Planning an Event? Let the Community Know on Times of San Diego’s Free Events Calendar
San Diego is beautiful nearly all the year round, thanks to sun, sand and sea.One of the many fringe benefits of our bi-national location – there’s always something to do. Our region boasts an amazing variety of events, big and small, to celebrate everything you can imagine. Art. Community. Fitness. The outdoors. And so much more.That’s why we’re pleased to introduce you to our latest addition to Times of San Diego, our new events calendar. And you can contribute too. In fact, we’re counting on it.The calendar will include events at all of our leading venues, from Snapdragon Stadium and Viejas Arena to the La Jolla Playhouse and the San Diego Museum of Art.But we want to hear about your community events too – street festivals, classes and workshops, yoga and workouts, church concerts, story hours and more. And when you share them with us, we’ll share them with our 600,000 monthly readers.It’s easy to add your event. Just click on the blue “Create an Event” button and follow the instructions. It’s free, though you can pay a small fee to promote an item.Take a look when you’re searching for a fun thing to do or share something you think your neighbors would like to know more about. Highlights from the calendar can be viewed on the bottom of the Times of San Diego home page or see it in full here. Please take a look, select your favorite category and explore all of the great things San Diego has to offer.
How National City’s Rosie Hamlin, 15, Made ‘Angel Baby’ a Hit, Chicano Anthem
Rosalie “Rosie” Hamlin Mendez was admired by the likes of John Lennon, Linda Ronstadt and Robert Plant. Image via YouTubeLove can transcend race, distance and time.Rosie Hamlin proved that love can even transcend death.Her music has.Rosie and the Originals have entered immortality.Hamlin died in 2017 in remote Belen, New Mexico, unleashing an outpouring of grief and nostalgia among older Chicanos and undying gratitude among younger ones who believe Rosie paved the way and made so many things possible for la raza.Not bad for a 15-year-old National City girl who kicked around Rachel Avenue with the rest of los chavalitos on the northeastern edge of town watched closely by the cops but no one else.Chicano National AnthemRosie and the Originals were one-hit wonders who blazed across the pop charts as teenagers then disappeared from radio like a fading comet melted by the sun.It was a hit, though, that changed popular music and reshaped Chicano culture.Rosalie Hamlin Mendez, a preternaturally talented 15-year-old singer-songwriter, recorded “Angel Baby” during the summer of 1960 in a makeshift studio stuffed into the corner of a ratty recording studio in rural San Marcos. Her teenage friends who huffed through 30 takes had no idea they were making history.“‘Angel Baby’ is the Chicano national anthem,” said Herman Baca, the 81-year-old chairman of the seminal Committee on Chicano rights. “Rosie was the first Chicana to have a hit record and the first Chicana in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.”Baca — a Southwestern College Honorary Degree recipient — is one of two living people painted on the iconic Founders Mural in Chicano Park. (The other is fellow SC Honorary Degree recipient Dolores Huerta, the 94-year-old United Farm Workers matriarch.) His friends insist he knows as much about the music of the 1950s and ‘60s as he does la causa of the 1970s and ‘80s.“Rosie was one of the most important Chicanas ever,” Baca said. “She was a pioneer. She was a source of pride and inspiration.”And she could flat out sing.Send My Love to RosieHamlin was revered for her crystalline soprano voice, flawless technique and falsetto that seemed to brush against the gates of Heaven. Rock-n-roll legends John Lennon and Jackie Wilson counted her among their favorite singers. The Beatles name checked her in the Abbey Road Studio. The Rolling Stones wanted to perform with her. Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant had a serious teenage crush on her.Plant said he loved “Rosie’s enchanting voice.” In the liner notes of the 1973 Led Zeppelin mega-hit album “Houses of the Holy,” the band inserted the plaintiff homage: “Whatever happened to Rosie and the Originals?” Plants sings about his adolescent love for “my dear Rosie” in the Zeppelin song “How Many More Times.”