Ramiro Cortés Interview
Ramiro Cortés talks to Chris about his years as Lydia Mendoza’s impresario. Just after quitting his job playing baseball for the Coca Cola company, Ramiro Cortés was looking for work, and proposed that he take Lydia Mendoza out on tour. Just after she agreed, her family was in a tragic car accident, and Lydia lost her sister. After pulling back from the spotlight for 5 years to grieve, Ramiro organized her reentry onto the public stage. As big of a star as she was, it proved to be a challenge at first, because according to Ramiro, many people had assumed that it was Lydia who had passed in the car accident, as opposed to her sister. Cortés relates several amusing anecdotes about being on tour with Lydia, including an incident in Sonora, Arizona where an old woman hit Ramiro over the head in the lobby of the theater where Lydia was performing, because she was convinced that the real Lydia Mendoza had died in the car accident and that he was scamming the audience for money using a faux Lydia. She beat him repeatedly with the handle of her umbrella until blood from his head poured onto his suit and he was rushed by an ambulance to the hospital where he was treated with three stitches. Ramiro explains in the interview that things like this happened all the time. Listen to him speak candidly in these interviews about his time on the road with Lydia, which he describes as a years long “beautiful episode” of his life.
- Ramiro Cortés Interview Pt 1 00:00
- Ramiro Cortés Interview Pt 2 00:00
- Ramiro Cortés Interview Pt 3 00:00
Interviewee: Ramiro Cortés
Interviewer: Chris Strachwitz
Date: 7/23/1984
Location:
Language: English
This is an interview originally recorded for research purposes. It is presented here in its raw state, unedited except to remove some irrelevant sections and blank spaces. All rights to the interview are reserved by the Arhoolie Foundation. Please do not use anything from this website without permission. info@arhoolie.org
Ramiro Cortés Interview Transcripts:
Chris Strachwitz:
…in Hollywood, the Cortez, and when did you first meet them?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh, I met them in- must have been 1934. There was a- it was a little group made of the family. The father, the mother, the two sisters and the two brothers and Lydia herself. She played the violin at that time, she didn’t play the guitar. Her sister played the guitar. The mother played a violin, the father played a little triangle with a little ‘cling cling’, you know? The brother didn’t play nothing they were just singers and comedians. Very good comedians, both of them. El Chapulín, that’s what we called the small one.
Chris Strachwitz:
He and Juanita recreated quite a few of those comedy skits for me and I’m going to print them in the book.
Ramiro Cortés:
How long since you’ve seen Juanita?
Chris Strachwitz:
I saw her, I was there about two months ago.
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right?
Chris Strachwitz:
In San Antonio.
Ramiro Cortés:
What is she doing?
Chris Strachwitz:
Well you know she doesn’t want to get out of the house hardly at all. That’s a shame. I visited Maria also. She had just broken her hip or something. Juanita is pretty good. To get back to your early … Did you grow up in San Antonio?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well yes.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you happen to be there?
Ramiro Cortés:
I was reared in San Antonio since I was thirteen years old until I was eighteen, then I was hired by the Coca Cola company to play baseball for them.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really.
Ramiro Cortés:
At that time, Coca Cola had a team called a sandlot team, you know. Not for commercial business but for advertising. Played Doctor Pepper, played the factories and schools. They call it sandlot.
Chris Strachwitz:
Sure.
Ramiro Cortés:
I was taken to Dallas, Texas, so I made my residence in Dallas. I moved my family over there. My mother and my brothers. I moved to Dallas.
Chris Strachwitz:
Were you a professional ball player?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well not exactly a professional, because the Coca Cola didn’t have a professional ball team, it was just a club. Just to advertise the Coca Cola. Every time we finish a game, there was a big sign and Coca Cola was here. They used to take it on movies, like a news reel. They’d show it all over the years everywhere. Show the whole game. At the end they show a sign that would say and Coca Cola was here. We used to travel in a big train car and this big sign, Coca Cola baseball club. I stayed with them five years. I had a contract with them five years. They used to pay me fifty dollars a week, but in that time not even the president of the bank was getting that much money. It was those times. You don’t remember, no you don’t remember.
Chris Strachwitz:
We were too young.
Ramiro Cortés:
I’m seventy-six years old now.
Chris Strachwitz:
Are you really?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, I’m seventy-six years. At that time I was in Dallas and my brother was there. At that time Lydia Mendoza was already very popular. Another man by the name of Cortez, Raoul Cortez, he had a one hour of Spanish radio station in San Antonio, Texas, and he took Lydia to this radio station. He only had one hour time of day. Then from there she went to the Bluebird company to record some of the first record that she ever made with Bluebird. At that time she was so popular in Dallas that every restaurant they would- rock star. Everywhere where you have a radio you will hear her day and night.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really?
Ramiro Cortés:
Also there was a big radio station in not Eagle Pass, Texas, but I forgot that the other town next to Eagle Pass in Texas.
Chris Strachwitz:
In Del Rio?
Ramiro Cortés:
In Del Rio, it was a big strong very strong, they tell me you can hear this radio station all over the world. Do you remember that?
Chris Strachwitz:
Well, I’ve read about it.
Ramiro Cortés:
It was Dr. Brinkley.
Chris Strachwitz:
Correct.
Ramiro Cortés:
Dr. Brinkley was the owner of that. He used to advertise the glands, he was transplanting glands. Little bull you know.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you hear her live over that station or was it records?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, yeah. She took … She had a program there of every day, and then this fella, somebody, not Brinkley but another guy who rented some time with this radio station, he was advertising, he was selling Lydia Mendoza’s’ photos for one dollar. He says mail me one dollar and I’ll mail you an autograph picture of Lydia Mendoza. He made like a million dollars. He made rich because dollars come in the mail by the thousands every day. By the thousands. Still Lydia didn’t get nothing from that.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you ever send for a picture?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, no, I never did. When I quit the Coca Cola company then I’m having much to do so I was looking around to see what I can do. That’s when I found her in San Antonio, and that’s when I made a proposition to her to go out on the road.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you do that? What did you say to her?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh she said it was all right. Her husband at that time was living, you know the first husband. This is second. You met the second husband?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yes, Fred.
Ramiro Cortés:
He’s also both are shoe makers. Isn’t that coincidence? Anyway I took her out on the road, went to Dallas to play Dallas. Houston.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you just go with her or the whole family?
Ramiro Cortés:
No the whole family. The whole family. There was another sister who just play guitar. Her name was … I forgot the name.
Chris Strachwitz:
The one they can Panchita was her?
Ramiro Cortés:
Panchita, that’s right.
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s the one who died in a car wreck.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s right. They had an accident coming in from Dallas. I wasn’t there. I was in San Antonio waiting for them. Coming back something happened. They had a big wreck and she died. Then she quit. All of a sudden on account of that she quit for, oh I’d say five years. She didn’t do nothing.
Chris Strachwitz:
She didn’t do anything?
Ramiro Cortés:
She didn’t want to go out on the road. She didn’t make records or nothing. She stopped working for five long years.
Chris Strachwitz:
When you took them on the road, could you somehow in your mind tell us how that went? What kind of car did you drive? How did you know where to go?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well I inquire from … First, before I started with her, I started working with a man. Mr. Jiménez, he had the first distribution office of motion pictures. Motion pictures distributing office for Mexican pictures called Latin American Film Agency. This is a name I still use, my name for my company here because I’m now a distributor of pictures myself.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh you are? A film distributor?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, yeah. I sell pictures. I buy pictures and I sell them to Mexico. Not exactly a distributor but a broker.
Chris Strachwitz:
Broker.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, broker.
Chris Strachwitz:
This man was in Dallas?
Ramiro Cortés:
This man was in San Antonio, Texas with his office and he was a branch office. The main office was in El Paso, Texas by the Calderons. They used to be the producers of these pictures and the buyers also from all the independent producers in Mexico. In that time they used to produce maybe three or four pictures a year. Anyway, these pictures were distributed out of San Antonio and El Paso for California, and Texas and Arizona. All Latin people were, Mexican people. I started with him. I work for him for a while and then I learned where all these places were. I work there one year before I went out on the road with Lydia. When I went out, I quit this man because I didn’t like to be … I never did like to be working for nobody. Nobody.
Chris Strachwitz:
Your own boss.
Ramiro Cortés:
I am, yeah, my own boss. I went to work as an impresario as manager for the Lydia group or the Mendoza group, but she didn’t want to work. She work for me six of seven months and after the accident she didn’t want to work. She quit me. So I started to work with other artists. That’s why I have so many pictures, see? I started working with other artists that I bring from Mexico. Personal appearances of Mexican movie stars. I went to work on the road. I had a little office in San Antonio, Texas in the Houston building. All of a sudden one day here comes Lydia and her husband. First husband. They asked me if I can take them out of the road because they, well they needed to go out on the road. She got tired of doing nothing for five years. About that time the people kind of forgotten about her.
Chris Strachwitz:
This was after the second war, was it?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
This was about ’45 or …?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well no, right in the war.
Chris Strachwitz:
During the war?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, it was still after the war. After the war. Yeah must have been ’45, something like that. Then she asked me if I could take her out on the road again because she needed to go out. Her husband wasn’t working then so I tell her all right, I was going to do my best, because about that time everybody kind of forgotten about her. But anyway, because the city public thought that Lydia was the one that got killed. Everybody thought that Lydia was the one. They didn’t think it was the sister because she disappeared. She disappear from the stages, from the public, so everybody thought that Lydia was the one that died in this accident, see? So when I got started to try to book her, nobody wanted to believe me. ‘What’s the matter with you? Trying to fool everybody, now you’re getting out the sister. Thinking Lydia, they going to have names, or we don’t want you.’ I had a big trouble. Lots of effort to put her on in theaters again. Still I got her on theaters and the people responded and they saw that it was really her when they hear her singing. She had a beautiful voice.
Chris Strachwitz:
I’d like to go once more way back when you first started picking her up back after, in the ’30s when you first met her. Do you remember what kind of a show they would put on? Do you know how it started?
