Lydia Mendoza or "The Lark of the Border" as she was later known, recorded "Mal Hombre" just before her eighteenth birthday with a lyric she found on a bubble gum wrapper ( according to the book). The success of this song brought Mendoza from playing at street corners and restaurants--making barely enough money for food-- to an icon of Mexican-American music. The success of the Texas-born songstress launched a surge of similar recordings in the 1930s and 1940s.
Equipped with her twelve string guitar, Lydia intones Mal Hombre, or "Bad Man", with a passion and maturity that belies her young age. The simplistic song about a chauvinistic man abusing women didn't impress me at first listen, but I eventually warmed up to it and don it with my "worth hearing" seal.
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