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Crosno Mural at Campbell & Fourth

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:13:39 +0000

Crosno Mural Downtown El Paso January 2009 - Campbell & Fourth

STEVE CROSNO: AN APPRECIATION by Jack Stauder

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:13:18 +0000

Steve and I were best friends in Las Cruces High. We didn’t share every interest, but we both had a taste for adventure and humor – and taking these to the edge. After high school, I went away to college, and Steve and I parted ways in terms of career and lifestyle. But whenever I returned to Las Cruces to visit family, Steve and I always got together, and we could always relate closely due to our shared sense of humor.
Of course everyone who met Steve, or listened to him on the radio, was aware of his funny side. He was a spontaneous comedian. But with friends his sense of humor often ranged wider and deeper than he usually allowed in public. Irony, sarcasm, the absurd, the bizarre – he relished them all, as I did. With other friends, we loved concocting what we called “farces,” which were quite outrageous practical jokes. “Outrageous” was in fact a positive comment in Steve’s vocabulary. And Steve had an “outrageous” side to him that came out in his comedy. But his humor was coupled with a genuinely warm and friendly personality, which is why so many people liked him over the years.
Steve would even try to find the humorous vein in sad or serious situations. Probably this dark humor helped him to deal with reality. He made wisecracks and wry remarks even as he suffered many ailments. That’s why I think he would richly appreciate the recorded message I kept getting as I tried over and over to call him on the day he had died. A deep male voice would tell me that the number I was calling was not available, and that the person I was calling “may be outside of the reception area.” I think Steve would have savored the irony and double meaning of that message.
While the lighter side of Steve was always on public display, and while he was a champion of having fun, his life had its share of doubt, despair, pain, crisis and sheer hard times. Sometimes people who don’t know Steve too well have asked me why, if he worked so many years as a disc jockey, did he end up in reduced circumstances in his later years? Don’t disc jockeys earn lots of money?
Some do, I guess. I don’t really know how much disc jockeys earn in the El Paso market, although Steve’s experience would indicate they don’t get retirement plans or medical insurance. What I do know is that Steve was never much interested in money. Early in his career, he was lured to a big station in San Diego where he could expect a really high salary and a shot at national prominence. But after not too many months, he resigned that job and returned to El Paso. Why? Because he discovered on moving away how much he loved the El Paso/Las Cruces area and how much it was part of him. He loved the people here, the climate, the land – he would never give them up. He was a local patriot.
Working for stations in El Paso must have brought him a good salary, but you would never know it from how he lived. There was no luxury in his life. He had no use for material goods unless they were either necessary or had entertainment value. Instead of buying really expensive electronic systems, his strategy was to use his engineering skills to improve the systems he already
owned.
Steve was generous to a fault with others, helping out with time and money his friends whenever they needed something, and many times helping also fans he hardly knew.
Steve of course soaked up a lot of television, radio, music, movies – entertainment was his passion and profession. But many of his fans would be surprised to know that his greatest recreation consisted of simple excursions into nature – camping in the mountains of the Gila, or walking along the irrigation ditches of the Rio Grande. Almost up to the end of his life he was still daily taking long walks early in the morning and again in the evening with his little dachshund Sharma.
So where did Steve’s money go? It went to the care of his mother in her ailing old age. Over the years, Steve and his sisters sacrificed to provide their mother with the best health care possible, better than Medicare would provide, hiring caretakers to be with her day and night so she could continue to live with comfort and dignity at home. Her children reached to the bottom of their pockets, even mortgaging the house they had grown up in.
When his mother died, Steve had virtually no assets except his home studio and his record collection. To make things worse, during this period he lost his last full-time disc jockey position in El Paso. Steve often fought with the managers of the stations where he worked when they did not appreciate the music he played, when they tried to force another format on him. They brought their ideas from out of town, or were trying to impose some national trend. But the El Paso market was different, and Steve knew this market (his listeners) intimately. His experience and intuition led him to create what’s now recognized as the “El Paso Sound” or “Chicano Soul” – the unique musical mix that together with verbal comedy became the Crosno hallmark. And his radio programs consistently received the area’s highest ratings.
But some radio managers just didn’t get it, so a number of times in his career Steve changed stations in order to play the music he wanted to play, the music his fans wanted. Call it “artistic integrity.” He was not afraid to lose a job, if it was over a matter of principle.
Eventually, however, he lost one job too many. He was reduced to a weekly show whose advertising earned very little, and he returned to Las Cruces to work out of his own studio in the house where he grew up. The house was rescued at the last moment by a fan who purchased it, and let him live on there as caretaker in his few rooms at the back. Steve was able to go onto early Social Security too at about that time, and get along, as the song says, “with a little help from my friends.”
But overall Steve was not unhappy towards the end of his life, even as serious physical afflictions began to undermine his health. He remained productive and creative. He maintained a wide circle of friends. And he could devote himself to his canine companion, Sharma.
Fans of Steve’s might be interested to know that he was pretty religious, in his own way. He certainly believed in God; he and I used to have long discussions about the nature of God. Steve was also convinced by a number of life experiences that the supernatural does exist, a world beyond our own. In his bedroom and studio a visitor would see many prayers he had written out and stuck up, as well as conventional religious items. He often kept burning, especially at night, a large devotional candle in glass with a saint’s image – one of the Catholic candles found in the supermarkets of the area. He burned the candles, he said, as prayers. A couple of times in the past few years when I picked up groceries for him – the essentials were Pepsi and dogfood – a new candle was on the list. I liked to get for him the candle showing the saint with the dog (St. Lazaro?).
What more can I say about Steve, in his memory? Lots. But his many other friends and his huge number of fans will probably say the rest.
I would just like to conclude that he was the best of friends and basically a good person, as he was raised to be. Despite his outrageous streak and complex personality, Steve was actually pretty simple in his relations with people: he was amiable, open, honest, compassionate – and amusing.
Steve had soul, and may his soul rest in peace.