Ramiro Cortés:
At first they would open up the show with the two sisters singing. Maria playing the guitar. Juanita never really play nothing. The singing it was little country singing. Real beautiful singing, then after that they came in the two comedians. Which was Manuel, El Chapulín, doing a little sketch together with Juanita. Juanita would happen on the stage. Also Juanita would come out, the next number Juanita would come out sing by herself. The old type of singing, you know, with the little mirror you know talking about is, ‘I like this man here,’ the old type of, you know. Then after that why Lydia would close the show. At that time she didn’t play the violin no more, she only played the violin while they was in the group. While the other sister was living, the other sister was playing the guitar together with Maria.
Chris Strachwitz:
Where did you first see them? On the plaza?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah in the plaza in San Antonio.
Chris Strachwitz:
Could you give me a description of what it looked like? Where were they sitting?
Ramiro Cortés:
All right. You know where the market is? The Mexican market? You are familiar with San Antonio?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah a little bit.
Ramiro Cortés:
You know where the hospital is? What’s the name of this hospital? Right in town.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah I know. It’s just South of there.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah and right across the plaza there, big park in there. We call this park el Plaza del Zacate. This is an old rest park, but no more. It’s got another name. There is a big market there. Fruit market. In the back of the fruit market now all the trucks, they come in the morning from everywhere full of fruits. All kinds. Vegetables. Maybe you notice it, in the back of this market, see? That place was open air at that time and around this open place, around it was lot of tables and little restaurants like in the open air. They sell you enchiladas and tacos and tamales and all of that. They sound, there was little groups going around there singing for the public. Trios, duets, or single men singing. You give them, you pass a hat around. Lydia’s group was one of these kind of groups, you see? She would play in these restaurants around here and they would pass the hat around. She was playing the violin. Very sweet music, beautiful music. Old type of waltzes, foxtrots. Then she sing. That’s when the people got around her. When she start singing why everybody, all the tables would come over where the business was. That’s where she was picked up by this Bluebird company to make records by this Cortez boy who’s already died.
Chris Strachwitz:
You mean the family would sing, but then when she sang by herself people would really pay attention?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. At that time I just follow her, but I didn’t do any business with her. I didn’t talk to her or nothing. I just admired her like an admirer. I was at that time working for this fellow with the distribution office in San Antonio, Texas. When she didn’t like this kind of work, and the old man was getting old. Finally he died, the old man, and that’s when she stopped going out to certain places. Certain places. Restaurants, mostly restaurants in Dallas, and Houston. Her husband would take her out. That’s when I made the proposition to her to go out with me, but then the accident came and we stop for five years.
Chris Strachwitz:
Can I ask you a personal question?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
Were you very fond of her? I mean she was a very beautiful woman wasn’t she? Was it strictly a business attraction?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, at that time I was married myself. It was strictly business. She had her husband with her.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh she was already married then?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah. She had three little girls already.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh she already had three girls?
Ramiro Cortés:
You know the girls? You know the daughters?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yes, I met them too. I put a picture of some of them on one of the records.
Ramiro Cortés:
Of course they’re old people now, they’ve got grandchildren and everything, but at that time she already had two girls. Then she had another girl. Three all together.
Chris Strachwitz:
But you liked her music than you did any of the other people you heard there?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh sure, I used to like her singing very much. I used to bring big stars and I used to put her together with big stars from Mexico and everybody was astonished. Everybody admired her so much because they liked the way she’s singing. I never did … I was not smart now to take her to Mexico because she was more popular in the other side of Mexico, on the frontier of Mexico and United States. She was more popular there than her own, than on this side. For instance in the state of Chihuahua, all the Northern part of Mexico, she was so popular. The first time I notice that is one time that I receive a telegram from a fellow from Chihuahua asking me if Lydia Mendoza was available for a couple of days in Chihuahua, then how much I wanted for just her? He didn’t care about the group or nothing, just her. I told this, I didn’t even answer him, because we ain’t got any business in Mexico, you know? Here is our business. I was a fool.
Finally this guy keep on after me. One day he call me on the phone. San Antonio. He found me there. He say, “Look why don’t you answer my telegrams,” I say, “well I don’t [unable to parse] we’ve got plenty work over here in the United States. More than I can do. We still got to Chicago and up to New York and all those places.” He says “look, I give you five thousand dollars for two nights.” At that time, five thousand dollars, it was not nothing. You had to break all the banks to get five thousand dollars. That was a lot of money. It was a fortune. I thought the guy was playing with me, you know. I said listen. He says no I can send you a draft right now. I can send you a check. I can order the bank, the commercial bank is going to pay you five thousand dollars anytime you want to. Just send me a telegram saying yes. Send me a telegram.
Then I talk to her. I talk to her, look Lydia, this guy must be crazy. He’s offering me five thousand dollars for two nights. Only you, not the family. Well let’s get the money. She says all right let’s go. I say no let’s get the money first, because I still don’t believe it. I send this guy a telegram, and the next day, the very next day they call me from the commercial bank. Banco Commercial San Antonio, yeah we’ve got an order here to pay you five thousand dollars. So I went and picked up, got the money out. That time I was working with, I always work on percentage with Lydia. We had a salary paid to the family and then her and I would split the difference, see. Would split the dollars. We were making very good money. I made enough money to educate my boy in colleges and everything. She made enough money, only her husband would just spend most of it all the time.
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s what I heard.
Ramiro Cortés:
Anyway, let’s not talk about that.
Chris Strachwitz:
Well we’ll get back to that, but did you go then finally?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well yeah, finally I tell him … Here came the day that we have to go. My goodness. I drove all the ways from … Had a brand new station wagon myself, but we traveled all over for years. We traveled in this station wagon. I took my station wagon, went out to Chihuahua. You know before you get to Chihuahua, before you get to the city of Chihuahua because that’s the name of the state, but the city of Chihuahua. Must have been about fifteen kilometers before we got to Chihuahua we were stopped by the police. I thought they was immigration or something about papers you know? We stop. They say come to the side, get to one side.
The policeman they had a little tent. Little tent. They said, Lydia Mendoza? Yeah, yeah. All right. This is the city Mayor of Chihuahua and I’m the chief of police, and these are two of my [unable to parse]. We have a parade going. We will have a parade fixed for Lydia but we want her to get dressed here in the little tent. Put on her costume, you know? I was astonished myself. All right. I told her what it’s all about. She goes all right. She dressed with her costumes and everything. Then when they put her on a truck, big beautiful truck all with ribbons, flowers, and a big box that says Lydia Mendoza. I was in the automobile myself with the city Mayor. I’m telling you. When we got to the …
Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:22:14].
Ramiro Cortés:
I thought. I thought I lose.
Speaker 3:
Okay.
Ramiro Cortés:
We arrived in the city you know, we was surprised. All the main streets. So many people waiting for her and they had arcs on the streets. Welcome Lydia Mendoza. Bienvenida Lydia Mendoza. Welcome Lydia Mendoza. That’s when I said, my goodness, I think I made a mistake. I should have charged ten thousand dollars. If I’d had asked that guy for ten thousand … He told me later on, he said you don’t know how to do business with this woman, Mr. Cortés. If you’d have asked me for ten thousand I would have given to you. I’m telling you, and the show was going to be in the bull ring. Because that was … The bull ring was not big enough. They must have had about twenty thousand people that night there in that show. They had other people in the show, other artists, local artists, and then her. The second night was the same. Then another guy came in from Torreón, Coahuila. A town in the state of Coahuila which name is Torreón.
This guy came over and says I want- have you got Lydia? Yeah. She said hello. He said I give you fifty percent of the gross for her two days in the bull ring in Torreón. I say, no you give me some guarantee. Then I open up my eyes. I was very easy to learn myself. I say you give me a guarantee, so much money a guarantee, and then you give me fifty percent. He said all right. I forgot how much guarantee he gave me, but we went over to Torreón for two days. I’m telling you, I’m telling you, it was a big commotion to see her in town. And then-
Chris Strachwitz:
How much did you make that night? Do you remember?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh I forgot. We must have made ten thousand dollars, something like that.
Chris Strachwitz:
That must have been a lot of people because they didn’t charge. How should they charge it?
Ramiro Cortés:
No it was cheap then, I mean ten pesos or fifteen pesos. One dollar. It was eight pesos, one dollar at that time. Then I open my eyes. I didn’t want to take, and then they come over to see me from Saltillo, from Monterrey, from all the border towns. I say no more business, we go back home. We’re going back home. We’re going to organize something better than this.
Chris Strachwitz:
Why didn’t you like it there? Was the hotels not comfortable?
Ramiro Cortés:
No no, it was very beautiful hotels, it was very nice, everything was very nice. Same as the United States. A lot of places much better, but I didn’t want to do it because I tell Lydia I want to think about business now. If she’s making so much money here, let’s go back home and think about it, and organize a tour. A real organized tour like [unable to parse]. So we went back. I said this is all we know. “Oh, we got to go to Saltillo.” No no no, let’s go back home. We went back to San Antonio and organized a tour through Monterrey, Tampico. But at that time I was busy myself over here, and I couldn’t- I didn’t go with her, I just sent her over there. She went by herself, with the family. Her mother was very wise for business. She was. Lydia’s always been quiet, very quiet. She didn’t know nothing about numbers, she didn’t know nothing about data. Her mother and her husband, they’re the ones that got all the money. She never knew how much. She never knew nothing but sing and play the guitar.
Chris Strachwitz:
I guess that’s why she depended on you.
Ramiro Cortés:
Here, when I brought here in Los Angeles-
Chris Strachwitz:
When did you first bring her, do you remember?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. Must have been in 1944, ’45. Something like that. We play El Paso, Texas at the Colón Theater one whole week. It was big.
