Los Donneños were a 1950s Mexican Norteño duo formed by Ramiro Cavazos and Mario Montes and named after

Donna, Texas Donna is a city in Hidalgo County, Texas, United States. The population was 16,797 at the 2020 census. History Donna is in southeastern Hidalgo County, east of McAllen, in territory that was granted to Lino Cabazos as part of the La Blanca la ...

. Ramiro Cavazos was the lead singer and played the

bajo sexto Bajo sexto (Spanish: "sixth bass") is a Mexican string instrument from the guitar family with 12 strings in six double courses. A closely related instrument is the bajo quinto (Spanish: "fifth bass") which has 10 strings in five double courses. ...

, while Mario Montes was second voice and played the

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

. On some recordings they were joined by a string bass player, Rafael Gaspar.

Formation

Cavazos met Montes while working as a migrant laborer near

. They had been acquainted through their manual labor, but joined forces musically after Cavazos noticed Montes playing music by the side of the road. They formed a duet named after the Texas town, and continued to work as migrant laborers even after making records for Falcon Records and developing a following that spanned both sides of the United States-Mexican border. In the 1970s and 1980s Ramiro Cavazos had a record store on South 23rd Street in McAllen, Texas. - Limited access

Later years

Montes died on 28 January 1993 and Cavazos continued performing with other musicians. In 2010, Cavazos participated in a recording that brought together other veteran stars of the norteño genre, including Hector Montemayor, Lorenzo de Monteclaro, and Poncho Villagomez, calling themselves Los Amigos Desde el Rancho.

References

American norteño musicians Norteño music groups Tejano music groups Musical groups from Texas American Latin musical groups Spanish-language singers of the United States Musicians from Nuevo León {{US-musician-stub