Carlos y José had been playing bars together for five years before the duo had a name. Carlos Tierranegra Salazar, born in General Terán, Nuevo León, in 1942, sang lead and played accordion; José Rodríguez, born in Los Ramones in the same state in 1950, took the second voice and the bajo sexto. They formed the act in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in March 1968 and cut their first record the year after.
"La cosecha", in 1970, was the hit that made them, and "El chubasco" broke norteño sales records in Mexico and the United States in 1981. The press took to calling them "los consentidos de la música norteña". They beat that record again with "Flor de capomo", their Spanish reading of the Yaqui song "Kapo sewa" by José Molina Palma. Across more than 80 records the catalogue leans hard on corridos about prisoners, smugglers and men who died badly. Rodríguez left in 2008 to go solo and died the following year; Tierranegra died in Texas in 2015, and their grandsons Juan Carlos Tierranegra and José Edwin Rodríguez now record as Carlos y José Jr.