Trini Lopez, an actor and singer-guitarist who collaborated The Dirty Dozen actor and had hits with “If I Had a Hammer” and “Lemon Tree” – which was named in a popular Seinfeld episode – died today in Palm Springs. He was 83. Palm Springs Life magazine reported the news but gave no deaths. A source tells Deadline that it was from COVID-19.
Lopez was already a recording star when he was cast as Pedro Jiminez – aka Number 10 – in The Dirty Dozen, the star-studded drama of World War II of 1967 directed by Robert Aldrich. It follows the story of an insurgent major of the U.S. Army (Lee Marvin) who assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them in a mass murder mission of German officers. The ensemble cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland.
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Lopez also appeared in the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin torso Marriage on the rocks (1965), The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966), The Phynx (1970) and played the lead role in Antonio (1973). He also guest on such series as Adam-12 en The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries; guest-hosted Hullabaloo a few times; appeared on various game and talk shows and variety specials; and song on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Andy Williams Show and several others.
Born Trinidad Lopez to Mexican immigrant parents on May 15, 1937, in Dallas, he got his big shuffle through Sinatra, who signed the young singer on a long-term deal on his Reprise Records. The impression of Warner Bros. would be to release all of Lopez’s albums in the 1960s.
Lopez broke out as a singer with a version of Pete Seeger and Lee Hays’ ‘If I Had a Hammer,’ which aired three weeks on no. 3 on the Billboard 100 in the summer of 1963. It was shot dead by the LP Trini Lopez by PJ’s, which went gold and spent 101 weeks on the Billboard album chart. The disc lasted six weeks at no. 2, smeared by Andy Williams’ Days of Wine and Roses and the debut by a 12-year-old prodigy known as Little Stevie Wonder.
The song and album would be the highlight of Lopez’s recording career, but he continued to chart albums in the late 1960s – three including his 1963 sequel More Trini Lopez by PJ’s. would make the top 20 – and had fewer pop hits with “Kansas City” in 1963 and “Lemon Tree” two years later. The latest song became a popular punchline in an episode of season 2 of NBC’s Seinfeld. In ‘The Telephone Message’ when George (Jason Alexander) and Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) take unusual measures to pick up the cassette recording of an angry phone message that George left for a potential girlfriend, their “signal” from one to the other that they are about to was to brush her would be singing a line of “Lemon Tree.”
“Peter, Paul and Mary,” George says as Jerry suggests. “No, Trini Lopez,” Jerry corrects.
Lopez is the subject of an upcoming documentary with the title My name is Lopez, which includes interviews with the likes of his Dirty Dozen co-star Brown, Dionne Warwick, Tony Orlando and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. The producers are P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes; the latest posted news today on Lopez’s death on social media:
