Ideal Records

Ideal was founded by Paco Betancourt and Armando Marroquín in 1946, making it the first of southern Texas record labels owned by Mexican-Americans.

[3] Thus, Marroquín became not only cognizant of the demand thus left un-met, but was personally suffering financially because he could not find records with the music expected by his customers.

[2] Marroquín made partnerships with Betancourt, who owned a music store, and the Allen Company, a record distributor from Los Angeles.

[8][9] Between 1950 and 1956 Ideal organized numerous tours for artists Beto Villa and Carmen y Laura that enlarged the influence of tejano music not only in the Southwest, but in places such as Chicago, Kansas, and Utah.

[2] The first such trip to California initially proved to be a debacle in Los Angeles, but a last-gasp stop in the San Joaquin Valley turned into two weeks of sellout concerts.

[4] The label moved from Alice to San Benito, Texas, opening new recording studios and a pressing plant there.

[3] Ideal's location in Alice, Texas, more towards San Antonio than the Mexican border, was an ideal location to record a more sophisticated brand of tejano music called conjunto which appealed to the bilingual and educated descendants of earlier immigrants, in contrast to its main competitor Falcon, whose more rustic output was called norteña.

[4] However, his interest in the music he released was not only financial, but also one of belief in the cultural value of his product, as a statement against what he felt was the intellectual snobbery of the "anglos".