Last night I was fortunate enough to see one of the greatest stars and greatest shows which I have ever seen. I saw Charro and her troupe perform yesterday afternoon at Soka University in Aliso Viefo, California in South Orange Country.
Prior to this concert, I had been citing 3 concerts seen long ago as the greatest concerts which I have ever attended. The first one was in 1964 when I saw Nat King Cole perform live at the old "Theatre in the Round" across the street from Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. The great singer sang most all of his most famous songs, including "Mona Lisa". In that theater, torn down decades ago, the stage rotated continuously and Nat King Cole had an uncanny ability to seem as if he was always looking at you and talking directly to you and singing for you. That was a great show. In 1967, I was in Tivoli Gardens in Denmark and out of the blue, I noticed a billboard saying that Marlene Dietrich was performing there that night and that the concert would cost 5 "krone". Danish Crowns were worth 20 cents at the time. I hurried to the box office and for $1.00 US, I was able to see a two hour live show from one of the most legendary entertainers of all time.
I described that show in detail on the this thread back in its early days and won't do it again here. The other memorable show for me was the Captain and Tenneille, seen by me and my wife in Las Vegas sometime during the mid to late 1980's In the Captain and Tenneille team, Toni, the female lead always did all the talking and Daryl Dragon, the Captain simply wore his captain's hat and joined her in the songs. Toni started out mentioning that fans often asked her if Daryl could talk or he was poor at public speaking. She said that he was a better public speaker than she was but he just didn't like speaking in public all that much. She said that they were going to make this a landmark show and she would hand him the microphone and shut up and let him do all the talking. Daryl then took over and was a fantastic emcee for the show plus he performed an old song from the late 50's or early 60's called, "The Book of Love"
Seeing Daryl, Toni and their band sing and dance to this song put this concert in my top 3. Here is a video of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfuNPbBaaA
Getting back to Charro, one of the reasons she is so good is that her show contains so many genres of music and dance. First of all, she comes out in her "cutchi cutchi" mode which is sort dressing and acting like she is a burlesque performer, telling lewd jokes and being very suggestive sexually. Changing modes, she enters into Spanish music and dance, starting with a group of dancers in her troupe, 2 males and 2 females, dancing the Basa Nova and then dancing Flamenco. Charo gets into the act a bit participating in part of the dancing.
Next she goes into Spanish popular music and sings one of my all time favorites, "Er es tu/". This song made it big on the charts in the USA in the early 70's. Older people usually remember it but most younger people have not heard of it..
A full show is made up of all this singing and dancing in many and various genres. As if that weren't enough, she now brings in her skill playing classical guitar. She mentions that she started out in show business at age 7 learning classical guitar and studying under one of the all time greats, Andres Segovia. She was so successful that she is actually considered one of the greatest classical guitar players in the world.
Here os a sample of her plane the famous Malagena by Ernesto Leucania: She played that piece at last night's performance as well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmNPXqG6ovg
After playing that humber, she had a long talk with the audience telling them how great they are. She is 64 now and yet is brimming with tremendous energy. What a show, I think that is now the number one show that I have seen so far!!
Lakey
