The Royal Jesters

“The radio stations that played Spanish music had what they called ‘English Oldies.’ The deejay would play the Spanish songs but then he would pick some English oldies to add to that so we all grew up listening to our stuff.”—Sonny Ozuna "English oldies" is just one of many concepts endemic only to San Antonio’s unique terrain. The Alamo City is pretty much the exact spot on the map where Tex meets Mex, where Anglo America crashed into Latin America for the first time, got all mixed up, and came out the other side as cowboys, fajitas, spanglish, chili, and groups like the Royal Jesters. It’s one of those places where a group of Chicano teens singing doo-wop seems entirely unremarkable. Like their hometown, the Royal Jesters serve as a kind of hinge on which to chart cultural turns—from their earliest beginnings inspired by the mass culture wrought by 1950s youth trends and rock ’n’ roll, they gradually evolved into a popular Spanish-language Tejano act.