Selena, the Queen of Tejano, shared a sweet last moment at her Texas home with two of her band members — keyboardists Joe Ojeda and Ricky Vela — the night before her tragic murder 30 years ago.
“I was actually in Corpus Christi with Ricky recording some ideas for her next Spanish record,” Ojeda exclusively told The Post. “And we went to her house to [figure out] a key on her vocal for one of the songs that we were recording.”
“And we got to her house, we had some cheesecake, and then she walked us out … just making funny faces at us. We would be seriously talking to her, and she would make funny faces. She was so fun to be around,” he shared. “That’s the night before the tragedy happened.”
That turned out to be his final memory of Selena Quintanilla. The next day she was fatally shot by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar — who had just been fired days before by the Mexican-American singer for embezzlement — on March 31, 1995. Saldívar was denied parole on Friday and will not be eligible again until 2030.
“I’m grateful she didn’t get parole,” said Ojeda. “I mean, she took an innocent life away from from us, and you know, justice was served. So I’m grateful she got denied … She’s still where she needs to be.”
Selena was just 23, a Grammy-winning sensation and cultural phenomenon in Latin music who was poised to cross over and become the next superstar pop diva in the English market. She was even called the “Mexican Madonna.”
“She was on her way to become a really big star,” said Guy Roche, who produced “Dreaming of You,” the hit title track of Selena’s English crossover LP that was posthumously released in July 1995.
“Why not make her a superstar [who was] not just Latin? So that was the idea. But, you know, it was cut short.”
Ojeda joined Selena’s band with backup singer Pete Astudillo after their duo the Bad Boyz had opened for her.
“When we joined the band, we were performing at weddings, you know, and stuff like that,” he told the Post.
“It was fun in the bus just traveling from city to city, from concert to concert. It was like my second family, because the whole family traveled [with her].”
But Selena’s career went far beyond weddings with hits such as “Como la Flor,” “Amor Prohibido” and “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.” Her 1993 “Live!” LP — recorded at the Memorial Coliseum in her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas — won a Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album in 1994, making her the first female Tejano artist to win the award.
Ojeda recalls her concert at the Houston Astrodome in February 1995 — just one month before her murder — as the moment when he knew that Selena had really made it to the big time.
“We played at the Astrodome in front of, like, 68,000 people,” he said. “That’s when I was, you know, ‘Wow, this is big.’ ”
Still, even as her star was rising, Ojeda says that Selena remained down to earth.
“She was so humble,” said Ojeda. “She kind of knew, like, she was getting up there, but at the same time it didn’t keep her from being Selena — beautiful, innocent, humble, always making us laugh. She was an angel.”
Just a few weeks before she was murdered, Roche went to Corpus Christi to record with her.
“She was excited about everything in English, because she didn’t get to sing a lot in English,” said Roche, who also produced “Captive Heart” on Selena’s “Dreaming of You” album. “She was just amazing,fun, laughing and smiling and cracking jokes. She was just wonderful.”
Indeed, Selena was living her own dream with the English crossover that was happening before she was killed.
“That was her dream since the get-go,” said Ojeda. “That was special to her. So she was very happy. It meant a lot.”
But after discovering that Selena was murdered, he said, “It completely changed our lives, you know? It was something so dark, so sad.”
Ojeda was staying at a hotel when he got the news about the shooting from his then girlfriend, now wife Raquel. “I drove to the hospital … and when I got to the hospital, I saw a lot of people and some media, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s going on?’ So I kind of made my way into the emergency room, and that’s when it really hit me. I saw everybody crying … and I just started feeling so cold.
“Then I see Abraham [Quintanilla, Selena’s manager father] coming out of the emergency room crying. So I said, ‘Oh my goodness, oh Lord.’ I started freaking out. So I approached Abraham, and he just told me, ‘Selena is gone.’ … It all went dark after that, and I felt numb. And I remember just finding a vending machine. I kind of, like, sat next to that vending machine, and I started crying.”
Similarly, Roche was grief-stricken. “I broke down in tears, and I was shocked,” he said. “I was traumatized.”
What Selena’s future would have been — both professionally and personally — will always remain unknown.
But Ojeda believes she was destined for even bigger things: “She would have been just everywhere,” he said.
“I know that she wanted to start a family with Chris [Pérez, her husband and guitar player]. They already bought some land and were gonna build a house.”
Thirty years after Selena’s death, Ojeda said, “Her smile is what is very vivid in my mind, her beautiful smile.”
And he continues to celebrate her legacy with the Joe Ojeda Band.
“She opened a lot of doors for a lot of Latina female artists, and even for some Latino male artists. And her legacy … it’s still alive right now,” Ojeda said of the singer, whose story has been told in the 1997 biopic “Selena” starring Jennifer Lopez and Netflix’s “Selena: The Series” in 2020-21.
“It’s good to see new generations connect with her music,” he continued. “Her music is timeless. There’s a new Selena fan every day.”
