Azteca Records

Founded in 1946, the well-distributed Azteca label was started by Trinidad Peláez. The label recorded and promoted Lydia Mendoza and the Mendoza Family along with Los Angeles-based Mexican stars such as Dueto Azteca. Peláez recorded at major LA studios and hired the popular Rafael Méndez to play trumpet in the studio band Mariachi Azteca, which helped make the trumpet-driven mariachi sound ubiquitous in the U.S. in the middle of the twentieth century.