How do you solve a problem like Maria Grever
What a female Mexican composer has connected to the Backstreet Boys
Word on the block is that *NSync is coming back together for Trolls. The 90s can keep both of these trends. BSB4Lyfe! For some, this isn’t big news, but fans wrecked the internet when these rumors hit feeds.
As a young teen, I hoarded my boy band love. LBR I still have a folder full of all my Teen Bop/Beat JTT/BSB posters. Dorian’s lucky they don’t wallpaper the War Room. SEVERAL goldfish of mine were named Donny. I distinctly remember when I first got into Backstreet Boys, my bus riding friends poking fun as I flipped the pages of Teen Beat on the way to school.
A couple of months ago, a friend who feeds my rabbit hole interests with unusual research cat nip shared a story with me they’d heard from a friend about some South African music producer who had cracked the nut with a boy band formula, sky rocketed his label in global fortune, earning him a deal with the German owned BMG label, and how their success nearly crippled the label. Or at least that’s what they could remember. Could I reach out to their friend and dig into what it was all about? No way was this South African producer Lou Pearlman of the famous Boy Band Con scandal.
Low and behold, the story goes that back in the early aughts, German-based BMG music publisher was in dire straits and had to merge it’s music division with Sony in 2004, sell its subsidiary BMG Music Publishing to a French media holding company, only to then sell its 50% ownership of their 2004 Sony BMG partnership label in 2008 all because of the world’s largest independent music organization who graced our worlds with BSB, *Nsync, Britney, etc., Zomba. This is getting too technical.
Basically here’s a simplified explanation in 2002, BMG was stressed because their required option to buy the remainder of what they didn’t own in Zomba was about to expire, allowing South African born-Brit Clive Calder (Zomba founder) to buy back full ownership of his company. It was a tough sell, but BMG ending up caving, paying Calder $2.74 billion for a majority stake in the independent label.
It looks like music press and blogs and so on talk about Calder like he’s some wizard behind the curtain music legend guru and the richest dude in the music industry. He practically brought a family-run international business to its knees. Of course, looking at all the details, there are plenty of opinions I could share about this little history, but what’s more interesting and worth talking about is how Zomba became so successful.
Calder started it with Ralph Simon in 1971 South Africa, moved to London in 1975 where they started Jive Records in 1978.
Among their first hits:
An ear worm gift from me to you for today. *wink* You can thank me later.
Billy Ocean
Def Leppard
Whodunit
Elvis Costello
The Boomtown Rats
They also started relationship with Mutt Lange. Yep, Shania Twain’s infamous ex-husband.
Then in the 80s, they had A Tribe Called Quest and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. In 1988, they started a new small label, Silvertone, that focused on rock and blues, with artists including Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker. 1991 had them riding high on successes with songs featured on Michael Jackson and Bryan Adams releases. Calder was offered purchase sales and partnered with BMG to distribute instead. This post would literally be too long to look at all the artists, albums, songs, hits, etc. they had going for them. So, I’m not going into this, but have fun reading and/or Googling.
What really caught my attention, though, was reading how in 1994 Zomba bought the catalog of a company in San Antonio where I live called Grever International S.A. of Mexico City and Golden Sands Enterprises, Inc. of San Antonio. What the who is that? I’m bad about thinking of San Antonio as an ordinary place where there isn’t a lot of big flashy special things going on. Let’s forget about the Alamo and the River Walk, ok? Apparently, Grever International was literally responsible for the 1990s Tejano music golden age. In fact, the label put San Antonio on the music industry map with many calling it the Tejano music capital of the world. They’re also the reason why we have the Tejano Music Awards, having hosted several of its events in Alamo City, but most importantly it’s inaugural show in 1981.
If you aren’t a Texan or tejano music fan or a San Antonio is lame resident, this likely isn’t that cool. But articles literally reference Grever International as the Motown of tejano music and if you don’t like Motown, how are you even living!? And this wasn’t even the thing I read that had me dead.
Reported to be the largest publisher of Tejano music, Grever/Golden Sands brought us Mazz, La Mafia, Emilio Bavaria, Bronco, Roberto Pulido, Jimmy Edward, La Mafia, Lisa Lopez and…Selena. Yes, that Selena.
