[3] He was born in the Plaza del Mentidero, at Calle Vea Murgía 5,[4] in the city of Cádiz, the son of the couple formed by Adolfo and María, who were not gypsies and who had seven children.
From a humble family, he barely went to school for three or four years and soon began to work as a street vendor selling sweets and candies, and as a small singer on the horse-drawn carriages that travelled around the city.
He took part in the shows of the Flamenco Opera, Pepe Marchena's company, and toured many provincial capitals, ending up in the Cadiz bullring, where he had great success.
[3] In 1936 he competed in the Circo Price competition in Madrid organised by the businessman Alberto Montserrat, winning first prize for seguiriyas and soleares, and was awarded 1,000 pesetas.
Two programmes were devoted to Juan Martinez Vilches: "Rito y Geografía del Cante" (1974) and "Flamenco" (1976) directed by the poet and writer Fernando Quiñones.
In this Anthology, accompanied by the guitar of Félix Utrera, Pericón showed cantes that were forgotten or that had a singer's own stamp: seguiriyas by Enrique Ortega (Caracol's great-grandfather), soleares by Morsilla (son of the Mellizo), bulerías by Antonio Herrero (a cantaor from his youth who later excelled as a tocaor), cantes by Enrique Butrón (a cantaor who never became professional and created the alegrías style "Cantiñas de Romero El Tito", guajiras por bulerías from Espeleta, tanguillos, villancicos, the two malagueñas from El Mellizo, the granaína, the malagueña doble and mirabrás (in which Andrés Heredia played the guitar).