at the age of 15. In 1958, at the recommendation of Buddy Holly's father, Trini and his group "The Big Beats" went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico. Petty secured a contract for them with Columbia Records, which released the single "Clark's Expedition"/"Big Boy", both instrumental.
Lopez left the group and made his first solo recording, his own composition "The Right To Rock", for the Dallas-based Volk Records, and then signed with King Records in 1959, recording more than a dozen singles for that label, none of which charted. In late 1962, after the King contract expired, Lopez followed up on an offer by producer Snuff Garrett to join the post-Holly Crickets as vocalist. After a few weeks of auditions in Los Angeles, that idea did not go through. He landed a steady engagement at the nightclub PJ's, where his audience grew quickly. He was heard there by Frank Sinatra, who had started his own label, Reprise Records, and who subsequently signed Lopez.
His debut live album, Trini Lopez at PJ's , was released in 1963. The album included a version of "If I Had a Hammer", which reached number one in 36 countries (no. 3 in the United States), and was a radio favourite for many years. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. He also performed his own version of the traditional Mexican song "La Bamba" on the album; his recording of the tune was later reissued as a single in 1966.
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Another live album from PJ's was recorded later that same year under the title By Popular Demand More Trini Lopez at PJ's which contains the song "Green Green" which was written by Randy Sparks and Barry McGuire and originally recorded by the New Christy Minstrels earlier that year for their Columbia album Ramblin.
His other big hits were "Lemon Tree" and "I'm Comin' Home, Cindy", both of which made it to #2 on the Easy Listening chart, and "Michael", "Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now" and "The Bramble Bush", which made it to $7, #6 and #4, respectively. Beyond his success on record, he became one of the country's top nightclub performers of that era, regularly headlining in Las Vegas.
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| Trini with The Beatles |
His popularity led the Gibson Guitar Corporation to ask him in 1964 to design a guitar for them. He ended up designing two: the Trini Lopez Standard a rock and roll model based on the Gibson ES-335 semihollow body, and the Lopez Deluxe, a variation of a Gibson jazz guitar designed by Barney Kessel. Both of these
Lopez's acting career was essentially still-born when he walked off the set of The Dirty Dozen (1967) at the urging of Sinatra (who supposedly thought his music career would stall if he continued to work on the movie, which had gone over its scheduled shooting date) or was fired by director Robert Aldrich for being disagreeable. He appeared infrequently as an actor over the next 10 years, mostly on television.
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He continued his musical career with extensive tours of Europe and Latin America during this period. Since then, Lopez has done charitable work and received honors such as being inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2003. On May 15, 2008, his 71st birthday, Lopez was inducted into the Las Vegas Walk of Stars.
Lopez was still recording and appearing live in recent years and in 2008, his 63rd album, "Ramblin Man,” was released. "El Immortal" was released in 2010 and in 2011, Trini released his 65th album "Into The Future.” (Edited from IMDB & Wikipedia)