“I got a little schoolgirl and she’s all mine,” Plant sang. “Oh, Rosie, oh, girl/Steal away, baby, steal away/Little Robert Anthony wants to come and play/Why don’t cha come with me, baby, steal away.”Plant was 12 or 13 when he first heard “Angel Baby,” he said, and remembers the then-16-year-old Rosie as “exquisite.”Lennon called “Angel Baby” one of his all-time favorite songs and recorded his own version in 1973. He said in a 1969 Life Magazine interview that Rosie Hamlin was one of his favorite singers. He often sang improvised snippets of “Angel Baby” while messing around in the studio with The Beatles at Abbey Road or Twickenham. Sometimes Paul McCartney joined in.In 1973, Lennon recorded his own version of “Angel Baby.” As the opening of the song purred to life, Lennon said “Send my love to Rosie, wherever she may be.” Hamlin later in her life said the John Lennon cover of “Angel Baby” was her all-time favorite.Linda Ronstadt, a SoCal Chicana from Tucson, credits Hamlin with “cracking the tortilla ceiling.” She recorded “Angel Baby” in 1996 for her album “Dedicated to the One I Love.”Humble Barrio BeginningsRosalie “Rosie” Hamlin Mendez was born July 21, 1945, in Klamath Falls, Oregon to a White military father and Latina madre. She spent her toddler years in Alaska before her family returned to California. Her father and grandfather were musicians who could sing.Her abuelo worked in Vaudeville and played banjo and harmonica. Her father played the guitar and wrote songs. Young Rosie soaked it in. La familia moved to National City in 1956.At 13 she yearned to break into music. She auditioned over the phone for a country western band, claiming to be 16. She landed the gig and said she was happy to sing for tips.When she was 14 she wrote a poem for Robert, her first boyfriend. It was titled “Angel Baby.” Later she plunked out the chords and swooping melody on the piano at the home of her cousin. “It was puppy love,” said Hamlin in a radio interview later in her life. “The first time I performed it was at a rehearsal, on a piano. I was shy and didn’t want to play it.”John Chavez, 82, was the guitarist in the first band Rosie sang with, a group of National City Junior High School students put together by her cousin Victor Hernandez in 1958 or ‘59. It was not to be Rosie’s vehicle to fame. Hernandez fired her for missing rehearsals, Chavez recalled.“I remember that ‘Angel Baby’ became a big hit right after her cousin threw her out of his band,” Chavez said with a hint of bemusement.“Not long after Victor tossed her out of his band (my neighbor) Donnie Diffenbaugh called to tell me that Rosie had a (Top 10) hit record – ‘Angel Baby.’ At first I did not believe him.”Chavez said he did not know Hamlin well when they were teenagers, but they became dear friends decades later when they coincidently moved as senior citizens to New Mexico. Hamlin was near the end of her performing career when she settled into small town life in Las Lunas. (Another coincidence — Hamlin’s new home was adjacent to Baca’s native Los Lentes, New Mexico.)“Rosie’s father was in the military when she was a young girl and they moved around a lot,” Chavez said. “At one point her mom said the family needed to settle down, so they did, in National City. Rosie was 50% Chicano because her dad was a gringo, but she totally identified with the Chicano community throughout her entire life.”In 1960, her mother bought her an old upright piano, the kind found in dusty wooden saloons of the Old West. Her Tia Socorro taught her four-chord progressions, the building blocks of song writing, including the classic C-Am-F-G7 structure so popular in 1950s rock, doo wop and R&B that Rosie used in “Angel Baby.” Rosie learned the funkiness of honky tonk, propulsive boogie woogie and the aquifer of American music, the blues.Her uncle’s girlfriend, Gloria Moore, introduced her to high school guitarists David Ponci and Noah Tafolla, and bassist Tony Gomez. Drummer Carl Von Goodat and saxophonist Alfred Barrett joined soon after.The Originals were born.Can’t You Mow the Lawn Tomorrow?On a hot summer day in 1960 they piled into a car and headed to San Marcos. Hamlin recalled “driving into the middle of nowhere” seeing “cows and farms as far as the eye could see” to record “Angel Baby.” Los Angeles was too far and the funky set-up in a rural airplane hangar with a two-track set up was the only recording facility in San Diego County.The old airplane hangar had just the tape machine, a piano and a set of drums.“The owner had airplane parts all over the place,” Hamlin recalled in a 1964 interview. “He had a corner set up with recording equipment.”There was one big problem before they even got started. One band member was nowhere to be found.“Our sax player, Alfred Barrett, was not with us when we arrived at the studio,” Hamlin later recalled in her autobiography. “He said he’d be joining us later. As it got later, we started to worry. (Guitarist) Noah (Taffola) called Alfred at home.“We all became really worried when we heard Noah ask ‘Can’t you mow the lawn tomorrow?’ Alfred’s mother was very strict and he couldn’t go anywhere until he mowed and raked the yard. We realized then he wasn’t going to make it. So there we sat all bummed out until Noah got this great idea. He’d played a little sax and decided to teach our bass player, Tony Gomez, the sax part. I guess the rest is history. Not the best sax solo, but one anyone to this day can hum.”Gomez got many opportunities to practice. One-take wonders they were not. Rosie and her original Originals required more than 30 takes to get a master.Each time they made a mistake, they had to stop and start over. Even when they were done, they were not finished.When they had a master recording of “Angel Baby,” the engineer asked, “What would you like to put on the other side?”