Although it’s been decades since the melodic sounds of the band Los Kinos regularly regaled audiences in both small town taverns and metropolitan stadiums, their music has endured.
Their songs have been played almost 12 million times on YouTube. Young fans still show up at their shows to hear the music their parents grew up with.
Even though the music of Los Kinos is experiencing a resurgence because of the internet, few listeners know the name Adolfo Sanchez.
The former lead singer lived through the story of how a Livingston grupero band became a regional powerhouse of Spanish-language music. That didn’t just include Merced, as the group toured throughout the U.S. and Mexico.
Before singing at the bars on Main Street in Merced or working the farms of the Central Valley, Sanchez began his life in Guadalajara, Mexico.
“Cuando dejamos de trabajar y nos dedicamos a la pura musica … las ganancias eran bajas – when we stopped working and dedicated ourselves to the music … our earnings were low,” said Sanchez in Spanish, recalling how their music would travel from Stockton to all around the country and Mexico, yet the money they received was low.
“We only had four royalty checks in eight years. We didn’t care because we were earning money at the live shows.”
A job at a bakery as a teen taught Sanchez about survival and hard work.
That early work shaped a life that spanned his musical career with Los Kinos.
The band, which originated in Livingston and was formed by brothers Rosario and Jose Del Toro, along with Luis Arroyo, put Merced County on the map at a time when Spanish-language music was a rare commodity and not easily accessible.
Los Kinos belonged to a genre known as Musica Grupera, which emerged from Mexican American workers who also played instruments. The genre incorporates a variety of styles, including romantic ballads, cumbias, rancheras and dance songs.
Even after hanging up his microphone for good, Sanchez didn’t stop working. He went into nursing, trucking, aviation and also worked as a paramedic.
“I’ve always liked learning things, learning jobs,” said Sanchez, 74, who still lives in Merced and is retired. “I’m very active. I can’t find peace.”
Music came first
Music took hold of Sanchez in the late 60s, when his mother bought him his first acoustic guitar.
He focused on rancheras and learned by repetition. His goal was to follow in the footsteps of Pedro Infante, an icon he admired for his charm and popularity among women.
Luck put Sanchez in the path of Elbert Moguel, a member of the popular Guadalajara band Los Strwk, who became his teacher.
The first lesson was to learn four chords: C, A minor, D minor, and G7 – el circulo de Do, the circle of C. With different rhythms of strumming, those chords could carry rancheras, boleros, ballads or corridos.
Sanchez vividly remembers the first time he met Moguel and the wisdom the teacher imparted to him.
“I don’t like lazy people,” he remembers his mentor saying. “If I’m going to teach you, I don’t want to lose my patience with you, or anyone else.”
With that advice in mind, Sanchez said he practiced the chords and strumming. After his first lesson, he played “El Caballo Blanco” for his mother, a ballad about a once-strong horse worn down by years of riding – a lyrical metaphor about exhaustion after a lifetime of work.
Arrival in the Central Valley
In 1969, a 15-year-old Sanchez arrived in Merced to join his father in the fields he’d worked since 1958.
There was no pause for adjustment. He went straight to work. Picking fruit and vegetables became his base. Music remained, but it became a pastime.
Sanchez started playing at Tenaya Middle School while others kicked a ball in the field. Sanchez sat in the stands, strumming and singing to the delight of the crowds of teenage girls whose attention made him a staple of the bleachers.
“I would play, and all the girls were very happy, clapping and singing the songs, because there was no one else to sing our songs,” he said. “I even got a girlfriend. The girls started bringing us aguas frescas and tamales on the weekends, sometimes tacos.”
Soon, the members of a band called Scorpio heard about him and asked him to join.
Before agreeing, he asked his father, who reminded him that farm work came first and often ran six days a week. Sanchez promised to manage both. His father agreed.
