Abraham Isaac Quintanilla Jr., the father and manager of late Tejano music star Selena, has died. He was 86.
The news was shared by his son, Abraham “A.B.” Quintanilla III, in a social media post on Saturday (Dec. 13).
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“It’s with a heavy heart to let you guys know that my Dad passed away today…” A.B., Selena’s brother and producer, wrote on Instagram.
The post included a photo of Quintanilla set to Pedro Infante’s “Cien Años.”
A cause of death had not been disclosed as of press time.
Born in 1939 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Quintanilla began his music career as a teenager, joining the vocal group the Dinos in 1956. He later left the band in the late 1960s to focus on raising his family.
Quintanilla was married to Marcella Quintanilla, and together they had three children: A.B., Suzette and Selena, who was fatally shot at age 23 in March 1995 by her former fan club president, Yolanda Saldívar.
After recognizing Selena’s talent at a young age, Quintanilla went on to manage and help develop one of Latin music’s most celebrated artists. He oversaw Selena y Los Dinos, the family band that included A.B. on bass, Suzette on drums and Selena’s husband, Chris Pérez, on guitar.
“I found out she had the talent to sing when she was six-and-a-half years old,” Quintanilla told Billboard in August 2022. “As she grew older, I would sit down with her and teach her how to sing in Spanish. I would teach her how to pronounce the word and what the word meant so she can put some emotion into it. She learned it very well. She was a good student in learning music.”
Selena’s short-lived but historic career earned her the title of the Queen of Tejano. In the 1990s, she revolutionized the genre and broke barriers in a male-dominated field, powered by hits such as “Como La Flor,” “Dreaming of You,” “Amor Prohibido” and “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.”
On the Billboard charts, Selena logged 24 entries on Top Latin Albums, including 16 top 10s and seven No. 1 titles. Among them were Amor Prohibido, which spent 20 weeks at No. 1 in 1994, and the posthumous Dreaming of You, which topped the chart for 40 weeks in 1995. She also earned seven No. 1 albums on the Regional Mexican Albums chart and six on the Latin Pop Albums chart.
See A.B. Quintanilla’s post about his father’s death on Instagram here.