“We had somehow forgotten that a 45 record had two sides,” Hamlin said in a radio interview. “That is how ‘Give Me Love’ became the B side.”No one in the L.A. record industry would even speak to the scruffy gaggle of National City teenagers from Sweetwater High School with a song recorded by a 15-year-old Latina in an airplane hangar.Plan B was to ask the manager at a Kresge’s department store in San Diego if he would play the record in the listening booth at his store and sell copies if people liked it.Teenagers who heard “Angel Baby” at Kresge’s clamored to buy it. A man from West Pico Merchandising, the distributor for Highland Records, happened to be in the store when he witnessed commotion over the song.He listened to it and sensed a hit.“Bring your master and be ready to make a deal,” he told Rosie and the Originals. “We are going to make you stars.”This Is By a 15-Year-Old Girl From National CityRosie and the boys had given one of their two masters of “Angel Baby” to their supporter at Kresge’s. The other they carried around and spun on friends’ record players like teenagers did in the vinyl era.In the process of playing the disk in bedrooms, kitchens and patios across National City and Shell Town, they had ever-so-slightly damaged the master and it developed a small skip. To this day the original “Angel Baby” recording retains the skip.The band met with Highland Records and gave up the skipping master but left without a contract. Three weeks went by without any contact from the record company.Then, unexpectedly, the most blessed sound. They heard “Angel Baby” on the national broadcast of K-Day Radio with Allen Freed — the legendary DJ who in 1964 would ignite Beatlemania in America.Freed could smell a hit like cempasuchil on a Dia de los Muertos altar.“This is by a 15-year-old girl from National City, California, named Rosie,” barked Freed. “This is going to be a hit, guys and gals!”Freed, as usual, was right. He put “Angel Baby” into his regular rotation. DJs from San Ysidro to New York City, from Seattle to Key Largo joined him.Freed often played “Angel Baby” 10 times during his show.“Angel Baby” rocketed up the charts. It hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was a staple on jukeboxes, at high school dances and radios from coast to coast. It was loved by truck drivers and lowriders, Latinos and gringos, mods and rockers, teens and adults.It was also a Top 10 hit in Canada, England and Australia, and a Top 40 hit in much of Europe.Baca said “Angel Baby” hit him “like a tsunami” and stopped him in his tracks.“Whoa! That’s Rosie!” he said he recalled. “My classmate at Sweetwater High School!”Chicanas did not sing rock-n-roll at the dawn of the 1960s, Baca said.Except for Rosie.Solemente Rosie.The Chicano national anthem stirred to life.So did another episode of the sorry history of the mistreatment of Latinas. “Underage” Rosie, now 16, had to bring her mother to sign a contract. The record label listed bandmate David Ponci as the writer of “Angel Baby” rather than Hamlin because he was the oldest member of the group.“I guess they figured young Chicanas couldn’t write songs,” said Baca. “Reminds me of the old saying, ‘Professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built Noah’s Ark.’ ‘Angel Baby’ and the ark outlasted the so-called professionals.”It took Hamlin nearly 20 years and a string of lawsuits to collect royalties due her.Rolling with the Rolling StonesIn 1960, Hamlin was the first Latina ever invited to perform on the legendary Dick Clark program “American Bandstand.” She sang “Lonely Blue Nights.”Rosie and the Originals performed a series of shows with Jackie Wilson at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre in New York City and other lustrous shows in the early 1960s, but nothing like a November 1964 gig just a few miles up the road from National City.Rosie and the Originals shared the bill with the Rolling Stones.With the British Invasion of rock bands like The Beatles, The Who and The Kinks striding across the Atlantic and conquering the radio airwaves, scores of American acts with their roots in the 1950s were being pushed aside.Rosie and the gang, however, were embraced by the Brits and found new audiences performing with English rock acts who loved the do-it-yourself vibe of “Angel Baby” and Rosie’s transcendent singing.It was the Stones’ first San Diego appearance and a historical event for the Balboa Park Bowl, a small concrete stadium on what is now the football field at San Diego High School.Tickets were $3.50 to hear the lineup of Rosie and the Originals, Joel Scott Hill and the Invaders, The Misfits and Mick Jagger and the boys.Promoter Danny Millsap, who ran a local record store, told the San Diego Reader in an April 1998 article that he paid the Stones $400 and Rosie and The Originals $500.