from darrelladams.com

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:12:45 +0000

Up until I was about 12, I didn’t listen to the radio. One Christmas our mom and dad got us a little transistor radio. We listened to KHEY, which was the biggest country/western station around. this mostly because it was what Mom listened to when she was working around the house, which was pretty much all the time. Shortly, though, the kids at school (this was still Putnam) turned us on to KELP.

KELP was a bonafide top forty radio station, and the disc jockey head and shoulders above all others was Steve Crosno. Crosno was completely wired into the music biz and the area music scene, and had a really whacked radio personality.
he was (and still is!) unique and one-of-a-kind.
Crosno also had “Crosno’s Hop” on Saturday afternoons, featuring the dancing couples a la Dick Clark, and regional bands like Sonny & the Sunliners. his show had a decidedly Chicano twist–he knew who his people were.
(“Chicano,” along with “Mexican American” and “Hispanic” weren’t words that were used regularly at this point,
for that matter we had never even heard them used. That came later.)

KDBC vs KVIA on CNN

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:12:41 +0000

Crosno Memorial Video Part Two by Paul Zimmerman

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:12:31 +0000

CROSNO CARICATURE FROM THE EARLY 70'S

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:12:13 +0000

Crosno TV Show May 1976

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:11:39 +0000

STEVE CROSNO RADIO SHOW #243

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:11:20 +0000

[pro-player] http://www.archive.org/download/CrosnoRadioShow0243/Hour0243.mp3[/pro-player]

Wiggin out with Steve Crosno

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:09:42 +0000

[pro-player]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwZfH8kcDF4[/pro-player]

Chicken Fat and Booze: Rest in Peace, Steve Crosno

mrivera915 — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:07:16 +0000

Chicken fat and booze. That was my favorite line when Steve Crosno was a powerhouse on El Paso radio, and he used it often in his efforts to make us laugh. For example, someone would ask: “What’s for lunch at El Paso Tech?” The response was Crosno’s clip: “Chicken Fat and Booze.” And, boy, I cracked up.

He would get into arguments with children, who would often come out on top by putting Crosno down. For example, a little girl’s voice would say: “Steve Crosno is so dumb.” Another voice would chime in: “How dumb is he?” The response would be something like: “Well, he thinks that a Quarterback is a refund.” Or words to that effect. You know, the jokes were corny, but the way Steve said them, they became hilarious.

