Cat No 68993

The extraordinary Charvela Vargas became a Mexican singing legend, investing so much emotion in the canciones rancheras that she left “a little bit of her heart in every song”. Her name has even inspired a new word for the dictionary – chavelazo. In the early fifties she started to perform while hanging out with Frida Kahlo, toured with the famed singer José Alfredo Jiménez and in her own words, drank all the tequila in Mexico. At the age of 60 she retired to obscurity and dried out but after Werner Herzog discovered her and cast her as an Indian woman in his movie “A Cry of Stone” she gradually returned to singing. In 1994 she went into the studio and recorded enough material for 3 CDs, her vocal passion undimmed by age, and this is a selection of the best songs from those releases.