Recalling the blues of Agustin Lara.

• Author: Butler, Ron
• Position: Composer

Mexico's legendary composer Agustin Lara ("You Belong to My Heart," "Granada," "Maria Bonita") was born in Mexico City but long considered Veracruz, "that little corner where the waves of the sea make their nest," his true roots. La Casita Blanca, the large two-story home presented to him by the governor of Veracruz, is now the Agustin Lara Museum.

With marble floors throughout, the upstairs living room and balcony look out onto the harbor. A white C. Bechstein piano with yellowed keys - one of three pianos exhibited - and a white satin settee flanked by a silver champagne bucket reveal Lara's elegant life-style.

Lara was known as the "Irving Berlin of Mexico," less for the mood of his music - mostly melancholy love songs - than for his output and popularity. Like Berlin, he could neither read nor write music. He tapped out his tunes on a piano and let others set them down, more than six hundred in his long and prolific career.

Displayed throughout the house are wall after wall of photographs in night-clubs, bullrings, and radio and movie studios with celebrities, beautiful women, famous singers, band leaders, and presidents. Also shown are billboards, magazine covers, letters, paintings, programs, and musical scores. A desk in the bedroom contains eighteen leather-bound books of news clippings. Lara's music pours from wall speakers. The upstairs area also includes a replica of the XEW radio studio from where Lara's nightly "Blue Hour" mesmerized Mexican listeners for nearly two decades.

Blue was Lara's color and his mood. When he played the Capri, the Jacaranda, or any of the other popular nightclubs in Mexico City, his shows invariably opened in a midnight blue-lighted room. The slim, gray-haired, sad-looking Lara walked to his piano, accompanied by the music of a trumpet and violin. Then, from the darkness, the violin section emerged, moving through the audience as Lara's music filled the room.

Slight of build, the five-foot-ten Lara at his most robust weighed only 110 pounds. One of his snappy linen jacket and slacks ensembles is displayed in a glass case near the museum's second-floor stairway, attesting to his slender stature. A framed cartoon on an upstairs wall shows Lara with a little dog looking up at...