During the week, Sanchez worked the fields. On weekends, he put on a matching band outfit and played at bars and dance halls. By the early 1970s, he was singing across the Valley. Weddings, quinceañeras, church halls, bars and paid dances filled his weekends.
Spanish-language singers were rare in the region at the time, and Spanish-language radio was limited. Live music became the main way people heard songs that felt like home.
But Sanchez did not limit himself to Spanish songs. He sang what the crowd wanted to hear. Back then, songs like “Suavecito” and “Oye Como Va” dominated the airwaves, along with jams like “Long Train Running.”
“At that time, there was Santana, The Doobie Brothers, Malo, all the groups from the U.S.,” Sanchez said. “I even started singing in English. I didn’t know English at the time.”
Knowing the lyrics and the tone was enough to get him through the songs. Over time, that same desire to grow pushed him to learn English, practicing on his own whenever he could.
Internal problems split Scorpio into two. Sanchez opted to stay with the original group until he met his wife. He gave up music and left for Ferguson, Missouri, for three years.
“I wasn’t playing anymore,” Sanchez said. “I was a married man.”
Los Kinos
After returning to Merced, Sanchez was again sought out by musicians. By the mid-1970s, he met the Del Toro brothers, who formed a band known as Los Kinos, built on constant practice and consistency.
The brothers went to the almond farm where Sanchez worked and asked him to step in, since their singer lacked discipline.
This time, Sanchez turned to his wife for advice after seeing the dedicated band play at a quinceañera.
“They played perfectly,” Sanchez said. “They didn’t make any mistakes. Other bands would drink while playing and would mess up. They didn’t drink or smoke.”
That was all the convincing she needed, and he joined the band.
The same discipline and desire to advance made Los Kinos a staple of the area’s music scene, and soon they filled bars and other venues.
The band continued playing packed bars until one day, Discos Mar Internacional, a now-defunct record label based in Stockton, took notice after seeing them play at a bar. They secured their first record deal in 1975.
In the first three months, they released two albums and began playing more shows at bigger venues.
By the time their third album was released, the band was touring consistently in the U.S. and in Mexico. Their biggest show came during a multi-band concert in Mexico City, where more than 30,000 people cheered them on.
“They had soldiers guarding us as we were making our way to the stage,” Sanchez said. “People would give us their babies for us to kiss.”
Along the way, they played shows across the U.S., filling convention centers and arenas.
In the 1980s and 90s, Los Kinos shared stages with major acts, from big stadiums in Mexico to local fairgrounds across the Valley.
They performed alongside bands like Bronco, known for “Qué No Quede Huella,” and Los Tigres del Norte, with hits like “La Puerta Negra.”
Always eager to learn, Sanchez would not be limited to his sixth-grade education while on the road. He studied for the GED test and eventually earned a high school diploma.
Whether big or small, not all shows were successful, so the band members had to make up for it financially when they got home.
“There were many dances that were mediocre or bad,” he said. “There were times in a month when there were one or two good dances. When we arrived back home, (any unpaid bills) we made up for it with the good dances.”
While on the road, his love for engines helped him as he also served as the group’s mechanic.
“When we were driving back, I would get on the phone and order parts,” he said.
Once at home, he worked on the tour buses.
When discussing the division of pay within them from the label, Sanchez admits not knowing exactly how much they would be paid for their work.
“We didn’t question it,” he said. “We were thankful that we got to play.”
Sanchez’s career with Los Kinos lasted from 1975 to 1990, and he sang on 12 albums until he was beckoned home.
“I had been on the road for too long,” he said. “I had five small boys. I was never there for them.”
A family affair
More than four decades after the band first formed, Los Kinos remains a family affair. Today, Los Kino still includes members of the Del Toro family, along with one of their sons on keyboards.
The band’s name came from one of its founders, Luis Arroyo, better known as Kinochin. Los Kinos has no English translation, as it is the shortened version of the name of one of their founders.
“He lives in Mexico now,” said Ruben Del Toro.
