Trini Lopez (born Trinidad López III, 15 May 1937, Dallas, Texas) is a Mexican-American singer and guitarist. His first name is pronounced "Trinny."

Born Trinidad Lopez III in Dallas, Trini Lopez had a long apprenticeship in Texas before he headed off in 1962 to a brief period of fame and fortune in California. Lopez formed his first band at the age of 15 in Wichita Falls. In the late fifties Lopez was playing with the Big Beats when he made the acquaintance of another Texas musician on the way up, Buddy Holly. Holly recommended Lopez to his producer, Norman Petty of Clovis, New Mexico. Lopez had in mind recording an instrumental, however, and the producer wasn't interested. But the encounter led to recordings for Columbia, Volk, and King recording companies, none of which attracted much attention.

In 1962 Lopez moved to Los Angeles, where he became a regular performer at a nightclub called PJ's. Frank Sinatra heard him there and promptly signed Lopez to his new label, Reprise Records. The resulting album, Trini Lopez at PJ's, was an immediate success and endured on the pop album charts from the summer of 1963 well into 1965. The album included a version of "If I Had a Hammer", which reached number one in 25 countries and was a radio favourite for many years. He also performed his own version of the traditional Mexican song "La Bamba" on this album.

His popularity led the Gibson Guitar Corporation to ask him in 1964 to design a guitar for them. He ended up designing two: The Trini Lopez Standard, a rock and roll model based on the Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body, and the Lopez Deluxe, a variation of a Gibson jazz guitar designed by Barney Kessel.

He later recorded covers of other popular songs of the day, including "Lemon Tree" (1965), "I'm Coming Home Cindy" (1966) and "Sally Was a Good Old Girl" (1968).

During the 1960s and 1970s Lopez moved into acting as well as recording and playing, though his film career was not as successful as his music. His first film appearance was in Marriage On The Rocks (1965) where he appeared with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. He was one of The Dirty Dozen (1967) and starred in Antonio (1973). He continued his musical career with extensive tours of Europe and Latin America during this period, remaining firmly within his Latin music genre; an attempt to break out by releasing a disco album in the United Kingdom in 1978 proved an embarrassing flop.

Since then, Lopez has done charitable work and received honors such as being inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2003. He was still recording and appearing live in the early 2000s. Recently he announced a new CD album, and took part in a benefit concert to raise money for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

(Info mainly Wikipedia)