Hard-luck queen of the conjunto accordion sings for her supper

In the unforgiving, dusty glow of the streetlights in front of Jacala Mexican Restaurant near the Deco District, Eva Ybarra prepares to transform herself.

The grand dame of the conjunto accordion, a hard-luck queen of the instrument for nearly seven decades — playing since she was 4 — doesn’t look like a legend quite yet as she stands curbside just past dusk.

That doesn’t happen until she puts on her three-row button accordion and opens her mouth to sing. Then, stand back.

Her easy smile is more of a grimace this night. Her lower back is acting up, and she’s in pain with spasms. Her eyes reveal it, too. She’s moving with a slight limp.

Eight months ago, Ybarra, 70, lost her house to foreclosure. Gigs with her conjunto group, which includes her brother David Ybarra, have dried up. She can’t make ends meet on her Social Security checks.

Video: Ybarra tells her story

At Jacala, Ybarra waits outside with her assistant, Sandy Rodriguez, for the arrival of two mariachi musicians — Maria Ruiz, who plays the guitarrón (a nylon-string Mexican bass), and Ricardo Urbano, who plays the vihuela (a small, high-pitch five-string guitar).

Seeing Ruiz and Urbano walk up, Rodriguez unpacks Ybarra’s button accordion and helps her boss put it on. Standing behind her, more like a dutiful daughter than a gofer, Rodriguez lifts the tresses off Ybarra’s neck with one hand and helps adjust the instrument’s straps with the other.

It’s time to start “kitty-catting,” to walk into the restaurant unannounced and go table to table, asking customers if they’d like to hear a song for $10.

The plan is to hit two other nearby restaurants — Chris Madrid’s and Los Barrios — on the same cold Friday night. If they’re lucky, they’ll each walk away with at least $100 for the night. “Sometimes it’s only $30,” Ybarra said with a shrug.

That’s been her life for decades, save for those bright spots when she was included in the touring exhibit “American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music” at Museo Alameda several years ago, or briefly recording for Rounder Records or inducted into various conjunto halls of fame or playing the occasional festival or given props by musicologists.

“Mozart had a hard time, too,” Ybarra said. “They ignored him.”

She is a singular figure in conjunto music, a combination of legendary accordionist Esteban “Steve” Jordan’s defiant genius and gospel blues guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s rapturous grace.

As a child performer in the early ’50s, in her homemade cowgirl outfits and standing on beer crates to reach the microphone, she was akin to a conjunto Shirley Temple. The teenage Flaco Jimenez sometimes backed her up.

“There is nobody else like Eva in the world of conjunto,” said Juan Tejeda, producer of the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival at Rosedale Park. “Nobody compares to her.” Yet her name is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Jimenez, his brother and father, Jordan or Valerio Longoria.

Outside Jacala, three grim-faced musicians dressed in matching black mariachi uniforms set off with red bow ties barely make eye contact before walking inside.

“How about a song?” Urbano asks customers at the first table. “¿Algo especial?”

Do the hustle

“It sounds bad when you say it in Spanish,” said Ybarra, explaining the origins of kitty-catting. “The musicians, we say ‘kitty-catting,’ or ‘taloneando.’ It’s the same word like for a prostitute. You’re hustling for money.”

Chicano musicians call it “El Talon.”

Ybarra’s been on the hustle practically since she was born in a small house on Brighton Avenue on the West Side on March 2, 1945. By age 4, she was picking out melodies she heard on the radio on the two-row button accordion of her brother Pedro. She was soon performing in public and on the radio.

“I never wanted to play with dolls,” said Ybarra, recounting an early memory of seeing Mexican singer Lola Beltrán at the movies “and I cried.”

The first song she ever sang was “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” which she had turned into a polka. “It’s like a dream,” she said.

Ybarra has never known any other way of life. When she was 15, she worked briefly for the Mendoza Pecan Co., packing pecans. “I was vomiting every day,” Ybarra recounted. “I hated the smell.” She tried ironing at a dry cleaner. That job lasted a week. As a child, she’d helped pick cotton.

Her father, a truck driver who gathered his wife and nine kids to pick cotton and cucumbers in Arizona, Minnesota and throughout Texas, was her first manager.

She dropped out of high school because she refused to take showers with other girls after physical education. Her father didn’t mind because she was earning money playing and recording in a conjunto group with her brothers during the 1950s.