Chris Strachwitz:
It was probably after the war? The war was finished, wasn’t it?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah the war was finished. Then we came over to the Mason Theater in Los Angeles. At that time there was nothing. Million dollar was an American theater for American shows, you see, but Mr. Frank Fouce who was the owner … I got his picture there. Who was the order of the California theater, and the Mason theater. You know the Mason theater was … You know where the labor department is now? Between first and second streets in Los Angeles, there’s a big building there called the labor department. That’s where the old Mason Theater was. Mr. Frank Fouce had two thousand five hundred seats. That’s what she played first time. I’m telling you, that was a historical night it was, the night she opened there. It was so many people in the streets that they fire department had to come over, and the police, and they had to send some soldiers because the people were just … They couldn’t open the theater because they were afraid it would burn. Throw down the doors and everything.
I mean to tell you that there was no show. We couldn’t play that night because the commotion. It was not well organized. Even the owner of the theater didn’t think it was that much popular. She was so much popular that she would bring people even from Tijuana. They came over to see her. From San Diego, from everywhere. From San Francisco and they all try to get in at the same time. It was bad. The firemen with the big trucks. Oh let me tell you it was something big that nobody ever had, not even the big stars of Mexico ever had. Not even Cantinflas, or- Nobody. She was really something.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did the family come along with it?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, brought the family, brought the whole show. We stay there two weeks at the Mason theater. Oh it was, she was really popular.
Speaker 3:
Why was she so popular out here?
Ramiro Cortés:
She was popular everywhere. In Mexico City they had a program on the XEW radio station. At one o’clock in the morning have two hours of playing only Lydia Mendoza records, but nobody even wanted to put her in person. She was not the type for Mexico, see. She was the type for the people in the Northern part of Mexico, the Southern part of Texas and United States. Chicago. Everywhere. Her type of singing and her type of playing the guitar was not for the center of Mexico. That’s something else. I try to get her into Vera Cruz, no no. Not even the record. They didn’t even know her over there.
Chris Strachwitz:
She was too country huh?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah too country.
Chris Strachwitz:
But XEG it transmitted all over Mexico, didn’t it?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well no no.
Chris Strachwitz:
Well this was … Which one was it? XEW?
Ramiro Cortés:
XEW in Mexico City.
Speaker 3:
XEW in Mexico City.
Ramiro Cortés:
They’re the one that had a program. That’s all they … Program. She never went over there. She went one time as a tourist you see, but she never stay in Mexico. It was not her type. It was not the right type for Mexico City. Like many, many people, many artists from Mexico City, they’re not the type for the Northern part of Mexico. The Northern part of Mexico you have [unable to parse]. Polkas. Accordion. In the center of Mexico is mariachis you see, is different. Mexico has got different, each state, you find different food and different music in each state of Mexico. [unable to parse] country but anyway.
Chris Strachwitz:
You finally, you did open the doors finally at the theater and she made the performance yes?
Ramiro Cortés:
Where, here?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah in Los Angeles.
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, the next day was all right. The next day organized the lines. The lines, I mean to tell you, it was around all the blocks around us since eight o’clock in the morning.
Chris Strachwitz:
How much did they charge in those days to get in?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well fifty cents, initial price. Sixty cents. Then I had another emotion episode of her life one time. I took her to Tijuana. There was several Mexican artists that I took. It was a big show. Big show. Are you familiar with the Mexican actors? [unable to parse] Anyway, I got all these fellows. Emilio Tuero. Big show for the benefit of the red cross in Tijuana. I didn’t care what it was benefit or not, I say you give me two thousand dollars. I don’t care about the benefits. We don’t play no benefits. I never did play no … You pay me something then you advertise whatever you want. They did, they did. They gave me two thousand dollars for her. I took her that night. No, Emilio Tuero, which I have a picture there with him. Big star. Biggest star from Mexico. [unable to parse] Big show. Anyway we started the show and everybody opened the show. The show went on very nice, and we leave Lydia Mendoza til the last. That place must have been thirty five thousand people in the bull ring. It was also the bull ring. She wanted to play in the bull rings. They also put seats in the arena.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh in the arena where the bulls usually fight.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. It also puts maybe a thousand seats more in there besides what they have in the [unable to parse] It was funny. What a night. Everybody came out and sing and everything. The time came for Lydia Mendoza to come out so I told her come out here, let’s go. I saw her come out and she knocked on my door. Come out here let’s go it’s time for you. She says I’m kind of afraid it’s so many people. Yeah it’s one more show, that’s all.
See at first when she used to come out to sing she was always near the chair. Sit down on a chair you know. She’d hide her face because she was so ashamed for everything. But I got her to play and sing standing up to handle the guitar here with [unable to parse]. Got her to talk because … I says you have to say hello to the public, and say a few words to the public. So she learned all of that from me. She finally done it very nicely. People like that you know. That night, by the time she come out, I took her … She never want to come out in no big places if I didn’t take her by the arm herself because she feel confident so I took her. The minute we got out from the dressing rooms to the arena, when she go out to the big ring in the middle of the arena, all of the people stood up. Can you imagine about thirty five thousand people standing up? My goodness. She got so excited she couldn’t play. (Laughter). Come on, come out with it.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh my god that must have been embarrassing.
Ramiro Cortés:
She had something in her throat, like crying. I say the people applauding you know? They must have applauded twenty five minutes standing up. I can’t do it compadre. I had to take her back. We take her back to the dressing room again, and we got most of the artists to play again while she rests. What we going to do? We going to give the money back to the people here or something? She finally got over it, she finally got over it, and she sang. The second time she went out, she sang about, oh she must have sang about twenty-five, thirty songs.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did she take a good drink before she got there?
Ramiro Cortés:
No she didn’t, she never really drink or smoke or nothing. We used to offer her a little drink of cognac or maybe tequila, something. No.
Chris Strachwitz:
She just got herself together?
Ramiro Cortés:
She just got over it. It was a big emotion, she never saw that before, people standing up.
Chris Strachwitz:
Amazing.
Ramiro Cortés:
Amazing right? Big star. There never will be another one like her.
Chris Strachwitz:
She knows all these songs. That’s the other part that always really always baffled me. They’re all in her head. She doesn’t need a sheet to read from does she?
Ramiro Cortés:
No no, she don’t need notes, she don’t need music, no nothing. She just hear a song. Her most popular song was “Mal Hombre.” “Mal Hombre,” she must have recorded that song maybe fifteen or twenty times with different record company because she recorded for every company. You name it, she recorded. She must have recorded about a thousand records. Single records.
Chris Strachwitz:
I’m going to have a listing of them in the book. I’m trying to get the whole …
Ramiro Cortés:
At that time you know, it was just one song on each side of the record. Like now they have 10 or 12 songs. Different thing now. Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
You still didn’t want to go back to Mexico after all those amazing successes?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, yeah, I sent her. I sent her to the frontiers. To Saltillo, Monterrey.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh you did it alone?
Ramiro Cortés:
She went back to Chihuahua again. She made some tours, but I didn’t go. I couldn’t go with her. I just booked her but I couldn’t go with her because I was busy with this other company. At that time the big pictures came in like Rancho Grande, ¡Ora Ponciano! The big Mexican pictures. I had to be with the company because I had a big job.
Chris Strachwitz:
They never wanted her in any of those movies in Mexico did they? They never asked her did they?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, not in the movies. I tried to put her in the movies. I talked to Raoul [unable to parse], which is my picture over there with him. He was one of the biggest producers at that time. He says no, because what can I do with her? She don’t know how to talk, she don’t know how to act, she’s so timid. She’s so bashful. She’s no good for pictures.
Speaker 3:
Was it that, or forgive me for asking, was it [Spanish/Español]? Is that a part of it?
Ramiro Cortés:
No no, not any for that. A lot of portraits that have been done very good in the Mexican theater, in the Mexican movies, but she just didn’t have it. She was very bashful. [unable to parse]. Still is.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah she’s very-
Ramiro Cortés:
She don’t hardly talk. At that time when she started it was worse than now. She comes here to see me once in awhile. She’s around here then she comes over to the house. When we go to Texas I get to see her. I call her when I go to San Antonio very often. I call her on the phone to Houston. If she’s not there, I find her. We keep in touch. We keep in touch by mail.
Chris Strachwitz:
When you first picked them up and you traveled around, mostly around Texas, or where did you …?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, all around. Mostly Texas, Arizona and California. That was sure thing every year.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you know places where to stay or where to get good food?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh I knew everything. We never miss a day. Here sometimes I have to play three towns in one night. Yeah like here we used to play San Francisco, San Jose, Salinas the same night. Yeah we used to travel and at that time it was harder to travel because there was no freeways like now. A lot of people ask me about those because I’m the oldest impresario in the Mexican business there is. The oldest one. Sometimes they ask me and I make fun. I says ah we used to have this wall, this narrow roads, we used to fight with Indians to get through. (Laughter).
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you ever have any bad experience? I know that a lot of Anglos didn’t treat people of Mexican background [crosstalk 00:39:54].
Ramiro Cortés:
No I never did, even when we went to working in the West. We used to play the West Texas like Lubbock, San Angelo. Those were the bad places. Those were the bad places. I used to take her over there during the picking cotton season. There were lot of people, lot of money. Not now because now they pick cotton with machines, see?
Chris Strachwitz:
Then it was all …
Ramiro Cortés:
Then it was all handpicked. Especially, and we used to make play- We used to get to living, and we used to stay about three weeks in Lubbock, Texas and every night we play a different town. Every night come back to sleep in Lubbock. She would cook for all of us.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh really?
Ramiro Cortés:
She’s a good cook. Oh yeah. She make the finest flour tortillas I ever tasted in my life. During the day we didn’t do nothing. She would go out at seven o’clock at night to certain towns around. After Amarillo and I play lots in Colorado too, Denver, Colorado. Some places around Colorado we used to play all that too but mostly in Texas and West Texas. That’s where they had a lot of discrimination. You’d see restaurants where they say no Mexicans allowed, no negros allowed, no colored people, no dogs at that time. I make sure that I didn’t have to go in those places. We didn’t have to go in those places.
Speaker 3:
This was more in West Texas?
Ramiro Cortés:
Most in West Texas.