“Why not? Rosie was more popular then,” said Baca.Hamlin toured and did special engagements with and without The Originals into the 21st century – including a memorable 2002 series of appearances in Hollywood and New York’s Madison Square Garden.She said she was blessed to have performed with Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Freddy Fender, Johnny Otis, Big Joe Turner, Big Momma Thornton, Thurston Harris and many of the talented East Los Angeles groups like Malo, Tierra and El Chicano.Golden Years of an American OriginalHamlin said she always wanted to record a bilingual version of “Angel Baby” to honor her Chicano roots. In 1998, Rosie and the Originals laid down a Spanglish version that became a classic.She released it on her 2001 album “Angel Baby Revisited,” which features studio recordings and live performances. The Spanglish version became America’s No. 1 cruising song and can be heard even in White bastions of the United States like Idaho and Kansas on cruising nights.Mexican superstar Jenni Rivera recorded the Spanglish version with a Banda arrangement that appeared on her best selling album “Se Las Voy a Dar a Otro.”Hamlin’s concerts tailed off as painful fibromyalgia sapped her energy and forced her off her feet. She moved to New Mexico to be near her children. She also struck up a close friendship with her former junior high bandmate John Chavez, who coincidentally lived about an hour away in Santa Fe.“We were very close,” he said. “We were two San Diegans living in New Mexico. When we renewed our friendship, Rosie would still go out on tour, but she was fading out of the music business.”None of her friends or biographers can say for sure when her last performance was, but it was likely shortly after the Madison Square Garden extravaganzas.Fibromyalgia finally drove Hamlin off the stage and into her retirement life of painting and gardening, said Chavez.“Rosie was an avid gardener and a prize-winning painter,” he said. “Her paintings are amazing.”Hamlin was able to see Rosie and the Originals portrayed by Jeanette Jurado of the band Expose in the 1995 Chicano film “My Family/Mi Familia” directed by Gregory Nava starring Jimmy Smits, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales and Jennifer Lopez. Jurado performed “Angel Baby” in its entirety in the film.Hamlin became the national spokesperson for the Fibromyalgia Foundation and a cherished if low-keyed member of her New Mexico community.“Everybody loved Rosie,” said Chavez. “She was always sweet and kind to everyone.”Hamlin died in her sleep in Belen, New Mexico, on March 30, 2017. She was 71.“I spoke with Rosie the day before she passed away in the spring of 2017,” said Chavez. “She really struggling with the fibromyalgia. It was her time.”Chavez, even seven years later, said he is still heartbroken by the loss of his dear comadre.“I miss my best friend,” he said. “She is now truly an Angel Baby.”Even after Hamlin died, “Angel Baby” lived on in recording studios, oldies radio programs, lowrider rallies and in concert venues from the Arctic Circle to Oaxaca.In the summer of 2018, “Angel Baby” found its largest audience ever when the Spanish version recorded by Rosie and the Originals was featured in an El Pollo Loco commercial for its Te Amo sauces promotion.New generations watching large screen, wall-mounted televisions heard the signature guitar opening and Hamlin’s soaring soprano almost 40 years after their parents and grandparents heard them on their AM radios and black and white TV sets with rabbit ear antennae.Rosie Opened Doors for LatinasDr. Gerardo Rios, 47, professor of Mexican American Studies and History at Southwestern College, said the 1960s were a time of awakening for Latinos and Chicanos.It saw the beginning of the United Farm Workers, the emergence of great leaders like Cesar Chavez and Huerta, and demands for voting rights and civil rights. Chicanos started to advocate for themselves and push back against systematic inequalities. Rock music provided the soundtrack.“Rock and Roll was the expression of rebellion,” he said. “It was a youthful expression of energy. Let me shape this world! Let me be a part of this world. Let me live in it as well.”Rosie and the Originals are iconic for Chicanos because people of color finally saw a Latina on the record charts and on television performing alongside White musicians.“For Chicanos it was an awakening,” he said. “For Chicanos it meant so much. It meant visibility for the community.”Revered San Diego County Chicana leader Rachael Ortiz, the 83-year-old executive director of San Diego’s iconic Barrio Station, was Hamlin’s cousin and grew up with her in National City.“I am so happy that someone is finally acknowledging her,” Ortiz said choked with emotion. “I’m crying because I could not be with Rosie when she was dying because I was with my sister at the end and then Rosie died right after. I lost them both. I loved them both. Rosie loved my sister and my sister loved Rosie dearly.”Ortiz said her sister sat next to Hamlin at the piano for stretches as she composed “Angel Baby” in 1960.