When
Frank Solis found the tapes, he almost threw them out.
He and his family as well as the music world had assumed that his father, Michigander and Tejano music pioneer Martin Huron Solis Jr., had never recorded the songs that made him a pioneer in Detroit’s music scene of the 1940s and ‘50s. Though Martin was inducted into the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame in 2018, he was best known for his compelling live performances and hadn’t ever released an album with his fellow musicians, who made up Los Primos.
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Martin Huron Solis Jr. is the first Michigan resident to be inducted into the Tejano ROOTS Hall of Fame Museum in Alice, Texas.
Solis was born in San Antonio in 1929 and began playing the guitar at age six. Well we were migrant workers. And we didn’t have a job. My dad he decided we should come to Michigan. And that’s why I got here. That must have been 1948 or something like that. I remember the trip and it was nine of us at the time. Total, my mother had 12 children. We arrived at Coleman, Michigan near Bay City, he said.