Speaker 3:
Not so much here in California?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, nothing here in California, nothing. Texas and West Texas. Nothing around San Antonio near the Rio Grande Valley, no, there was no discrimination there because most of the people there Mexican anyway.
Speaker 3:
El Paso?
Ramiro Cortés:
No there was no discrimination. Towns like close to Eagle Pass. I forgot the name of this town, oh that was bad. There was a President of the United States that was born in this little town. It’s on the highway like coming from San Antonio to the Rio into Eagle Pass there was this town. Oh that was bad. I used to go play there but we used to come from San Antonio and go back to San Antonio the same night.
Chris Strachwitz:
Do you remember what happened there? The two of you …?
Ramiro Cortés:
No no, nothing ever happened to us from what I remember, nothing. It was to other people. Nothing ever happened to us because I was pretty careful. I was pretty careful and not to visit those places where I see these signs and all of these places. I was very careful and that’s the reason she … I used to put all my people in a tourist court. In tourist courts where they had kitchenettes. We used to cook our own meals and that way we’d keep from being in trouble.
Chris Strachwitz:
You really sometimes lived in a separate world sort of.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, yeah.
Christ Strachwitz:
Did you ever think that it might make people feel sort of strange?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, I used to see a lot of things that I didn’t like. What could I do? It was lot of people used to go work. Lot of movie stars. They were run out of restaurants. Nice people. Another fella by the name of Antonio Badu. You remember Antonio Badu? I had a picture of him. Big movie star, big one. The biggest one they ever had in Mexico. Still living, he’s still living. We went in the restaurant just because we wanted to go. We stop in the best hotel. The hotel was all right, see. The hotel was all right. Stop in the best hotel. He was making personal acquaintance with me, went to go around. We saw a big sign right across the street from the hotel, big nice beautiful restaurant. No Mexicans or colored admitted.
Chris Strachwitz:
Where was this? In what town?
Ramiro Cortés:
In Lubbock, in Lubbock, Texas. That was the worst one of all. La Mesa, Texas, San Angelo, all those places. So I told him, let’s go in there. Let’s see how it is. He says all right let’s go. We was dressed up very nice you know… We got in, we sat down at the table, we order a big steak. Nice food. They serve us. Very nice and everything, and the waiter, anything else. No no. We talk, we stay there about an hour and nothing happened. We got the meal, we left the tip, we got out and paid. As we were going out I told the cashier, I thought you said no Mexicans Says, you don’t look like it. I say well you’re making a mistake all the time. So we had a good time. We had our laugh. It was just for fun you know, but that was it. Nowadays there’s no more. No more. No more of that. That’s it. I mean, what can I tell you?
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you get your nickname, doctor-
Ramiro Cortés:
Nopal?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
Did she tell you that?
Chris Strachwitz:
No, she didn’t, but I’d like to know, but she called you that.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. See, that man over there, that man over there, you see those two men over there walking?
Chris Strachwitz:
Up there? Yeah, uh-huh.
Ramiro Cortés:
The next one is Lana Turner, see, I’m with Lana Turner. Well then, you see the two men there? One of the greatest comedians that ever was in Mexico, before Cantinflas, he drowned, he was drowned. He was swimming in the Chapala Lake and he was drowned.
Chris Strachwitz:
What was his name?
Ramiro Cortés:
Carlos López, El Chaflán. [Spanish/Español 00:00:39] He was a big comedian. See how happy with her. He’s the one that named me Doctor Nopal, because I composed a song, El Nopal, so I used to sing it myself and then [crosstalk 00:00:58] pick up my guitar, you know like here and I used to sing El Nopal for fun, you know. There’s nothing to it, very simple, but then he named me Dr. Nopal, I guess on account of the, on account of that song.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you ever take part in shows?
Ramiro Cortés:
See that caricature there? That was made by a very famous caricaturist in Mexico, what was his name- huh?
Speaker 3:
Crox? Croc?
Ramiro Cortés:
Crox Alvarado, Crox Alvarado [Spanish 00:01:31] he put the cactus there. Doctor cactus.
Chris Strachwitz:
Why did he put those feet up there?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well, that was a caricature, see that one over there? That’s another from another guy in San Antonio, who made that drawing of me sitting down in the cactus.
Chris Strachwitz:
I see.
Speaker 3:
That’s a cute one, that’s a cute one.
Ramiro Cortés:
And that’s what the song is all about, it says if you don’t love me, I’m gonna sit down on a cactus. That’s the story.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you have anything to do with them getting these jobs on these radio programs for Laboratorio Maya or something like that?
Ramiro Cortés:
No.
Chris Strachwitz:
No, you don’t know anything about that?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I don’t know anything about that.
Chris Strachwitz:
I think that was [unable to parse], because she said that they broadcast for a long time over at some stations for laboratorio Maya.
Ramiro Cortés:
What was that?
Chris Strachwitz:
I think out of Tijuana, but I’m not sure.
Ramiro Cortés:
Maybe they took some records of her, because I don’t even know about Laboratorio Maya, haven’t heard of that.
Chris Strachwitz:
And, I’m still, in the beginning, did you like any of the musicians you heard in San Antonio? Like Santiago Jiménez or the Echeverría brothers-
Ramiro Cortés:
Yes, I used to like him, I used to like Santiago Jiménez, it was several, several good singers and comedians and actors, and everybody wanted to work for me, we need more time, I never had time.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
When I go out with Lydia, it’s 3 or 4 months at the time.
Chris Strachwitz:
They said they would only travel about 6 months and then they would go home again and stay-
Ramiro Cortés:
One time I was playing at this, this is funny, this is real funny. One time was playing at a little town called Sonora in Arizona, where they, copper mines, a lot of people. And I was, out in the lobby, Lydia was singing on the stage, I was out in the lobby getting ready for me to count the money and check out because we had to leave for another town the next day. I was talking to the manager of the theater, standing up, waiting for the show to be over, when here comes an old woman, hit me with an umbrella in my head and it broke my head. Blood came out and everything. I was taken to the hospital, 3 stitches in there because she really hit me with this umbrella, with the handle of the umbrella.
What the hell’s the matter with you? She says that she was cursing me, she says you should be ashamed, bringing, making the name of our people who’s already dead, Lydia Mendoza is in heaven now, and you bring somebody else, thinking it was showing us that it was her, you should be ashamed and she kept on hit me with this umbrella. She still thinking that it was not Lydia, things like that happened many times.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you convince her?
Ramiro Cortés:
I couldn’t convince her, they put me on an ambulance, [crosstalk 00:04:50] all bloody here, my suit and everything. Jeeze Louise. You should be ashamed, she said, bringing somebody else here, that’s her sister. That’s on account of those 5 years, she hid from people. Many things-
Chris Strachwitz:
Well, her sister is pretty popular too.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, the sisters were very popular too. The duet, it was a very good duet, yeah, they were, Maria was a very good musician, she played the piano very good.
Chris Strachwitz:
On a stage she would play the piano.
Ramiro Cortés:
Sometimes, yeah, she would play the piano for her sister when she was singing all by herself, the [inaudible 00:05:30], what we call the [inaudible 00:05:33], she would sing the [inaudible 00:05:30]. Or when Manuel would come on the stage to put a comical dance, she would play the piano, she was our pianist, we had everything in the group. We had everything in the group, she’s a good piano player, by ear, everything by ear. She never took lessons or nothing.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did the mother take part in the show at all by the time-
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, yeah, at first, not at the shows, but when they were singing in this park, in this plaza that I’m telling you, in the market.
Chris Strachwitz:
Zacate, yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s when she used to play the mandolin.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you ever hear them sing together, the mother and Lydia.
Ramiro Cortés:
Sure, sure, yeah, I heard them sing together, when they were playing in this place, you know, I used to go every night to see them.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh, you did.
Ramiro Cortés:
When I was in San Antonio I used to go every night.
Chris Strachwitz:
You must have really enjoyed-
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, sure, like everybody else, like everybody else, sure, I enjoyed very much, very much. My mother knew her very good and used to love Lydia Mendoza, every new record that would come out on the market would sell like hot cakes right away. I would buy one for my mother right away, yeah, sure. Everybody liked her. Yeah. A lot of composers were looking for her all the time because everybody wanted for Lydia to sing their songs, you see. Like this one over here, see that group, the 3 there? That fellow sitting down, I don’t even remember who he was but the other one on this side, that’s the famous Lorenzo Barcelata he’s the composer of María Elena, Rancho Grande, all those- huh?
Speaker 3:
Pepe Guizar?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, no. Rancho Grande? No, Pepe Guízar composed Guadalajara, not Rancho Grande, that’s the composer, María Elena, Rancho Grande. One of the biggest composers of Mexican music-
Chris Strachwitz:
And he would come to you and-
Ramiro Cortés:
I have his guitar that he left when he died, he left me his guitar, it’s sitting up on there and then he would come over here to work for me and he would talk to Lydia Mendoza and he gave her many, many songs.
Chris Strachwitz:
I was wondering, where she got, how would she learn them, do you know how she would learn them?
Ramiro Cortés:
A lot of times she would, I would get her a record, a new record, by somebody else. She would hear this record and she had such a beautiful memory and ear that she learnt it right away. She still does. She still does.
Christ Strachwitz:
That’s amazing.
Ramiro Cortés:
Amazing, amazing. Amazing woman. The whole family was very musical.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah. I wish you could think of another story like those-
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, well, it was- many stories, not very many because it was a family, we travel nice, we talked about nice things, she never liked a joke, she was quiet woman.
Chris Strachwitz:
But her sister, Juanita was a pretty good jokester?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, she was very bashful, too. She was, everybody was very bashful, very bashful. All of them, very quiet, everybody.
Chris Strachwitz:
Because Andrew now seems to be a real, he’s a real outgoing guy-
Ramiro Cortés:
Well now, Andres, what is he doing?
Chris Strachwitz:
He works for the bus company in San Antonio.
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh well, Manuel.
Chris Strachwitz:
Both of them.