“We all loved music,” Ortiz said. “We all sang in church. We sang gospel music and rhythm and blues.”Barrio Station, the 54-year-old service organization in Logan Heights, has been honored locally and nationally for its altruistic work in disadvantaged communities. Ortiz is a 2004 Southwestern College honorary degree recipient.“Rosie worked with me at Barrio Station for a while,” Ortiz said. “She helped a group called The Loganettes, which sang oldies. They learned a lot from her and she loved teaching. She was very gracious to give back to the community.”Hamlin also helped with fund-raising at Barrio Station, Ortiz said.“I loved having her here with us,” she said. “It was a special time. She was the pride of National City. My angel baby.”Former Southwestern College President Norma Hernandez said she worked at Barrio Station with Hamlin “around 1972” before starting her career at the college as a counselor.“She was very sweet and nice,” Hernandez said. “A joy to be with.” Writer Jennifer Cooke said “Angel Baby” is one of the greatest and most important artistic creations ever to come out of San Diego County.“‘Angel Baby’ by Rosie and the Originals should be the official song of National City, California the way states have flowers and universities have mascots,” she said.“For generations of kids who grew up in neighborhoods like mine, ‘Angel Baby’ will always be the anthem of our childhood and an indelible part of the soundtrack of our lives. ‘Angel Baby’ is, without a doubt, number one.”Cooke said only locals knew that Hamlin attended Ira Harbison Elementary School, National City Juniior High and Sweetwater High School.“It was a point of pride for anyone in our much-maligned little suburb of San Diego,” she said. “We have Tom Waits and we have Rosie.”John Lennon and Robert Plant “have good taste,” Cooke said.“I will never forget listening to Art Laboe’s oldies show on 92.5 where all the girls would dedicate ‘Angel Baby’ to their boyfriends in jail or hearing the song pump out on loudspeakers of the lowriders that cruised down Highland Avenue on a Saturday night.”“Angel Baby” burned itself into the hearts of her generation, Cooke said.“I listened as I cried my pre-teen heart out about my beloved Albert who liked Martha better than me, and I scribbled furiously in my Hello Kitty diary about the injustice of it all,” she said.“There seemed to be no song in the world that could adequately capture the excruciating poignance of adolescent love the way that Rosie Hamlin did in those simple lyrics: When you are near me, my heart skips a beat/I can hardly stand on my own two feet.”Cooke said she and her friends were amazed to learn later in life that John Lennon was such a Rosie Hamlin fan.“If one of the world’s greatest ever songwriters called ‘Angel Baby’ one of his all-time favorites . . . well, that’s really saying something for a little girl from National City.”Alexa Lima is editor-in-chief of the Southwestern College Sun student newspaper. She has won national awards for editorials and coverage of Native Americans. The Sun is the recipient of the 2024 ACP Pacemaker Award, the Pulitzer Prize of college news media. A version of this story first appeared in the Sun.
Academy Reveals 323 Films Eligible for Oscars, Including Golden Globe Winners
Zoe Saldaña in “Emilia Perez.” (Photo via “Emilia Pérez” official trailer)A total of 323 feature films are eligible for consideration for the 2024 Academy Awards, including 207 that met the criteria for consideration for best picture, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Monday.The announcement comes on the heels of Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards, which unofficially kicked off the Hollywood awards season. The films “Emilia Pérez” and “The Brutalist” took home the top movie prizes, winning for best motion picture musical/comedy and drama, respectively.Those films are both among those declared eligible for the Academy Awards.To be eligible in general categories for the 97th Academy Awards, feature films must have opened in a commercial motion picture theater in at least one of six U.S. metropolitan areas — Los Angeles County; the city of New York; the Bay Area; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; and Atlanta, Georgia, between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2024, and run for at least seven consecutive days in the same venue. The films must be more than 40 minutes long.Qualifying for the best picture category, films must be eligible for the general categories and producers must submit an Academy Representation and Inclusion Standards form. They also must complete an expanded theatrical release standard, including a run of at least seven days in 10 of the top 50 U.S. markets, no later than 45 days after their initial release in 2024.Academy members will vote on nominations Wednesday through Sunday. Nominations will be announced Jan. 17.The Academy Awards will be presented March 2 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
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