In the early years, the older Del Toro brothers performed as Los Kinos while the younger siblings had their own group. Over time, the two bands began working together.
“El Kinochin would go to Mexico and leave them with gigs to play,” Ruben said. The younger brothers would step in for those performances until the groups eventually merged under the Los Kinos name.
After they began recording in 1979, the brothers rotated between instruments to keep the band moving, whether in the studio or on stage.
Over the years, Rosario, Jose, Rudy, Ruben, and Raul Del Toro played in the band.
The group recently reunited for a hometown performance at Livingston Music in the Park & Food Truck Flavor Jam in May after not playing together for about a year. For this show, Ernesto Del Toro, Jose’s son, joined the band to continue the family legacy.
“We don’t charge (for) what we usually do; we like to donate our time to our hometown,” said Ruben, as one of the organizers handed him a bag of tips collected from concertgoers. “After everything we’ve done, we’re still here.”
Another founding member, Jose Del Toro, had not performed with the band in about 20 years. He stepped in on vocals because the original singer, Rudy Del Toro, was dealing with health issues and could not perform.
“Playing is a little bit harder now,” Ruben said. “It hurts, but we’re still here. We have plans to continue playing if the contracts make sense.”
Ruben said the brothers were still young when the band began taking music seriously. Around that time, they recruited Sanchez.
“He started playing with us about a year before we started making records,” Ruben said. “He left the group in 95.”
After Los Kinos stopped recording with Mar Internacional, the band continued making records with another company. By the late 1990s, however, banda music had become dominant and grupero music was no longer drawing the same level of demand.
“We recorded a song in the Techno Banda genre called Toro Palomo, which did really well for us and got us some more work,” Ruben said.
Eventually, he said, audiences wanted to hear full banda groups rather than keyboard-driven grupero bands, prompting Los Kinos to return to the style that first made them successful.
Even now, Ruben said, the band’s music continues to find new audiences.
“We’ll have young people that are about 18, 20 years old that tell us they come to our shows because it’s the music their parents used to listen to and they wanted to see the band live,” he said, adding that many online commenters are also younger listeners.
Most of those comments, Ruben said, compare Los Kinos’ music to modern acts.
“They say this is real music, not like the ones we have now,” he said with pride in his eyes. “It makes us feel really good.”
Life after Los Kinos
While Los Kinos was a memorable chapter in Sanchez’s life, it was not the whole story.
After leaving the band, Sanchez went to college and became a paramedic, working at hospitals and as a nurse for a cannery.
He still used his downtime to continue studying.
“There were nights when nobody got hurt, and I did all my homework, read a chapter, and arrived ready for my exams,” he said.
He later became a transportation and fuel manager at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Atwater.
“Both were managerial jobs,” he said. “I would go to San Francisco to drive students back and forth. I was also in charge of the fuel. You had to check the temperature of the (jet) fuel.”
Proximity to the planes allowed him to do some minor piloting while flying with instructors to test out planes.
“They would ask me if I wanted to land them,” Sanchez said. “I would say, ‘yes, yes, yes.’”
In 2012, he began the process to obtain his license, but legal problems at the academy led him to seek other employment. The work at the academy diminished, and Sanchez needed to leave and began trucking for a company in Livingston.
“I would do runs from Arizona to California,” he said. “We carried nothing but chickens from Foster Farms. I was comfortable, and we did a lot of runs.”
In July of 2024, after a nine-day hospital visit, Sanchez retired after his health didn’t allow him to continue and a Parkinson’s diagnosis from 15 years prior began to show symptoms.
“Everyone was telling me,’ Well, you’re in your seventies, it’s better to stop,’” he said. “Ever since I went to the hospital, I’ve been trying to recover. I was very frail.”
Sanchez inherited his father’s home and has lived in the same house on Highway 59 ever since.
“I have lived here for 53 years,” he said proudly.
