ESQUIVEL is DEAD!!!! - Space-Age Melody Maker Esquivel Dies

By Jon Wiederhorn 01/09/2002

Juan Garcia Esquivel, the '60s lounge music composer who became a belated hero for a community of '90s post-angst alternative irony buffs, died at his home in Jiutepac, Morelos, Mexico on January 3. He was 83.

The musician had been bedridden with a back injury for nearly 10 years. Three months ago he suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak and caused paralysis in one-half of his body. He had a second stroke on December 30 that led to his death.

Esquivel was born on January 20, 1918 in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico. In his youth he was a popular pianist and bandleader in his homeland, and was a regular attraction on Mexican radio and television. He studied briefly at the Juilliard School in New York and scored and starred in two Mexican movies, "Cabaret Tragico" and "Las Locuras del Rock 'n' Roll," and at age 29 was lured back to the U.S. by RCA Victor Records, which signed him to a recording career.

At the time, record labels were only beginning to release stereo albums, and Esquivel fully explored the medium, integrating panning and sonic separation into his winsome melodies.

Between 1957 and 1967 Esquivel wrote and released 11 studio albums of effervescent, easy-listening pop flecked with strange galactic sound effects, quirky noises and instrumentation that was exotic for the time (theremin, early Fender-Rhodes keyboards, Chinese bells and bass accordion).

His most played composition, however, is "Universal Emblem," a three-second-long flurry of sound that has for decades accompanied the Universal Studios logo at the end of hundreds of television shows.

In the '80s Esquivel returned to Mexico, where he worked on music for a children's TV show.

In 1994, in response to a renewed underground interest in kitschy martini-pop, Bar/None Records issued the Esquivel compilation Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. Other collections followed, including Music From a Sparkling Planet (1995) and Merry Xmas From the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (1996). Esquivel's whimsical melodies were also featured in numerous films, including "The Big Lebowski," "Four Rooms" and "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America."

"The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening has called Esquivel "the great unsung genius of space age pop." Although Esquivel enjoyed a career revival in the '90s, a broken hip and aggravated spinal injury left him bedridden and unable to walk. But while he was musically incapacitated, he retained his Austin Powers-like taste for indulgence. In May 2001, at the age of 82, he married his 25-year-old home health care worker, Carina Osario, his sixth wife.

After his death he was cremated and his ashes were sent home to his wife. He is survived by his son Mario Eddi Garcia Servin.