Ramiro Cortés:
I thought Manuel Already retired from the bus company.
Chris Strachwitz:
I think he’s supposed to retire next year, I think.
Ramiro Cortés:
The last time I saw him he told me it was, one more year and I quit.
Chris Strachwitz:
I think Andrew works as a mecha- no, he takes care of some of the stations.
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right?
Chris Strachwitz:
The outlying bus stops, he keeps the plants in order and stuff like that.
Ramiro Cortés:
Did you talk to them?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
Did he tell you about me, they told you about me?
Chris Strachwitz:
Well, they all talked about you.
Ramiro Cortés:
We were one family.
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s right. You were really a family, it was in that way a very traditional thing.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
It wasn’t just that.
Ramiro Cortés:
There was an older man here from Washington, from the University of Washington, he tried to write, he wrote, he tried to write something about Lydia Mendoza, and he did, he sent me some, he came here with me to ask me lots of questions and I said all right and then he sent me from this, from the University of Washington, he sent me this writing that he made. Very nice.
Chris Strachwitz:
He did make it, could I possibly see it, would you have it?
Ramiro Cortés:
I don’t even know where I have it, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 3:
Remember his name?
Chris Strachwitz:
Because that’s the only other person they mentioned to me that was writing something about her. A professor at Washington-
Ramiro Cortés:
Professor, he was a professor.
Speaker 3:
Seattle, Washington?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I think Washington DC, he was a professor of Latin costumes or something like that. But there was another one in San Antonio, Texas, he still lives there, he was recording all the history of Lydia Mendoza. He called me many times, I told him well I can’t go especially for that, the next time I’m in San Antonio, I’ll be glad to do it, so one time I went to San Antonio, I stayed the whole week with him and Lydia.
Chris Strachwitz:
Was that the man who did some programs for KCOR?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
They told me about that.
Ramiro Cortés:
He really got something, he’s really got it.
Chris Strachwitz:
Do you think he’s got some …
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, he really has got the whole thing. Lydia and I were sitting all the time, hours and hours everyday. He really was doing a very wonderful job. I don’t know about-
Chris Strachwitz:
Interesting to get those tapes.
Speaker 3:
Was he at Trinity university?
Ramiro Cortés:
This man?
Speaker 3:
Trinity? Yeah. Trinity University?
Ramiro Cortés:
I really don’t remember the name of the university. I really don’t remember the name of the university.
Speaker 3:
Como se llamo?
Ramiro Cortés:
Como se llama, yeah. This was a long time ago. I must have something around but I don’t really know where, you know. I didn’t pay much attention to him because he was mixing Lydia with other people, not only with her.
Chris Strachwitz:
I see.
Ramiro Cortés:
He was trying to figure with a lot of people from Mexico, a lot of artists-
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh, I see.
Ramiro Cortés:
Concerts and this and that thing.
Speaker 3:
Was it Manuel Peña?
Ramiro Cortés:
Sounds like it, sounds like Manuel.
Speaker 3:
Manuel Peña.
Ramiro Cortés:
Professor Carlos B. Gil. Carlos Gil. University of Washington, department of history. Seattle, Washington, you’re right. Here is a telephone if you want it.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, could you give me the phone number?
Ramiro Cortés:
Sure.
Chris Strachwitz:
Tell it to me, into the machine is okay.
Ramiro Cortés:
All right. Seattle, Washington.
Chris Strachwitz:
Great.
Ramiro Cortés:
Carlos B. B like in boy Gil, G-I-L. You know something I had him over there all the time.
Chris Strachwitz:
G-I-L, I see. That’s the one she told me about.
Ramiro Cortés:
Besides him, is this other guy in San Antonio, which also-
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s about it, yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
This guy in San Antonio really got something, he’s really got something, we really went at it.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, that’s it. I think we- [Tape stops].
Ramiro Cortés:
…Everything.
Chris Strachwitz:
She also played violin.
Ramiro Cortés:
She’s the one that taught them everything.
Chris Strachwitz:
Apparently so.
Ramiro Cortés:
She was not like them, I don’t know what they got, those bashful, because she was not bashful, she was real frank and she would talk, say come on let’s go see him, if she wanted to go see the president, she’d see the president.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah. Would she call herself Leonora or Leonor?
Ramiro Cortés:
Leonor.
Chris Strachwitz:
No A on that-
Ramiro Cortés:
Leonor. They have a daughter she has, Leonor, Leonor, Lydia has a daughter by the name of Leonor.
Chris Strachwitz:
You didn’t know the husband that well, the father, I guess he died in ‘38.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, he died right away, I didn’t know him very well. I saw him play this little triangle but-
Chris Strachwitz:
But you didn’t get t meet him much.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I didn’t get to meet him, he died right away.
Chris Strachwitz:
They told me a lot that he was sort of, he had a hard time trying to make a living and he was never able to find a job her in the United States, really. They say that’s why he kept drinking more and more.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, he was a real alcoholic, very much.
Chris Strachwitz:
I was wondering about if you could pin it down for people, to get an idea, they say while she made a lot of money, she spent it all, what sort of money would she make on an average city, let’s say Friday night in Laredo.
Ramiro Cortés:
She would make her part for herself, she would make maybe $100, $150, which in those times I’m telling you it was a lot of money.
Chris Strachwitz:
You also said you paid the family a certain salary.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, from what I get from the theaters, I used to get 50%, 60% of the draws. They would pay for everything, advertising, everything, they would pay for everything, we just paid our expenses. First we take out the cost of the expenses, traveling expenses, gasoline, something happen to the station wagon, which never, because I kept a new station wagon every 6 months. All my life, every 6 months I would go get a new one and I never had no problem in the highway or nothing, a flat tire, nothing. We would take out the cost of the station wagon, like oil and gasoline and keeping it clean, something like that. We take out the cost of the hotel expenses for the whole group, hotel or tourist court, wherever we had a stop. Then we take out from the gross the salaries we give the two sisters, the two boys, small salaries, something like $5 a day, $10 a day.
From whatever it was left, we’d go 50/50, her and I. She’d make pretty good, from the whole week I would say in average, in a small town, I’m talking about like when we’d go to the Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg or McAllen, Texas, far West places, she would come out I would say, five, six hundred dollars a week, which in those times … big real big money, not little money, it was big money, because the biggest salaries in those times was $6 a week, $7 a week, you remember. How old are you?
Chris Strachwitz:
I’m 52.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, you remember.
Chris Strachwitz:
I was in another place though. I was born in Europe, actually, I was born in Germany.
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, I came here after the war.
Ramiro Cortés:
I’ve been in Germany, my wife and I have been in Germany many times. I got lot of pictures from Munich.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. 2 years ago we spent New Year’s and Christmas in Munich.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really? And you have been involved with motion pictures here at all that are made for Spanish audiences-
Ramiro Cortés:
No. I made, I produced 2 pictures myself in Argentina. There’s a picture one, that’s where I am with the girls, a color picture, that’s from the House of Love, which I produced myself an then there was on the top over there, let’s see … that one over there, see that drawing? That color drawing, that’s another one. The House of Madam Lulu. Sexy pictures, I made 2 in Argentina, I made very good with it.
Chris Strachwitz:
They probably sell well.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, they still sell, they’re still on distribution in the United States, in Mexico, all over Latin America and I made very good, I don’t want to get involved in that, too much work. I don’t have to work.
Chris Strachwitz:
You’ll spend your I’m sure. Did you travel to the valley with them once? Down to Edinburgh.
Ramiro Cortés:
Once? Every year. Every year.
Chris Strachwitz:
You were never there when he made all those hundreds of records, like the recorded for Ideal and Falcon-
Ramiro Cortés:
No, she done none of that on San Antonio, only Falcon, she went by herself, when sheshe was headed to record with Falcon, with the Ramirez brothers, one of them died already.
Chris Strachwitz:
The one who wrote songs.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, beautiful, I used to make most of these, most of these, no, not most of these, some of his songs had my words.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really, you also wrote songs?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, I write poems and songs and all that.
Chris Strachwitz:
Are there any of them that Lydia recorded or not?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. She recorded one, she recorded … I forgot the titles. She recorded several of them.
Chris Strachwitz:
But you never checked in to how little or how much they got from these records-
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I know they were, they’d sell like hotcakes but I don’t know.
Chris Strachwitz:
You apparently never kept records. You can’t do everything.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I was very busy with her tours always kept me day and night busy, busy making telephone calls and trying to arrange the tour because you had to arrange the tour to go one way, see? Come back the other way, not jump from one place and you kill yourself then, like if you wanted to play San Antonio and then play Los Angeles and then go back to, no, you had to come down straight, you had to book yourself from San Antonio, coming down, all the Rio Grande to El Paso and then to Arizona, make Arizona if you wanted to go to New Mexico, you can go to New Mexico, which we did many times. One of the last tours that I made with her was in New Mexico. The last tours. And then we’d come this way to Los Angeles, we’d go back the other way. You had to arrange, you had to keep working all the time and just trying to arrange.
Chris Strachwitz:
I know that she recorded with for example Narciso Martínez, or Beto Villa.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, she never did record with Beto Villa. Beto Villa was very popular, he had his own orchestra.
Chris Strachwitz:
But you never traveled with them?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, the only local people they had to work with was Lydia Mendoza. All the rest of, I had 5000 people work for me, 5000 actors, from all over the world, I mean, when I come to Spain, I used to bring from Argentina, from Central and South America, from Mexico, but from United States, only Lydia Mendoza, that’s all. I never did work for nobody else. I had it one time, I had Los … A duet of an accordion and a guitar. Los … Los Alegres de Terán.
Chris Strachwitz:
You had them-
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, they worked for me. I was one of the first ones that I got them out of McAllen, Texas.
Chris Strachwitz:
Really? I was wondering, that was certainly that-
Ramiro Cortés:
They’re [unable to parse], they are [unable to parse], but they’re not the same ones, the songs and, the first ones they can’t even sing, not at all.
Chris Strachwitz:
What did you say, Eugenio Abrego and Ramiro…
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s a Jr.
