In the legend, Esteban "Steve" Jordan is always playing for his life. His spidery, turquoise-and-silver-laden fingers squeeze the custom Hohner diatonic accordion, in and out, in and out, the snakelike bellows expanding and contracting. The wild mane of hair, once black as jet, is now shot with gray, framing his thin face dominated by the ever-present patch over one eye.
Pirates of the Caribbean missed the boat not casting him in a cantina scene
The patch gets all the attention, but it's the other eye Steve Jordan keeps casting about him. "A couple of spots on my liver" is all he acknowledges of the cancer that's taken down the 69-year-old San Antonian in recent months. Chemotherapy has thinned out his mane, but he's not one to comment on it. Steve Jordan doesn't like to talk much these days, his friends say.
He doesn't have to. More than five decades of music attest to his madman brilliance on the accordion, an inspired fusion of Mexican heritage and Texas rebel rock, on display most Friday nights at the Saluté International Bar in San Antonio.
