Charo is a hit- concentrated energy,professional hips. A big hit of hair and flawless makeup. Charo has lived many lives, manifested the seemingly impossible. She lives in you and me every time we feel random joy or unreasonable hope.
She has endured- coming out whole and dancing in chunky heels on the spitting side of entertainment's girl-woodchipper. Even though she doesn’t need to, at 74ish, she still gives freely. Sounds like a lot of work to me but she doesn't let on if it is.
“They gave me a lot of make-up, they gave me a falsie body, big maracas, big hips. I thought 'OK, I'm gonna please (Johnny Carson)’, she told SF Gate magazine in 2005. “I wanna stay in America. So everything he asks, I'm gonna say yes’.”
The best part of Charo is her left thigh, where the guitar sits. It’s been there since she was 9, held closely to her heart as advised by an elder camping on her grandparent’s farm in Murcia Spain. You may not know if all you know is ‘Cuchi Cuchi’ but this is really her. She begins and ends with her guitar and the amazing things she can do on it.
When I was a kid, Charo would stumble from the deck of The Love Boat into our front room, with her exotic breasts, flipping her hair, saying stuff we thought was funny. She’d kick furniture out of the way, scare the dog and pull me off my ass, scattering Cheez-Its. Before she’d leave, she’d give my grandma, my mom's mom, a long kiss on the forehead with her eyes closed.
Mom, who was suspicious of Dolly Parton, was okay with Charo. Charo, even with her stream of Spanglish double entedres. She was welcome in our house. Maybe she was even Catholic.
I’ll never be able to thank Charo, but if I could I’d just bow silently. She’s still popping on social media- check her out. Life advice, demonstrations of costumes, cooking lessons. She’s the best kind of wealthy- kind and conscious.
Look her up if you didn’t have her in your life growing up like I did- she’s generous in her interviews and the details of her life are pretty shocking, heard through our modern cultural filters.
That she’s endured, that she endures is what I need to see nowadays. A bullshit-free cloud of glitter, a fundamentally gifted musician. A real hero in an age of soul crushing artifice.