The announcement from his family did not give a cause of death, but the singer had been hospitalized since August, after a fall at his Guadalajara ranch in the central state of Jalisco required an emergency spinal surgery.
While in the hospital, he had also been diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the body’s nerves, his family had reported to media.
Fernández was largely considered the last living legend of the Mexican ranchera, the style of song deeply rooted in the values and traditions of rural Mexico.
Over a six-decade career, his voice became synonymous with Mexico itself.
His thick mustache, dyed black long after his hair had turned white, was punctuation under the brim of his shoulder-wide sombreros.
His songs dripped with an uncommon vulnerability, and in many of them, he openly wept, gasping for breath as he drowned in the pain of a bitter heartbreak.
“He would sing these songs with so much pathos and so much emotion, that grown men would cry, and he would cry,” Cobo said.
Fernández was born in 1940, in a small town in the central ranching state of Jalisco.
He started singing in bars and restaurants at 19, and eventually made his way back to Guadalajara and Mexico City, where he convinced label executives to record his music.
But he always emphasized his humble origins, and felt an affinity with Mexico’s poor, working-class, and rural people.
His longevity and popularity as a singer was remarkable, spanning generations, said Jose Anguiano, a professor in popular music at California State University, Los Angeles.