I’m not a huge fan of hers which is sacrilegious among most Latine Texans, but whatever. To somehow find connection between the Queen of Tejano Music and beloved deity superstar among MANY U.S. Latine especially in the LGBTQ community and my beloved Backstreet Boys that wasn’t because they did a collaboration together AND I didn’t know about it, not just as a fan, but as a Texan!…had me floored (and embarrassed TBH).
Here’s Bob Grever, Grever International leader, on signing the nalgona Selena:
I was already feeling salty/excited about not knowing this connection when it drastically blossomed as I found out just who Grever’s grandmother was, Maria Grever.
Now, I really don’t have a poetic manner to transition into introducing you to her because I’m still floored by the magnitude of her significance. I’m just gonna rattle things off:
She wrote her first song at the age of 4.
In 1912, at 18, her first record, “A Una Ola” (“To a Wave”), sold millions of copies, and was eventually covered by several singers.
She composed over 1,000 popular songs in her lifetime. Not to mention that she studied piano under Claude Debussy, LITERALLY the most prominent figure in Impressionist music, one of the most notable and influential French musical composers that has ever lived.
She was a part of the Tin Pan Alley song machine alongside the likes of George Gershwin. Cole Porter hand-picked her to translate his hit “Begin the Beguine” into Spanish in 1935…but he wasn’t the only she did the for. You’ll see her name on several pieces of sheet music written by HUGE composers like Porter and Irving Berlin.
She was the first female Mexican composer to achieve international acclaim AND THE FIRST Mexican songwriter to join the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).
She composed background music in films for both Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. One of her songs is listed on the Casino soundtrack.
Her songs are jazz standards in the American Songbook.
Artists like Placido Domingo, Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole, Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, Rod Stewart, Cher, Luis Miguel, Gloria Estefan, Natalie Cole, Barry Manilow, Jose Feliciano, Javier Solis, Natalia Lafourcade, Julio Iglesias, Linda Rondstant, Robbie Williams, Andrea Bocelli and more have released recordings of her songs.
In fact, the English version of Maria’s song “What a Diff'rence a Day Made” won Dinah Washington the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Performance in 1959, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, AND also earned Washington her first top ten pop hit, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. I’ve had Diana Ross’ version on repeat for weeks.
When publishers didn’t like her song Tipitipitin (Ti-Pi-Tin), she started her own company to publish it (Portilla Music Corporation which later would become Grever International S.A.) And the song became a HUGE success when The Andrews Sisters recorded it. (Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, Jackie Gleason would go on to do the same themselves.) The story behind how she wrote this song is literally nuts.
She performed at Carnegie Hall, wrote operas and even a Broadway musical that producers spent something like $80,000 on $1.5 million translated in inflation, but the play bombed. It was not open for long. The only thing that didn’t bomb was the praise for the music.
For christ’s sake the woman has a Google Doodle. Did I mention her songs are jazz standards all jazz musicians play!? There’s so much to share about Maria Grever. This short list barely scratches the surface of her history. Most of it was accomplished between 1912 and the late 1940s, a time that was quite unfavorable for an immigrant Mexican woman, seemingly single mother in the United States. And what’s even more wild is that there’s only ONE book, a college dissertation, that’s been published about her. I mean, I just can’t even. Of course I own it.
Sharing this history about Maria has lived heavy on my mind and heart since I first encountered her. Just the thought that Dinah Washington might not have gotten her flowers while alive without Maria or that Selena might not have become the icon that she is today or that tejano music might not have had it’s day in the sun or that her grandson might not have gone on to build a business that would become a part of an international catalogue of music or that he’d not have worked with major Top 40 artists like the Backstreet Boys and she’d only have ONE BOOK WRITTEN ABOUT HER makes me want to go all Sybil Ludington with a blow horn to make sure everyone knows who she is. This feeling, that’s why representation matters. Not to get all preachy on you. I hear some of y’alls eye rolls.
I wish I’d have known her when I was younger. And I am desperate to know if the Backstreet Boys ever did a song of hers. Out of curiosity, I had my sister look through my grandmothers sheet music to see if by any chance she was lucky to know Maria’s music when it was playing at it’s height on the airwaves. Sure enough, she found a 1926 print of Júrame among her collection. Knowing my grandmother played Maria’s song on the piano really brought this whole mad research journey home, and makes my boy band love all the more sweeter.
TTFN ~ Angelica
Listen to Latino USA’s podcast episode about Maria Grever here.