Chris Strachwitz:
No.
Ramiro Cortés:
The old ones? They must be my age.
Chris Strachwitz:
They are. Almost, not quite. Tomas Ortiz,
Ramiro Cortés:
Tomas Ortiz, Tomasito.
Chris Strachwitz:
Eugenio Abrego.
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right?
Speaker 3:
What is that, about 70, 72.
Chris Strachwitz:
I don’t think they’re that old but they were probably a little bit younger than you were, they were probably-
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, they’re still going, oh yeah. They’re sort of retiring, I think.
Ramiro Cortés:
In Mexico, the say that I’m so old that I was a waiter in the last supper. Ain’t that something? Because I’m the last one, I’m the last one in the movie stars and everything, I’m the last one, no more, they all have passed away. Pedro Armendáriz is gone, Jorge Negrete is gone, Cantinflas is the one but he’s 65 years old, he’s about the oldest one too. And that guy there, Ramon Pereda, see how young he is there? He’s 91 years old now. They say that he was a referee between the- in the fight of David and Goliath. [Tape stops.]
Chris Strachwitz:
Where did you grow up, I think you said that when you were 13 you came to San Antonio?
Ramiro Cortés:
When I was 13 years old, in 1921. My father got killed in the revolution in Mexico and, he was with the federal army. They shot him in a little town close to Saltillo, Agua Nueva. He’s buried there and then, my mother, she came over to San Antonio with the rest of the kids, we were five boys and one girl. I was the oldest.
Chris Strachwitz:
You were born where?
Ramiro Cortés:
I was born in a little town close to Monterrey by the name of Galeana, Nuevo León. All my brothers were born there, no, 2 of them were born in Saltillo.
Chris Strachwitz:
Was she able to bring any property with her?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, we couldn’t bring that in. She was so lucky, see, the government, the president of Mexico gave her 11,000 pesos, silver pesos, the big ones at that time. We had all, we would, all the kids, when we came across, we had all these pesos around our pockets and the little bags, and everything. 11,000, can you imagine? In and bag, in a briefcase, in a canvas bag. I had one, we came across the border.
Chris Strachwitz:
So you actually had a little money to start with.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, 11,000 that was a lot at the time, what happened she put it in a Mexican bank in San Antonio, the Banco de Mayo, Banco Mayo, at that time, the banks in United States had no federal reserve.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, they were not insured.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, they were not insured, Roosevelt was the one that closed all the banks that didn’t have insurance with the federal reserve. This bank, my mother deposit all these 11,000 pesos in this bank and the next month after she made the deposit, the bank was closed, was broke. She lost every penny on it.
Chris Strachwitz:
No.
Ramiro Cortés:
Every penny of it.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you make-
Ramiro Cortés:
Well, we had to go to work, I went to work right away selling candies and selling, my brothers and everything. We had to do it, after school we’d go to school. Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
You really liked baseball and you became pretty good at that?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well, when I was little, I used to play with a little funeral home, Gonzalez Funeral Home and he had a club, he had a club, I used to play with him every Sunday, they’d give me 50 cents to play with him every Sunday. From there they picked me up, the Coca Cola people, like scouts. And then I went and talked to my mother about it, she said all right. I had to travel, I went to New Orleans, I used to go to Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, New Orleans. By train, everything by train.
Chris Strachwitz:
You sort of became the star of your family.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, I’m the oldest one. I was the man of the family then, 13 years old. I didn’t get to go to school very much, maybe I went a couple of years, that’s all. In Mexico there was no schools, due to the revolution, there was no schools at all. I was 13 years old, I barely knew how to write my name, because my mother used to teach me, whatever I knew my mother teach to me. She made me read a lot of books when I was older. Picked up here and there. I like Germany very much. We spent Christmas and New Year, 2 years ago in Munich. That’s where the business is, in Munich.
Chris Strachwitz:
A lot of the films companies-
Ramiro Cortés:
Especially in the motion picture business, that’s where it is, in Munich.
Chris Strachwitz:
Are the Germans making- [Tape stops].
Ramiro Cortés:
I was brought here by Mr. Frank Fouce.
Chris Strachwitz:
Senior?
Ramiro Cortés:
Senior, yeah, el papá. I was brought here, let me see. In 1946?
Chris Strachwitz:
The same time that you brought Lydia and the family?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, it was later, I already quit with Lydia, long time ago.
Chris Strachwitz:
Why did you quit with her?
Ramiro Cortés:
Well, mostly, the boys didn’t want to go out no more, Manuel, he didn’t like the going out. He didn’t like very much the work of being at the theater all the time. I don’t blame him.
Speaker 3:
Other than the fact that they were, forgive me for interrupting, like second fiddle.
Ramiro Cortés:
Who?
Speaker 3:
The boys, and the sister. Lydia was the big star, and they were-
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, sure, they were the fillers. Then I was offered a good job here, managing the Million Dollar Theater, and the Mason Theater, Frank Fouce had 5 theaters at that time, he had the Roosevelt Theater, the Monterrey, the California Theater, then Mason. No, 4 theaters. No, and the Mayan, the Mayan and I was managing the 5 theaters myself, so I stayed with him 22 years.
Chris Strachwitz:
Is that right?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yes.
Chris Strachwitz:
Were you in charge of hiring the live talent?
Ramiro Cortés:
Everything, live talent and the workers and everything, the whole thing, he was never there. He had only one son, which is old now, he calls me pretty much everyday, only one son he had, he’s 52 years now.
Chris Strachwitz:
We just spoke with him, actually before we came over here. I had a little talk with him, just to see-
Ramiro Cortés:
Frank Fouce, Jr.? Oh, I talk to him every day. He’s like my son.
Speaker 3:
He said he spoke to you. He always says you’re the only man to talk to.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. Sure.
Chris Strachwitz:
How did you decide what kind of talent to book in to these theaters?
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s mostly, mostly the work of an impresario, see, you got to know what the people like to see, in pictures and motion pictures and also in live talent. You have to more or less know what the lawyer wants and what the printer wants, what the shoemaker wants and the carpenter wants. You have to know, you gotta be sure, otherwise you’re gonna lose a lot of money and a lot of time, so that comes by itself, that comes right by nature, like a producer when he makes a picture, he’s got to know more or less what the gross of the public’s going to like. If you’re going to make pictures for you to like, you’re not going to make nothing, because, you know? Like myself, I only like one director and one producer in the United States, John Cassavetes, he is my idol, if it was me I would buy all his pictures and I would see all his pictures all the time, because he is the only one that knows how to make real good pictures in the United States and all over the world but he makes very few and his pictures are not commercial, they art pictures.
But I can’t buy pictures for me, I have to buy for the other guy, for the sweeper, for the shoe shining boy. [Tape stops].
Ramiro Cortés:
…People who go, people who pay for the theater, which are the common people, the workers, the laborers. This is what you’ve got in your mind when you’re buying all the time. A lot of people- I had a friend of mine who went to buy pictures for Mexico, he’s a big distributor but he bought 15 pictures that he liked himself, went to Mexico and nobody like them, he lost a lot of money, lost a fortune. Can’t do that.
Chris Strachwitz:
I guess Mexico isn’t going to change, I always wondered aren’t they going to get tired of the Ranchero movies ever?
Ramiro Cortés:
Never will, never will. Here the Westerns are gone from the United States, they will come back. The Westerns will come back. There was a beautiful cuento, comó se dice cuento en inglés?
Speaker 3:
Story. Cuento’s like a problem.
Ramiro Cortés:
Story. Yeah, cuento. This is a company of dramatic company, traveling around in Mexico, traveling down in the country in the rivieras playing here, playing there. It was so bad this impresario used to real fine place, for the country people they’re no good you have to find something the people like where you go. In his program he only had been dramas, crying, they don’t like that, they like that in Mexico city maybe or Monterrey or in New York, Broadway or that.
Nobody would go, every night he’d hit a new town, oh we’re going to do here, we’re going to very good because of here it’s so big, so beautiful but nobody go, 15 or 20 people. They were hungry they didn’t have no money to travel no more so they hit a big town in the state of Chihuahua and he said to the actors, “Here we’re going to make a lot of money so we have enough to eat tomorrow. Everybody with their share so everybody will be happy. You see how beautiful the theater is.” That night they advertised, they went out in the streets to advertise, like in a parade. “Tonight! Tonight! Is the big show.”
That night 8:00 at night it was only 5 people, well let’s wait a half an hour more maybe some more come in soon. They look through a little hole in the curtain, there’s always a little hole where you look around, eh? All right, so they waited a half an hour, 2 more came in so they get started they had to open up the curtain and they started the show. He told them, “Don’t be afraid, these people will like the show so much they will talk tomorrow, they will bring a 1,000 people tomorrow and we’ll have a full theater tomorrow because the people going to like the show. We’re doing the same show tomorrow, because they’re going to like it they’re going to advertise.”
That’s the best advertising there is, when you talk to another guy or something. They said, “Well, all right.” That night they eat hamburger from nothing, hoping that they next night. The next night, what happens? Only one man, right in the middle of the theater, big fat man sitting down there, waiting for the curtain to go up. They looked through the little hole, he say, “What’s the matter? Where’s the people? There’s only one man over there. Tell him to go home, we can go to work with it. Oh no we will be ashamed if we don’t put on the show, this guy paid to come in. So he’s entitled for us to give him the program, he’s entitled to see the program, whether we go hungry or not, he paid the admission price so we’re going to work.”
All right so we go to work so they put on the whole show for this guy and he applauded. In the intermission he got up and smoked and come back and sit down in the same place. Then at the end of the show they used to put what they call the grand finale, somebody will recite somebody will sing, that’s besides, like the gift to the public. One of the actors went to the manager of the show, to the head of the show, of the company. “You go down there and give this guy his 2 pesos, tell him to go home, we don’t want to go out there and sing and recite for this only one guy.” He says, “You’re right, I’ll go and talk to him.”
