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When they closed that down, evidently Orlando gave him a big ol’ severance package. Evidently, he worked at the location which is now the San Francisco Grill. He worked for years and years for Orlando Fonseca at the Hamburger Hut. Zaza: Oh, Miss Las Vegas, yes, that was her nickname. The difference now, of course, is that everybody is nostalgic and looks back and says the old days were better. MJ: At that time, how many people were doing performances? It was a very Carmen Miranda sounding song. Do you know where I got that cassette tape? In a music store in Saudi Arabia. was “ Dime Que Sí,” by a Spanish singer Antonita Moreno that no one had ever heard of. All I remember was that he was a big bearded guy who they used to call “Mae West” because he had such a big chest. I think Gilbert had pretty much stopped doing shows. Of course, Rose Quintana, who was the Madam of the scene. MJ: Who were some of the people who were doing shows then? The first number I took any part in, was a production number with her of “We Need a Little Christmas,” from Auntie Mame and the first solo number I did was “Guava Jelly,” by Barbra Streisand. Pepe leaned over to one of these boys and he whispered something and then the boy left.Īnd during shows, sometimes he would sing things like “Autumn Leaves.” His voice was cracking a little bit, you know, but he would get out there and sing his heart out. They whispered for a few seconds and then the Anglo went back upstairs. And he was sitting there not unlike a Turkish pasha and his court and this Anglo with his beer came down the steps.
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And he would sit where you’d walk down, at the bottom of the steps, there was a banquette. And Pepe DaCosta hung out there.Īnd I began to notice more and more that he always had these young boys around him, of all different shapes and sizes. I guess it had been a bar once and a restaurant too because it had a huge kitchen. It’s right across from the police substation. For sure it’s there, but the police parking, the painted white multi-level parking lot. What’s the street that runs in front of City County Health? It’s that street. It’s where the police had their parking lot, that parking garage they had There’s a restaurant there now, you would go downstairs into it. MJ: Here in El Paso? That’s where you started to do drag? He had bars in Albuquerque by the same name. It was a place that a guy from Albuquerque had opened up.
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When I met him, he hung out in a place called the Cellar Door. He told me one time he had some married man in one room and the wife in another room and they were both trying to get him and all this stuff and the guy who was like a count and all that sort of stuff. Zaza: No, no, no, that kind of thing didn’t exist openly at the time. MJ: Did he sing specifically in gay bars? They had never heard this kind of music before. He had the sombrero, the whole outfit, the sarape and everything. He said they had never seen anything like it before. In his younger days, in his twenties or early thirties, he believed he was the sensation of Europe because he went there and sang in cabarets and clubs.
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He died in like 1985 or 1986, Gilbert (Salazar) and Bob (Bonaventure) went to the funeral. Zaza Montenegro took the name from Sasha Montenegro, the famous Mexican actress. Oscar Wilde said, ‘the one charm of the past is that it is in the past.” Things have certainly changed and improved for the LGBTQ family in the intervening 24 years and that is as it should be.