Sad news reaches us today...
Sir Monti Rock III - surely the campest vocalist of his, if not every generation - has twirled his last twirl, boogied his last boogie and, in a puff of dry ice, ascended the glitterball-strewn stairway to Fabulon.
His career began as a celebrity hairdresser, but his flamboyant clothes and personality led him to become something of a fixture on the TV chat show circuit. Famously, he once accused none other than Liberace of "stealing his look"!
By 1974, the music style known as "Disco" had begun to erupt, and Sir Monti Rock III burst upon the dance scene with a new group - Disco Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes! Their first single, Get Dancin', never failed to fill the dance floor in New York clubs, and their appearances at Trudy Heller's Le Jardin nightclub were always sure to sell out. The song was written by Kenny Nolan and Bob Crewe (who wrote loads of hits for the Four Seasons). Backing vocals, for a time, were by Jocelyn Brown. Needless to say, he was head-hunted for a cameo appearance as the club DJ in the film Saturday Night Fever, and his legend continued - Get Dancin' was featured in The Simpsons, and Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes were name-checked in Elvis Costello's song Invasion Hit Parade and prominently in the Pet Shop Boys' 1996 hit Electricity.
Here is the classic for which he will forever be so fondly remembered - the song that launched campery of a most glittering kind upon an unsuspecting, and grateful, public in that dismal recession-hit mid-70s era:
To quote Sir Monti's "ad-libs" in [the full-length version of] that song:
America needs you!
We need you to go dance!
We need you to get together, and boogie woogie woogie woogie!
RADAR LOVE IS HERE! THE STAR OF STARS!
THIS IS YOUR NIGHT! THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
No matter how pretty you are,
Nobody cares how you wear your hair, darling!
Just keep doing it!
Do it, baby
You can't think of all the wrong
All the wrong of the world.
You can't think of all the bad things you do.
You just get out.
Get dancing!
And you can't say fairer than that.
By way of a very special bonus, here is the grande dame's very own Coronation - as King and Queen of Las Vegas - in 2010:
There'll never be another. RIP, darling!
Sir Monti Rock III (born Joseph Montanez Jr., 29th May 1939 – 23rd February 2026)
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