In 1965, Robert “Rabbit” Jaramillo and his friends were on the cusp of becoming rock ‘n’ roll royalty.
Their Eastside quartet, Cannibal and the Headhunters, had a spring smash with “Land of 1,000 Dances.” The hypnotic tune with a memorable “nah na na na nah” chorus earned them appearances on TV music variety programs like “American Bandstand.” They played at concerts with chart toppers like the Temptations, the Righteous Brothers, Marvin Gaye and the Rolling Stones. The vocal group’s tightly choreographed performances impressed the Beatles, who asked them to be an opening act for their second U.S. tour that summer.
The Headhunters returned to L.A. in August with the Fab Four to play two shows at the Hollywood Bowl just weeks after the Watts riots. Jaramillo danced with such energy that his pants ripped while he and the others scooted across the stage on their behinds, drawing delighted shrieks from the hometown crowd.
“We were the act, the act!” Jaramillo told the Times in 2015. “Didn’t make no difference what color you are. We’re here, we’d perform, and we’d do our best to show ‘em a good time.”
When the Beatles run ended a few nights later, the Headhunters went back on the road through the fall with another popular British Invasion act, the Animals.
But Jaramillo and his friends never recorded another hit, and he left the group two years later.
“He wanted to keep going, but he needed to make money for his family,” said his daughter, Julie Trujillo. “He always had regret about that.”
Jaramillo died Aug. 8 of congestive heart failure in Pueblo, Colo. He was 78.
After leaving the band, he slunk into such musical obscurity that when Tom Waldman began to research what became his 1998 book “Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roll from Southern California,” the word was that the former Headhunter was already dead. Instead, Waldman found him in Pueblo, where Jaramillo had moved in the late 1970s to continue his post-Headhunters career as a railroad signal maintainer.
His still-strong tenor was reserved for belting gospel songs at the Pentecostal church he attended.
“He was serious and thoughtful about his career, not bitter but not exuberant either,” said Waldman, who ended up writing a musical based on a fictionalized version of the Headhunters. “But certainly, there was always a sense of pride of what they had done.”
The book sparked renewed interest in the Eastside’s 1960s Chicano rock scene, and Jaramillo reunited with bandmates to perform for a few more years before adoring crowds. As the last surviving Headhunter, he appeared in documentaries and radio interviews for the rest of his life to recount that magical summer of 1965 when four Mexican Americans from L.A. proved to the world they could shine next to some of the biggest rock groups of all time.
Born in the Northern California city of Colusa to Mexican immigrants, Jaramillo and his family moved to Boyle Heights when he was young. He grew up in an era when young Mexican Americans on the Eastside were absorbing genres from across Los Angeles — doo-wop from South L.A., surf rock from the coast, the tight harmonies and lovelorn lyrics of Mexican trios — to create a distinct genre later on called Chicano rock or brown-eyed soul. While attending Lincoln High, Jaramillo, his brother Joe and their friend Richard Lopez started a group called Bobby and the Classics, practicing their moves inside what used to be a chicken coop in the Jaramillos’ backyard.
With the addition of Frankie Garcia as lead singer, Bobby and the Classics renamed themselves the Headhunters after a shrunken head that Jaramillo hung on the rearview mirror of his ’49 Chevy. Their stage personas were based on their neighborhood nicknames: Cannibal for Garcia, Scar for Lopez, YoYo for Joe. Robert was Rabbit because of his large front teeth.
The teens quickly became local favorites, performing at church halls and auditoriums. A local producer recorded “Land of 1,000 Dances” with members of car clubs singing along and clapping in the studio to re-create the verve of an Eastside party. It topped out at No. 30 on the Billboard charts, which Jaramillo found out while picking peaches in Northern California with his brother and Lopez to help their family’s finances.
“We get a call — ‘You guy’s gotta come back! The record’s a hit!,” Jaramillo recounted decades later in a documentary. “‘We gotta go to this ‘Hullabaloo’ show!’ We made enough money to get our sorry butts back home.”
Eastside Chicano rock group Cannibal and The Headhunters perform on the NBC TV music show ‘Hullabaloo’ in March 1965 in New York City, New York. Robert “Rabbit” Jaramillo is second from right.
(Hullabaloo Archive/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Their rollicking appearance on the nationally syndicated program was what members claimed caught the attention of Paul McCartney, who supposedly told Beatles manager Brian Epstein he wanted the “Nah Nah boys” to open for them.
“I remember asking him how big of a deal that was, and Dad said, ‘I never knew anything about the Beatles,’” Trujillo said. “To him, all he cared about was that he was singing.”
Trujillo said her father shared anecdotes over the years about the Headhunters’ short stint in the spotlight: the time he and Ringo Starr sneaked away from chaperones to get high, or when Cher sat on Jaramillo’s lap while the two took a crowded taxi somewhere.
“I do remember my dad saying that their manager screwed them a bit, that they weren’t getting any money and the guys just had to start careers,” Trujillo said. “But we didn’t see him as a famous person. We just saw him as Dad.”
The performing itch returned to Jaramillo when he retired from the Santa Fe railroad in the 1990s and moved back to Southern California. Gregory Esparza joined the Jaramillo brothers and Lopez in 1999 to take the place of Garcia, who had died three years earlier. Esparza said those Headhunters never performed much publicly because of a copyright dispute over the name, but he remembered rehearsing with the original members “hundreds” of times.
“It was about reliving what they had at such a young age — reaching the top of the mountain at faster-than-light speed,” said Esparza, who’d go on to front another legendary Eastside Chicano rock group, Thee Midniters. “Getting that recognition really meant a lot to them.”
He recalled a festival in San Bernardino where the promoter told the group that they wouldn’t get paid if they identified themselves as the Headhunters. “So Rabbit goes on stage, gets a big smile and said, ‘You all know who we are!’ and everyone cheered.”
Health issues brought Jaramillo back to Colorado in the mid-2000s, but singing never left his life. He was inducted into the Chicano Music Hall of Fame during a 2017 ceremony at Su Teatro in Denver, drawing roars from the audience when he went onstage with his cane only to toss it aside and dance to the Headhunters’ signature song. Fellow congregants at Jaramillo’s longtime church, Good Shepherd Fellowship in Pueblo, regularly asked him to perform Christian songs — a favorite was “The Blood That Jesus Shed for Me” by gospel pioneer Andraé Crouch. He also loved to do karaoke with his grandson Daniel Hernandez, preferring oldies like “Daddy’s Home” and “Sixteen Candles.”
“No one knew who he was, and he never said who he was,” said Hernandez, a Phoenix resident who grew up in East L.A. but spent time with Jaramillo in his later years. “But after he sang, we would always have people buying us beers and telling him, ‘Hey, you’re a great singer!’”
Jaramillo is survived by two brothers; eight children; 15 grandchildren; and 17 great-grandchildren. Services were held at Good Shepherd Fellowship and ended with his casket being wheeled out to “Land of 1,000 Dances.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
