One year later, we continue to mourn the loss of a legend in his own mind

In 2022 I read stories about an incredible entertainer who had accomplished more in his life than I will accomplish in 10 lifetimes.

I read about Joe Chavira's incredible accomplishments via Vegas 411, a website that provides a wide array of Vegas news and information, and doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Sure, it has some of the more predictable things you'd find on a website vying for Vegas tourists, but it has a lot of unique information and interesting stories you won't get elsewhere.

It's not a tourist publication, and therefore it allows writers like my friend Sam Novak to write a two-part series about a curious, unknown entertainer who was quick to sell you on how talented and accomplished he was. 

Some of us have our doubts. 

I linked to both of Sam's stories in a post I wrote last summer, recounting Joe's rapid ascension to Vegas entertainment royalty and some of the odd, incongruous things I found when looking closer at the career of an entertainment giant. I also noted that Joe died in March 2023, ending his long, allegedly successful career in music as a songwriter, vocalist and multi-faceted instrumentalist. He was also a successful cartoonist, allegedly, as well as a patriot and a standout high school athlete. 

It was such a strange story, and honestly, some of it was inexplicable. I'm not saying it was fabricated, but it was so bizarre that there was no way to logically reason how it could all have come to be true. But yeah, some of it was really, really hard to believe. 

Joe died a year ago today. He was in his early 60s and hadn't been in Vegas long, despite a lifetime of success, when he died, apparently from brain cancer. There's an obit page that contains a couple dozen or so tributes and testimonies to his talent. People seem to think he was talented and was entertaining, or at least they said so in memory of him. I listened to samples of his music and didn't see the same shining star others saw. But some folks really seemed to love the man and/or his music.

While I chronicled a variety of details about Joe's curious past and referenced Sam's reporting in November 2022, I had failed to notice Sam wrote about Joe one last time, at the end of the year, when Sam wrote about the villains of 2022. 

Sam wrote about a few entertainers who left their stain on Vegas in '22. Let me excerpt a portion of Sam's writing for those who don't want to click over to Vegas 411, where Sam explains that Joe had made himself known to several Vegas entertainers. Entertainers who shared a common story with Sam, which Sam recounted at the end of the year: 

...Chavira has the habit of party-crashing their shows, asking to sing a song or two, then listing himself as their guest on his resume. That method has allowed this virtual unknown to create the illusion that he’s in demand while simultaneously falsifying a list of show credits. It’s all part of a plan that Chavira himself has branded "Joe Mania."

A reader shared a similar story about Joe, which Sam also relayed in his villains of 2022 writing. This story occurred at a dueling piano bar at the Paris Hotel Casino on Dec. 23, 2022: 

'All of sudden Joe enters the bar holding a frame (about the size of a gold record that I am sure Joe will never get). He goes right up to the piano player…while the other was taking his turn. He starts talking and shows him the frame. It’s his Las Vegas Walk of Fame star! I guess he just carries it around?

Maybe a song or two later one of the piano players introduces him but doesn’t seem 100% sure who he is. No one in a fairly crowded bar seems to know who he is. He plays his songs and then sits back down. There is what I would describe as polite applause but he kind of killed the vibe. The piano players threw a few good-natured ribs (or maybe not so good-natured) at him after he finished.'

The witness to this Paris piano bar fiasco also contacted me after reading my recounting of Joe's strange days in Vegas, pointed me to Sam's villains of 2022 writing and added a couple of minor details to the story. 

What a stunning display of hubris! 

I would have included this wacky tale from the last months of Joe's life had I known about it when I eulogized Joe last summer. 

I didn't, so it seemed only appropriate that I share it now in memory of Joe a year after Vegas was robbed of his incredible talent. 

If I didn't know better, I'd swear Joe Chavira was really Tony Clifton in disguise.