Steve Crosno was my favorite D.J. He had to be. There was nobody else. Not even Chicano DJs – of which there weren’t that many in 1950s-1960s El Paso — brought tunes to our hearts that impacted on us as Chicanos. Nobody else loved and cared for music produced by Chicanos more than Crosno. And he wasn’t afraid to play the music which was frowned upon by Anglo elders, and, yes, some Chicano elders as well.

Crosno helped Little Joe Hernandez, he helped Sunny Ozuna, and he helped many local Chicano musicians who were just then getting into American rock and roll. He played the tunes for us, but he wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Chicanos were talented too. Even though not too many people believed that our style of music was valid, Crosno did.

He loved Mexican music, and he loved Chicano music – in fact, Crosno loved all types of music and that was readily apparent because he had an eclectic sense of rhythm and appreciation. He loved all types of music, but he really made us Chicanos feel special about the music we liked and danced to. Whether we were in the cafeteria eating lunch and listening to Crosno on KELP-Radio, or whether we were at one of our Fox Hops, if Crosno was the DJ, he made us dance. We just couldn’t help ourselves. He lightened and enlightened our lives.

The fact that he also made fun of himself further endeared him to us Chicanos and Chicanas because he wasn’t making fun of us he was making fun of himself and we related to that. Anglos, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. But, not Crosno. He knew what he was doing. He was welcoming us into the general circle of humanity. He knew that some people didn’t like Mexicans, he knew that there was racism against us, so he defused that. He was silly, irreverent, hilarious, and accepting.

He accepted us, he accepted our music. That ridiculous wig he wore to hide his own baldness became his trademark, and I never saw him without it. Even the wig was funny, with the pompadour and the five-inch sideburns. Nobody wore hair like that in those days, but Crosno did. In fact, it would have been impossible for anyone to have hair like that, but Crosno did. So, we laughed the harder.

His television show, “Crosno’s Hop” became the place to see and be seen, as every Chicano who could boogie and mambo his way through life showed up bringing his favorite girl. I remember once, asking beautiful Judy to go to the dance with me. When she said yes, I was flabbergasted. I never expected Judy to say yes to homely little me, so when she did I was shocked. Because I didn’t have a car, there was no way I could take her, so I had to talk my way out of it. Fortunately, Judy understood, but she did make me promise to dance with her at the next Fox Hop. Me? With Judy, my dream girl?

Yes, and Crosno made it possible. Even if I never took Judy to the Crosno Hop, she had said yes and that was enough for me. Her “yes” gave me more confidence at 16 than I would’ve had any other way. Crosno loved Chicanos in El Paso so much that not even a big money job in San Diego could keep him away. So, he stayed and we loved him for it. He never left for bigger markets, although he could have. He was one of us, he was an honorary Chicano, and he made us feel loved and wanted.

He made us Chicanos feel like we were part of the general wheel of humanity. He seemed to understand what we were going through, but he never preached, never raised the race issue. He didn’t have to. Just his acceptance of our music and of our way of life was enough to keep us going. He never berated Chicanos, he never berated Anglos, he never berated anybody. He just played music – he played Chicano Soul Music, and we loved him for it.

Steve, thank you for everything that you did for us Chicanos, we’ll never forget you. You brought us laughter, you brought us respect and understanding. You knew who we were and what we were about. You never made fun of us, never ridiculed our existence. On the contrary, you made fun of yourself. You made us laugh when times were tough for us, and you made us sensitive to our own power, our own humanity.

You know, Steve, when you were asked why you had stayed in radio for such a long time, you responded: “What drives me to keep going is the people and making them laugh – in a way I guess I’m looking for love and acceptance.” I’ve got news for you, vato. You’ve always had love and acceptance, especially from us Chicanos. Que en paz descanses, hermano. We miss you already.

Sin Fin

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Joe Olvera is a freelance writer who lives in beautiful El Paso. He can be reached at jolvera@aliviane.org.