He went and told him, “Hey did you like the show?” “Oh beautiful show, I like it very much, I enjoyed it very much.” He said, “Look, I’m going to give you these 2 pesos and you go home because the boys don’t want to work no more, they want you to go they’re too tired and they don’t want to sing anymore, so you take your 2 pesos and go home.” He says, “No, I’m the one that’s waiting for you to go home, I’m the one that sweeps the theater.” They like to die. It happens, it happens, when you go out in the road. You’ve got to take out something that people like.
Chris Strachwitz:
Did you have any real bad nights when just nobody showed up?
Ramiro Cortés:
Not with Lydia but I had it with other people yeah, not with Lydia.
Chris Strachwitz:
Lydia was always- How did you promote? Did you do that part too, like go on the radio stations?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, we go to radio station, sometime, not all the time. I will call like one week before, I will arrange for my tour one week before I start call to the area and say, “Hey, I’m coming with Lydia Mendoza next Wednesday, I’ll see you next Wednesday.” Then I had a printing shop in San Antonio who will make me some window cards and hand bills then I will give this print shop the order say, “You send to the [unable to parse] theater in Fresno, California, send them 50 window cards and send them 1,000 hand bills.” He does that, he already had the form made for the whole thing. Only he would have to just print the, the name of the theater and the date, that’s all. The rest was all ready made. They do now with a photo, they don’t make no more cuts they used to make led cuts, remember? Now they don’t do that, they just photograph everything, it’s easier now and cheaper.
Chris Strachwitz:
It was usually by placards that you put in windows you say?
Ramiro Cortés:
In the window cards, window cards were placards. Then he would start advertising on the radio programs that he had, he reserved in the town. He would pay for the whole thing himself. The print shop will send him everything COD, collect. Then but lot of times we get down time for the program, I never let Lydia sing by radio, only talk, say hello to the public, I wait for you tonight in the theater and all of that. They would play a record for her, to her but we talk on the radio, tell the public we going to be, a lot of people will …
Chris Strachwitz:
When to the valley for example, Edinburg and all those places, did they always have theaters or did you sometimes have to go on the carpa?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, I never play no carpas? The only carpas I play was in Robstown, Alice, Robstown and Falfurrias, and Kingsville. Those big, huge tents they were owned by a man by the name of Stout Jackson who used to be the strongest man in the whole wide world. He was even in the Believe it or Not Book. He would raise in his back, 5 bales of cotton, which was 2500 pounds in his back. He was strong. When I met him long time ago, when I was working for the motion pictures on the road, I met him in Corpus, he had a side show on a carnival. He had a side show like he would hold up an automobile with his back, doing the strong man thing.
He had his nice little tent, nice little tent which hold about 800 seats. I told him, I says, “Hey, would you like to go in the show business? In the motion picture business? You must be getting tired of lifting things. What you going to do there with the tent?” He says, “I don’t know.” I say, “Why don’t you set your tent over here in Robstown, Texas, set your tent over there and buy a couple of projectors and have somebody show them I’ll give you the picture. I’ll send you the motion pictures on a percentage basis.”
He took to the idea right away, talked to his wife and to his son and they close the show right away because they were very tired of lifting things. (Laughter). You meet him he would have in his pocket the big nails, nails as wide as his finger and he would wrap his handkerchief around and he would, he’d give it to you as a souvenir. He was getting tired of that. (Laughter). The next time I was around there he already had his tent put up in Robstown, Texas in an empty space that he found there. He already went to Dallas and bought these two projectors. They were ray projectors which were very good at that time, portable.
Speaker 3:
16mm?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, 35mm, I have 16 there that I want to sell to somebody. Somebody came over here and sole me a 16mm, I had it new, I never used it. [Tape stops].
Chris Strachwitz:
He already had the projectors?
Ramiro Cortés:
He had the thing and I gave him a picture, and he made so good, charged only 25 cents admission price.
Chris Strachwitz:
Were they Mexican pictures?
Ramiro Cortés:
Mexican picture yeah, [unable to parse] I remember the title of the picture. He done so good, and I told him, “I was just going to charge you 35%.” I believe that night he made about $1,000 that night which is $250 for the motion picture, $750 for him, he was so happy! He forgot about the nails and about the horseshoes, holding up a train like this. He used to be very strong, very strong. Everyday. All right wait, then very smart guy, then I went back to San Antonio and I told my boss over there, “Mr. Jiménez, sir I already open up another place.” My job was to try to open up places where they show because the theater didn’t want to show the Mexican pictures they didn’t care for the Mexican pictures. They didn’t know what they were losing.
Then this guy, he had some money saved already and he bought another tent and he opened up a tent in Alice, one in Falfurrias and one in Kingsville, that was a big one. He done so good all the time that when the time went by he made his tents theaters, big theaters, but like a tent. Only the top was made out of asbestos and wood but it was in the form of a tent. He was right he said, “The people, they like to go to a tent, they like to go the circus.” The lower people, the cotton pickers and all of that, they don’t like to be a nice theater, they like to go where you can spit and you can eat and everything.
Chris Strachwitz:
Sit on the floor.
Ramiro Cortés:
He was right, he was right because after that a lot of people open up big nice theaters like the [unable to parse] theaters, the Circuit in Texas, they open really nice theaters for the Mexican people, they didn’t have no business, they want a tent. They still are. He died, he passed away already.
Chris Strachwitz:
The carpas were still pretty popular then?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh, in most places yeah and in Mexico a lot of carpas were around the country after the harvest time in each place. A lot of carpas. I love those carpas, I wish I had one myself.
Chris Strachwitz:
Then you actually went with Lydia to his tents?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, every year, not only every year but every 6 months, he used to call, “He, Cortés, come on, bring Lydia God damn it.” I said, “All right.” We used to make a lot of money in those tents, lot of money.
Chris Strachwitz:
On those nights when you had Lydia, she was just by herself or did you have some other act?
Ramiro Cortés:
No, no, no we always had a family and when the family didn’t want out when they were going to school or something like that, I get me somebody else like another girl, that would show her legs, like a cabaret, we had something. I used to say, “Comadre why don’t you show something?” Just for fun you know?
Chris Strachwitz:
She didn’t want to do that? That’s great.
Ramiro Cortés:
We had a nice time. It’s a very beautiful episode in my life for years and years, very nice. Very good. I made a pretty good living out of show business myself.
Chris Strachwitz:
You obviously enjoyed the music and the persons involved it must have been a really satisfying-
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yes, oh sure, I enjoy it very much, every day, every day was a holiday for all of us. We used have a good time all on the road. I’m too old now, otherwise I’d be on the road now with somebody. I liked it, I was on the road all the time, all the time. I used to wear, put on 100,000 miles in 6 months in one station wagon. I used to buy 2 station wagons every year, a year, oh yeah. That was my life, that was my tool to work with. Lydia Mendoza was quite a show, quite a show. She was made for that, she was born for that. I understand that she still brings in a lot of people somewhere, she can’t sing no more, she should quit now.
Chris Strachwitz:
Well, she can still sing.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah she can still …
Chris Strachwitz:
Her voice has gotten heavier but she can still sing good.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. She can play that big guitar though! She lost a lot of guitars, they steal her guitars when we’re …
Chris Strachwitz:
I think she really enjoys performing, I think she’d be really bored if she has to quit.
Ramiro Cortés:
The few people that can play those type of guitars, very few people can do that. I think she’s the only one, in the Mexican field I think she’s the only one that play a 12 string guitar. It’s hard, only to tune the guitar is hard. Not many people, I think she’s the only one.
Chris Strachwitz:
It’s a lot of work.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah. Lydia Mendoza, I named her La Alondra de la Frontera.
Chris Strachwitz:
You named her that?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, I put her name for the advertising purposes.
Speaker 3:
Why did you come up with La Alondra?
Ramiro Cortés:
Because La Alondra is a bird that sings so beautiful, you ever heard la alondra sing?
Speaker 3:
Sure.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s why I said La Alondra de la Frontera, from the frontier, from the border town, from the border. La alondra from the … The bird is from the border because she was born, I don’t even know where she was born.
Chris Strachwitz:
She was born in Houston actually.
Ramiro Cortés:
In Houston actually?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right, I didn’t know up till now. I thought she was from San Antonio all the time.
Chris Strachwitz:
He father worked on the railroad at the time.
Ramiro Cortés:
She was the one, she used to play the violin real good.
Chris Strachwitz:
You didn’t meet any of those people who made those Bluebird Records? Like there was a Mr. Oberstein, I guess was one of them.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, no I never did, I never met nobody, I had nothing to do with the records, never did.
Speaker 3:
She didn’t ask you for your advice on …
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, she’s always asked me you know, “Compadre, they called me last night from somebody from somewhere, they wanted me to go make a record.” All right, cool, “You can go on, go make your record.”
Speaker 3:
With “Mal Hombre” she feels that she could have made all kinds of money from that, but she signed a contract giving [unable to parse].
Chris Strachwitz:
That was before she met you.
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:
Oh, okay.
Chris Strachwitz:
When she first made that record her father was given the option, either you take $50 for this record or royalties and the father said, “Take the money.” She said she probably would have made a lot if she would have …
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, it happens, see that guy, that composer there who is Lorenzo Barcelata when he made María Elena and Rancho Grande he was singing in the saloons with his guitar, “hey could I sing you song?” Took a drink, to 2 cents or 5 cents, he was singing like this.
Chris Strachwitz:
Where was this?
Ramiro Cortés:
This in Mexico, in Mexico City. He take this and then he composes 2 songs one night and he took them to the music company, the name of the music was, it had a German name, it still is, they’re ones that master the old songs, the Mexican songs, this German company.
Speaker 3:
Frankfurt?