“My mother didn’t allow her to play the beer joints when she was little,” said Pedro Ybarra, the oldest brother, who taught her to play. They worked Mexican-American dances and weddings. Later, she’d play the bars El Camaroncito, Medrano’s, La Estrellita, El Zarape, El Riviera, Cometa, Cielito Lindo and many others.

But by the early ’70s, Ybarra turned to “El Talon,” working at cantinas and restaurants with mariachi musicians and splitting the money. When she was young, and her health was good, Ybarra, who never married, worked almost every night. Her gimmick back then was a skintight cowgirl outfit complete with holster and pistol.

She’s been kicked out of groups for being a scene-stealer and headstrong. The bickering, jealousy and backstabbing can be part of that world. “Sometimes, I’m a little concerned” about her welfare, Pedro Ybarra said. “She’s my sister.”

Ethnomusicologist Cathy Ragland, producer of the International Accordion Festival and an associate professor at the College of Music at the University of North Texas, worries, too.

“I hate that she’s kitty-catting,” Ragland said. “She’s a brilliant musician. She’s had some opportunities. But some of her problems are of her own making. She won’t go out and push and get the gigs and get the recognition. She kind of expects it has to come to her. She’s suspicious. And she does have a bit of an ego. She is sort of high maintenance.”

Like the lyrics of Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” el talon is her life. Ybarra’s self-image is so wrapped up in performing that she insists that she doesn’t really exist otherwise.

“When I’m onstage, I’m Eva Ybarra,” said Ybarra from a rocking chair in her modest rental house on West Malone Avenue, where she practices and composes daily on her accordion and the other instruments she plays: electric bass, bajo sexto, trumpet, drums, guitar and piano.

Mariachi musician and arranger Henry Gomez feels her pain. He’s been singing for his supper for 40 years at spots like Mi Tierra. “Not every place will let you,” said Gomez, 61. “It’s Russian roulette. Sometimes you go away with nothing.”

Kitty-catting

Ybarra keeps a small image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus taped to the side of her brown Gabbanelli button accordion.

At Jacala, she captures the attention of two women and tries to figure out the songs that they want to hear. Often, customers don’t know the titles — but maybe a line or two from a song.

With quivering vibrato, Ybarra belts out “Cielito Lindo” — the Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay song — and adds a few dance moves. The large turquoise ring on one of the fingers of her right hand dances, too, as she flies on the instrument.

“It takes me back to my younger days,” said Roietta Belk, bobbing back and forth in her colorful Christmas vest between bites.

While some customers wave them off dismissively, Elizabeth Leal loves it. “Mariachi is hip. It’s required,” she said. “Especially with a margarita.”

The trio weaved its way through the crowded restaurant. Ruiz breaks away to pass out business cards. Ybarra makes small talk with passing waiters and waitresses. Young children are particularly enthralled, staring wide-eyed at the musicians. One mom requests Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” for her son who sang it in a school play.

“I thought she was somebody. You could tell,” said C.W. Raetzsch, the boy’s grandfather. Ybarra’s emotional, full-throated performances had other patrons reaching for cellphone cameras.

It was the same reaction, whether at the hamburger spot Chris Madrid’s or at Los Barrios restaurant. At the home of the Macho Burger, Ybarra pulled out all the dramatic stops for a birthday party — flinging her reddish mane back, pumping her fists and exaggerating the quiver of her chin for effect as she sings the crying vocals of “El Rey.”

Overhead, the TVs carry a Spurs game. But Ybarra, her hair matted with perspiration, is leading a chorus of gritos and pretending to swipe a patron’s beer.

By the third destination, Los Barrios, Ybarra is a full-gale diva. “You can feel her. It’s amazing,” said customer David Tobar.

At another table, a young woman watches with her mouth agape as Ybarra solos furiously near her ear.

The instrument’s bellows grunt and breathe loudly like Darth Vader as they move in and out. “I got goose bumps. I almost cried,” said Justine Rivas. Her friend Jeffrey Stave described her as “Slash with an accordion,” referring to the famous Guns N’ Roses guitarist.

Nearly 30 songs, plus tips, is a good night. But Ybarra admits that she’s tired and weary. A locally produced play about her life at the Guadalupe Theater this year left her underwhelmed. She’s practically broke, but she refuses to get a daytime job. She teaches accordion one day a week at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.

She’s praying that 2016 will be a better year. She’s part of the Celebrate San Antonio New Year’s Eve party, which is a start. But she knows she’ll be kitty-catting.

“I’m going to work, even if I’m in a wheelchair,” Ybarra said. “I feel like I’m 20 when I’m performing. I love it.”

hsaldana@express-news.net