José ‘Dr. Loco’ Cuéllar, Chicano Scholar, Bandleader and Activist, Dies at 84

The last pachuco is gone.

Anthropologist José B. Cuéllar, who carved out a singular musical career as the saxophonist, accordionist, vocalist and leader of Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band, died at his Mission District home Jan. 21 surrounded by family. He was 84. The cause was lung cancer, according to his wife, Stacie Powers Cuéllar.

With his bushy eyebrows, impish smile, braided beard and long hair worn in a tight plait, Cuéllar was an iconic figure who effortlessly intertwined his twin callings as an educator and bandleader. His distinguished career as an academic included two decades studying and documenting Chicano culture as chair and director of San Francisco State’s Cesar Chavez Public Policy Institute.

But it was as Dr. Loco that he himself took the reins of Chicano culture.

Launched during his years teaching at Stanford in the mid-1980s, the Rockin’ Jalapeno Band drew upon his earlier career as an R&B musician in San Antonio, and later, Las Vegas. But the inveterately curious Cuéllar kept expanding the Rockin’ Jalapeno sound, deepening its connections to New Orleans grooves, jazz, and soul. Over the decades, the group included dozens of top Bay Area musicians, including many who went on to lead their own bands, and became known as a sure-fire act for fundraisers, community events, rallies and protests.

“Even early on he had killer musicians, guys who represented the real Tejano sound he’d come from,” said Jesse “Chuy” Varela, a Latin music expert and program and music director at the radio station KCSM. “As he evolved he kept bringing in different folks, like trombonist/arranger Wayne Wallace and drummer Brian Andres. A lot of the gigs weren’t going to pay a lot, and he’d be paying musicians out of his pocket. For Loco, it was more about spreading joy through the message.”

That message traveled much further than Cuéllar expected. His sound and visage made a particularly deep impression in Mexico City, where rock en español pioneers Maldita Vecindad viewed him as the embodiment of borderlands cool. They’d scored a major hit in 1991 with “Pachuco,” a song celebrating the sartorial style of Mexican American young men exemplified by zoot suits, “and they saw him as the last pachuco,” said Greg Landau, the eight-time Grammy Award nominee who started working with Dr. Loco as a producer and sideman in the 1990s.

In a final act of friendship, Landau produced an era-encompassing concert last month at Brava Theater Center, “A Rockin’ Jalapeño Tribute Concert: Celebrating the Musical Legacy of Dr. Loco.” Landau had already been thinking about pulling together a celebration, but Cuéllar’s terminal diagnosis put the project on a fast track. The sold-out event featured three generations of Rockin’ Jalapeno bands playing songs from the albums Movimiento Music, ¡Puro Party! and Barrio Ritmos & Blues.

“He was so overwhelmed,” Stacie Powers Cuéllar said of the concert, which Dr. Loco attended but was unable to perform at in his full capacity. “One thing he did through his music was connecting people all the time, in the classroom, at events. He had a really good time, but it was also heartbreaking for him, to know that was a defining moment and not be able to direct it. He so was proud of all the musicians and all the work and gigs they’d done.”

Born April 3, 1941 in San Antonio, Texas, Cuéllar often described obtaining a saxophone as a high school senior as a strike of lightning that changed the course of his life. He learned the ropes on the Texas roadhouse circuit with the Del–Kings, a mostly Chicano R&B band with a book of full of honking numbers by Junior Parker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King and T–Bone Walker, with a little Five Satins-style doo-wop thrown in for romance.

He put down his horn when he enlisted in the Air Force, and trained as a dental technician. But upon mustering out, he realized that he didn’t want to face the hurdles “it would take for a Mexican to be a dentist in Texas, as presented to me by my dentist,” he told KQED in a 2023 interview. He returned to the saxophone, a more stimulating work tool than a dental drill.

While Cuéllar spent the ’60s performing in Vegas and Southern California, he gradually found his way back to school, enrolling at Golden West College in Huntington Beach to study music. The anti-Vietnam War movement started his politicization, and when he transferred to Long Beach State in 1969, the rising Chicano movement, then deeply entwined with anti-war protests, shaped his scholarly direction.

He managed to juggle music and graduate studies, eventually earning a PhD in anthropology from UCLA in 1977. A tenure-track position at the University of Colorado at Boulder, however, left him bereft of musical comrades. “I wanted to get more involved in my academics too,” he said. “So the horn went into the closet and stayed there until I got to Stanford in 1983.”

It was his students at Stanford who inspired him to get his groove back. Teaching Chicano Studies and serving as senior ethnogerontologist at the School of Medicine, they urged Cuéllar to form a combo to play campus events. Always in the thick of the cultural ferment, he often backed the Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash, who felt he needed a catchy stage name. The problem was solved while he was doing research on gang kids, cholos, in Tijuana.

“I was standing there with a bunch of kids, and this kid comes up and says ‘Is it true you’re a doctor?’ And I said ‘Yeah, I’m an anthropologist,’ but in Spanish its antropólogo, so he goes, ‘Dr. Loco.’” The name stuck.

Cuéllar is survived by his younger brothers, Hector and Tony Cuéllar, his son Benny Cuéllar, wife Stacie Powers Cuéllar, and their daughter Ixchel Cuéllar. A GoFundMe campaign to help funeral expenses will soon be created, according to his wife Stacie. A celebration of his life is planned for early April.