Thousands of memories on 33, 45, 78 rpm

George Gongora/Caller-Times

Manuel Ayala’s love of Mexican and Tejano music has led him to collect more than 3,000 albums.

   The first thing Manuel Ayala did when he returned home from the Army in 1971 was to dust off his collection of Tejano and Mexican music and crank up the record player.
   "I was the only Mexican-American in my outfit and all we listened to while I was stationed in Alaska during Vietnam was country-western and soul music," recalled Ayala. "By the time I got back home, I was hungry for my kind of music."
   Thirty years later, Ayala is still enchanted with the music his father introduced him to as a young boy.
   "I start every day listening to DJ Leopoldo Luna playing the old stuff on Majic 105. It's like my first cup of coffee in the morning," said 55-year-old Ayala, who has more than 3,000 records in his Tejano and Mexican music collection, the latter including mariachi, trio and norteño music.
   When Ayala isn't working as a production controller for the Corpus Christi Army Depot, he is co-producer of Alice radio station KOPY's "Ecos del Recuerdo," a 1 ¤ -hour Sunday morning radio show dedicated to playing Tejano and Mexican music from the 1940s and '50s.
   Ayala, who just wrapped up workshops on Tejano and Mexican music for Del Mar College as part of Hispanic Heritage Month, researches every recording artist and song composer. He also travels across South Texas exhibiting his vintage assortment of 78-, 45- and 33-rpm records. Asmall portion of it is currently on loan to Alice's Tejano Roots Hall of Fame Museum, of which he is an advisory committee member.
   "He probably has the number one collection of the kind in the state, if not the country," said Homero S. Vera, a field historian with the South Texas Archives at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. "I don't know of anybody else who would do this like the service that he does."
   Ayala routinely accepts invitations to showcase his exhibit at different venues, including festivals, city fiestas, LULAC conventions and at colleges and universities. Ayala never charges. Nor does he turn away university students who request his expertise for their thesis papers on the origins of Tejano music or recording artists.
   "He's trying to keep alive the heritage of Mexican- Americans and doing this through music, which in a way is a universal language," said Roel G. Carmona, a professor of reading at Del Mar College and member of Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education. "Music is one way of finding out what life was like for our ancestors, what some of their problems were and how they felt about relationships between men and women because the songs reveal an attitude."
   Ayala's oldest records in his collection go back to the early 1930s. Among his most prized records are: "Nunca te Olvidare," recorded by Las Hermanas Gongora in 1949; "Mal Hombre," recorded in 1934 by Lydia Mendoza, Tony de la Rosa's 1949 "Sarita," and Valerio Longoria's 1947 "El Rosalito."
   When he retires, Ayala hopes to pursue his hobby full time.
   "I've actually made people cry," Ayala said. "When they hear a certain song, it reminds them of a loved one they've lost, of when they got married or some other occasion.
   "I feel bad when they cry, but by the same token I'm happy that I've brought back for them a memory. Music is memories. And that is my pay - seeing someone recollect a forgotten memory with a piece of music."