Ramiro Cortés:
I’ll find it. No, no, no it comes soon. Says, “I want to sell these 2 song.” They play them by piano, he didn’t know notes, he didn’t know music, he had taken somebody who write the piano part obviously. He take them and they say, “We don’t want to buy them, we can’t buy them, nobody wants to hear the waltzes now.” Because they’re a waltz, see, María Elena is a waltz. “Not here and now.” “Give me 50 pesos for both of them, I want to eat. 50 pesos can you take it?” No, no, no they don’t want them, “We’ll give you a percentage basis, we’ll give you a contract for 15 years and we give you on royalties basis if you want to.” “Can you advance me something on the royalties?” “Maybe we can give you 10 pesos.” That’s what they did, they made a contract of 15 years on royalty basis and gave him 10 pesos in advance. He had to take it.
Chris Strachwitz:
Wasn’t he lucky?
Ramiro Cortés:
Wasn’t he lucky, especially the widow, she’s a big millionaire now in dollars.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh really?
Ramiro Cortés:
She makes every 3 months, she get a check from the Pier Music Company New York.
Chris Strachwitz:
Peer International now it’s called.
Ramiro Cortés:
Peer International, something like that, they’re the one that handle most of the Latin music. She gets a check every 3 months for at least from $60,000 to $100,000, every 3 months and that’s cheap! I saw a check the other day, she showed me a check the other day for $25,000 only from Japan. Can you imagine? That’s what save her, not like Juventino Rosas who wrote maybe the most beautiful waltz that ever was written in the whole world, that was “Over the Waves.” (Singing). Juventino Rosas he was a very poor musician, played the violin and he composed the waltz and took it to this company and they give him 15 pesos for it, for the out right for life. That’s all he made on his beautiful waltz, 15 pesos. He die of hunger in a little Cuban town. He went to Cuba to play in a circus with his violin and finally he got Tuberculosis from being hungry and he died. When he died the President of Mexico who was Porfirio Diaz at that time, brought his ashes to Mexico with the big honors and everything but when he’s already dead.
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, can’t live on that.
Ramiro Cortés:
Can’t live on that, that’s what he made with “Over the Waves.”
Chris Strachwitz:
Actually on that “Mal Hombre,” it was recorded before Lydia, it’s the first recording of it but there’s no composer credit given on it. It’s by a woman named …
Ramiro Cortés:
Is that right? I never knew, I never knew who …
Chris Strachwitz:
She said that she heard it at a theater her father took her to in Monterrey, when she was-
Ramiro Cortés:
It’s an old song, I used to hear that song when I was a kid myself, I think it’s Argentine song.
Chris Strachwitz:
I don’t know where it came from, it’s a strange thing and it’s certainly one of the few really strong …
Ramiro Cortés:
It has the tune of the tango.
Speaker 3:
It has a tango feel, right, I hadn’t thought about that.
Ramiro Cortés:
I think it’s Argentine, I think it’s Argentine.
Chris Strachwitz:
I imagine at that time it was one of the few songs that spoke from a woman’s point of view.
Ramiro Cortés:
She sing it with a little funny way of singing it, she almost cried every time she sing it. [Tape stops].
Chris Strachwitz:
She was a big star then.
Ramiro Cortés:
She came with him many times, she came- I brought her to the Mason theater and then to the Million Dollar about 5 or 10 times they came over by the Million Dollar theater, every year, every year. He was small, Frankie, well he don’t remember nothing because he was small, going to school, he didn’t give a damn about the theaters and that.
Chris Strachwitz:
He didn’t?
Ramiro Cortés:
He was born with a silver spoon in his hand, he’s got more money, well look just a Million Dollar building, how much would that be worth? All that now belongs to him.
Chris Strachwitz:
He seemed to have an interest in the business to some degree.
Ramiro Cortés:
Not very much, he never did like it.
Chris Strachwitz:
As a landlord more.
Ramiro Cortés:
He didn’t care, he always had a lot of money. He don’t give a damn.
Chris Strachwitz:
You were really the one who was doing all the work and the booking everything …
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah booking everything and everything, he was just very little, fat boy. A lot of times I ask him, “You’re lazy, God damn it, why don’t you do something?” He said, “What the hell do you want me to do? What am I going to do with so much?” I’d get mad at him, “You lazy God damn it.”
Speaker 3:
You booked the theater when? What years?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh about 20, 25 years.
Speaker 3:
What year? Starting when?
Chris Strachwitz:
When did you start roughly?
Ramiro Cortés:
Doing this?
Speaker 3:
No, booking.
Chris Strachwitz:
For the Million Dollar?
Ramiro Cortés:
Must have been in 1945, 46.
Chris Strachwitz:
Right after the war.
Ramiro Cortés:
Right after the war, nothing before the war. Before the war I was working for the Calderóns, I was in New York, they send me to open up the theaters in the middle west.
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s the film distributing company?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, the Calderóns, I just wrote a letter one of them.
Chris Strachwitz:
Were they related to the Calderóns who had this record shop here in Los Angeles?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh really?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, let’s see now, maybe you’re talking about somebody else because there was another Calderón here, there was three brothers, Raphael, Jose, and the one who was here had a furniture store and record shop.
Speaker 3:
Mauricio. That’s him.
Ramiro Cortés:
Mauricio! Mauricio Calderón!
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s the one we’re thinking of, yeah.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s the one?
Chris Strachwitz:
Yeah, that’s the one.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s the uncle of the famous Calderón boys, he was the brother for Raphael and Pepe, everybody die already.
Chris Strachwitz:
Everybody’s dead, huh?
Ramiro Cortés:
I just wrote a letter to Federico this morning, Federico Calderón, he’s the oldest of the boys and he’s in Cuernavaca now, he’s retired in Cuernavaca with lots of money, lots of money! They own 125 theaters in the state of Chihuahua.
Chris Strachwitz:
They’ve always in the film business?
Ramiro Cortés:
Always in the film business, well, no, when they got started both of them, Pepe and Raphael they were working for the railroads in Chihuahua, they were conductors from Juárez to Chihuahua, they were the conductors on this train.
Speaker 3:
Mauricio was a telegraph operator?
Ramiro Cortés:
Mauricio was a telegraph operator, that’s right, then he’s the one that came over here and open up a little furniture store.
Speaker 3:
In south [inaudible 00:26:35]?
Chris Strachwitz:
It wasn’t so little I don’t think.
Ramiro Cortés:
No, later on, later on he grew big.
Chris Strachwitz:
He sold almost every Spanish language record in the state of Los Angeles, companies sold to his –
Ramiro Cortés:
Right, right, even though he was the one that furnished the money for the other 2 brothers to get started in the show business.
Chris Strachwitz:
Oh really?
Ramiro Cortés:
They open up a little theater in Juárez called … It’s still on, it’s still open, called, The Al Casa, Cine Al Casa. Do you remember?
Chris Strachwitz:
I remember Cine al Casa.
Speaker 3:
He grew up in El Paso.
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, well, en Juárez, [Spanish/Español] The name of it, Circuit al Casa. It’s 125 theaters, all the way from Juárez to Parral, all the theaters belong to them. Now they have rented to the government but they receive a lot of money for rent out of those places, they’re very rich people.
Chris Strachwitz:
You don’t know of any direct relatives that are still alive, of the Mauricio Calderón?
Ramiro Cortés:
Of Mauricio no, I know the relatives for the Don Pepe, Raphael, yes. I wrote a letter today.
Chris Strachwitz:
Do you want their address, or are they too remote for your purposes? [Tape stops].
Ramiro Cortés:
There was this brother-in-law. He had Gustavo Costa who for year, worked for the Colombia Pictures as a distributor. [Tape stops]. 1674, Cuernavaca, Morelos.
Speaker 3:
1674, Cuernavaca.
Ramiro Cortés:
Cuernavaca, Morelia, no es Morelos, Morelos, Morelos. [Tape stops].It’s so good that show business, because, only one reason, because you pay cash. You don’t get credit or nothing, you go to the box office and you pay cash, no credit card, no nothing. Nothing in terms.
Chris Strachwitz:
I guess that was back then too, there wasn’t like the grocery stores where you had to try and …
Ramiro Cortés:
Ah, grocery stores, well now there markets of where you have to pay in cash right now. Still they accept checks and they accept credit card lots of them. The show business, when you go to the box office you better have your cash money or you don’t go in.
Chris Strachwitz:
That’s right, that’s right.
Ramiro Cortés:
That’s why it’s good, no credit. When you make a picture, you’ve got to have your money in the bank first otherwise the union wouldn’t give you one work, one man or nothing.
Speaker 3:
Do you know how we can reach Gustavo Costa?
Ramiro Cortés:
Yeah, I know how to reach – [Tape stops]. When I met him a long time ago, he was the manager of the Latin Department in the Colombia Records in New York.
Chris Strachwitz:
What was his name?
Speaker 3:
[unable to parse–Eunicio] Acosta.
Ramiro Cortés:
[unable to parse–Eunicio] Acosta.
Chris Strachwitz:
[unable to parse–Eunicio] Acosta, and this was way back in the early 20’s?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh I met him in 19 … Gee whiz, no wonder they say I was a waiter in the last supper.
Chris Strachwitz:
Was the full prohibition on yet?
Ramiro Cortés:
Oh yeah, sure. It must have been 19 … Oh God damn it, they still had the mule horses, the horses street cars in New York.
Chris Strachwitz:
It must have been 1890!
Ramiro Cortés:
I’m talking back…
Chris Strachwitz:
I don’t believe that! [Tape stops]. Oh, that’s right. It’s not only Azteca and one other film company.
Ramiro Cortés:
Well as many films, there’s 7 now, but it used to be only Azteca. There used to be another one pulling strong which is Gustav [00:30:40]. Gustav was really strong too but he died and his sons sold to Azteca.
Chris Strachwitz:
They’re owned by the government? By the Mexican government?
Ramiro Cortés:
They owned by the government now. The distribution and the theaters, most of the theaters in Mexico belong to the government and also the distribution. They own about, 1500 theaters in Mexico, [Spanish/Español 00:31:10]. … in the United States they own the distribution, they don’t have no theaters here, they only have distribution. They have several offices, they have an office here, they have an office in San Antonio and the buildings and everything belongs to them. They have one in Chicago, one in Denver, one in New York.