Chingas
Jonny Chingas
February 27, 2009
Twenty-four years ago this week I photographed Jonny Chingas at the Griffith Observatory. A few months ago I heard Jonny's "Se Me Paro" during a birthday party at a Temple City park and decided to hunt for the 2 5x7 BW prints that still exist. I have asked few people and no one seems to remember when Jonny died.
Here is an excerpt from a Don Snowden story that was published in the Los Angeles Times on 3/1/1985:
Nobody needs to tell Jonny Chingas about the difficulties of the do-it-yourself approach to pop music. The singer/saxophonist/keyboardist, who brings his eight-piece band to the Lingerie tonight, has been acting as a one-man record company during his seven-year campaign to break into the pop mainstream.
"I'm trying to follow the American dream," he said in his San Fernando Valley home. "I'm not going crooked. I'm not into drugs or cheating anybody. I'm struggling and I don't have enough capital to work with, but I'm still going forward.
"I'm just trying to make it and if nobody can help me, I have the determination to do it myself. I don't care if I have to press the records myself or sell them at the swap meets."