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two or three years, it was just the two clubs. Then more formed in Dallas, Lake Charles, New Orleans. I got the idea to gather in one place, share ideas, enjoy the music, have some fun.” The central location was New Orleans, and the event was Meeting of the Minds. After six years, it outgrew the venues, and they decided to move it to Key West. Not one to sit still for long, Diaz, who resides on the eastern side of his home state of Texas, still wanted something in The Big Easy. He launched Pardi-Gras in 1997. He also organized On the Beach in Mexico, which will be in its 4th consecutive year in 2022. When asked about his organizational skills, Diaz credits his wife, Mary, with that, explaining he is more a marketing personality. And anyone who has ever done anything understands that marketing is often the key to success. All these things, along with Diaz’s gigs, CDs, songwriting and appearances, revolve around trop rock music, to which he gravitated a long time ago. “Trop rock has been circulating for a long time, but in the last decade, it has come into its own with younger ones picking it up. I’m the first generation, and there’s a second one coming along with a whole bunch of 40-ish (years old) trop rockers.” Diaz, now 60, is working on his 6th CD and he and his band, Hanna’s Reef, can play a whole concert of original songs. However, they love to mix it up with some Jimmy Buffett, Zac Brown, Kenny Chesney, Beach Boys and other popular musical artists. Texas Beach Music is his angle. He has played Shorty’s, one of the most popular beach bars a stone’s throw from the shore in Port Aransas, Texas. He has also appeared at the world famous Soggy Dollar beach bar in the British Virgin Islands and lots of other places. Jerry Diaz engages in the relentless promotion of trop rock as a viable music genre. That, along with the crazy fun events he has initiated for people who love tropical anything and the music that delivers an escape to the beach, has earned him the title: Godfather of Trop Rock.

expanded across decades, and in 1961 she sold out to Campbell Soup and became the first women to serve on its board of directors. She lectured at Harvard and other business schools and remains an American business icon. Yet we digress. Jerry Diaz was a beer distributor earlier in his career, but music, and especially trop rock, has captivated his heart and soul most all his life. He was influenced young by the Beach Boys and Jerry Jeff Walker and played in the requisite garage bands in high school and college. He found himself writing poems and lyrics during college classes. “I started playing different music, more folk, country, acoustic,” he recalls. “I sort of ‘hit a chord’ with the songwriting.” One summer in the mid-70s, Diaz traveled all over East Texas with his older brother-in-law, who was a dental supply salesman. During four weeks, Diaz listened to the radio while his brother-in-law made sales calls. And he heard Jimmy Buffett’s “Come Monday” what seemed like a million times. A little more than a decade later, Diaz started the 2nd Parrot Head Club in the country. “The first one was founded by Scott Nickerson in Atlanta,” Diaz explains. “For

www.jerrydiaz.com

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2021