The precarious economic situation provoked the dissolution of the family and Jos Alfredo was forced to leave his studies after completing primary school and realize various jobs to support himself.

Close to 20 years old, he would play football as a goal keeper for the Oviedo team, from where he jumped, albeit for a short time, to the first division team Marte.

Little by little they became known in the area, delivering serenades, and performing at parties and family gatherings.

With this group he began his artistic career and during these years he wrote, in a any scrap that was at hand, his first songs.

Fortune came one night at the begging of 1951, when Andrs Huesca, a singer-songwriter of the Ranchero genre, was dining at the restaurant and Jos Alfredo sang his new song Yo; impressed, Huesca memorized it and added it to his repertoire.

A few days later, during the recording of an album at RCA Victor, while Mariano Rivera Conde, then artistic director of the label, attended a telephone call, Huesca and his band rehearsed Yo, with the intention of singing it that very night at a private party.

The microphones where left open, and RIvera COnde heard the song and, after hanging up the phone, exclaimed: Boys, we record this one.

The overwhelming and unprecedented success of these songs earned him the accolade of Composer of the Year.

In just one year Jos Alfredo conquered success, fame and fortune.

The couple had two children: Paloma, born in 1954 and Jos Alfredo in 1955.

He composed more than 300 songs whose diffusion and popularity continually grew, interpreted and recorded in all latitudes by the most distinguished singers of the time.

Paloma, a patient wife, at first put up with his frequent and prolonged absences, but by 1960 the abandonment and Jos Alfredos affairs became intolerable for which they separated.

Nevertheless, the marriage was never dissolved and the singer-songwriter always took care of his family.

By then, his fame as a womanizer, sometimes real and sometimes imagined, extended.

The fusion of songs and life, made it so that in the popular memory the composer became indistinguishable from the characters in his songs.

In this way, rumors about him fathering children and having romances with various artists in show business appeared.

Jos Alfredo performed for the last time in the television program Siempre en Domingo singing his song Gracias, with which he seems to anticipate his death, which came about a week later, on November 23rd 1973.

Since his death he has been the subject of countless homages, which are nothing but the acknowledgment of the universality and permanence of his songs.

Jose Alfredo Jimenez Family