José Feliciano

José Feliciano, the Puerto Rican guitarist, singer, and composer, rose to prominence among Latin-born pop figures by blending flamenco guitar, bolero, folk, and easy listening pop in the late 1960s. Already established across Latin America, he achieved a major U.S. breakthrough in 1968 via his cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire," then stirred debate with a jazzy take on "The Star Spangled Banner" at that October's World Series. His 1970 holiday release "Feliz Navidad" later became a staple of the seasonal repertoire. He sustained visibility through the 1970s and 1980s as a touring and recording presence, issuing Spanish- and English-language projects, contributing to albums by John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, and Bill Withers, and writing music for Chico and the Man and Kung Fu. Into the following century Feliciano kept experimenting across genres, securing two Grammy Awards for the 2008 album Señor Bachata and joining Jools Holland on the 2017 jazz and R&B collection As You See Me Now. Still active in the seventh decade of his career, he delivered Right Here Waiting and Love & Christmas in 2022.

Born September 10, 1945, in Lares, Puerto Rico, Feliciano entered the world blind because of congenital glaucoma. Five years afterward his family relocated to Spanish Harlem in New York City, where he first studied accordion before switching to guitar and performing publicly at age nine at the Bronx's El Teatro Puerto Rico. During high school he became a regular on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, dropped out in 1962 to take a steady Detroit engagement, and signed with RCA after playing New York's Gerde's Folk City; two years later he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. Following the 1964 novelty single "Everybody Do the Click," he released the flamenco-oriented debut LP The Voice and Guitar of Jose Feliciano, followed early the next year by The Fantastic Feliciano.

Discontented with his musical path after 1966's A Bag Full of Soul, Feliciano returned to earlier influences and issued three successive Spanish-language albums on RCA International—Sombras...Una Voz, Una Guitarra, Mas Exitos de Jose Feliciano, and Sentimiento, La Voz y La Guitarra—while charting on Latin pop lists with "La Copa Rota" and "Amor Gitana." The 1968 album Feliciano! brought mainstream attention through a soulful version of the Doors' "Light My Fire," followed by a hit cover of Tommy Tucker's R&B classic "Hi Heel Sneakers"; soon afterward he sang the national anthem at the 1968 World Series in Detroit. His distinctive Latin jazz interpretation sparked sharp criticism, yet the controversy cemented his standing as a counterculture favorite, and a single of the performance also reached the charts.

During 1969 Feliciano completed Souled, Alive Alive-O!, and 10 to 23, captured the Grammy for Best New Artist, and, with his self-titled 1970 Christmas album, introduced the enduring original "Feliz Navidad," which became a lasting holiday favorite and has been recorded by numerous other artists. He maintained a steady schedule of annual tours and bilingual releases through the rest of the decade, among them the 1973 Steve Cropper-produced Compartiments; he also joined Joni Mitchell on the hit "Free Man in Paris" and performed on television programs including Kung Fu and McMillan and Wife. In addition he composed the theme for the sitcom Chico and the Man, which reached the Top 100 in 1974.

Feliciano became the first artist signed to Motown's new Latin division in 1980 and debuted on the label with an eponymous album the next year. Output slowed during the 1980s, though he surfaced occasionally with projects such as 1987's Tu Inmenso Amor and 1989's I'm Never Gonna Change. An East Harlem school was later renamed the Jose Feliciano Performing Arts School in his honor. He made a brief appearance in the 1996 film Fargo and received the Grammy Legend Award in 2000. Several Spanish-language albums appeared early in the new century; in 2006 he returned with the instrumental Six-String Lady and began a run of frequent releases that continued into the 2010s. The most visible of these was the 2017 duet album with Jools Holland, As You See Me Now. Entering the next decade he reunited with longtime producer Rick Jarrard for 2020's Behind This Guitar, his first Nashville-recorded project, which shares its title with a documentary that began screening at festivals that year. In 2022 Feliciano became the inaugural recipient of the Legend Award at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. That same year brought two new releases: Right Here Waiting, a collection of standards featuring fresh versions of "Light My Fire" and the Chico and the Man theme, and Love & Christmas, a seven-song EP containing the holiday tracks "Viva La Navidad" and "Little Drummer Boy," a Latin-flavored reading of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," and a Spanish-language rendition of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature."