Top 60 Jose Feliciano Quotes

When I was 15, I became an avid fan of Andres Segovia. He brought so much respectability to the guitar.

I was the first artist to put the national anthem on the charts, and I’m thrilled.

Some people wanted me deported – as if you can be deported to Puerto Rico.

It taught the English to speak Spanish and it taught the Spanish to speak English. If we had more songs such as that, it would solve the immigration problem in a hurry. But there can’t be another ‘Feliz Navidad.’

I’m kind of iffy on the Latin Grammys because I think we fought so hard, for example, to get the American side of the Grammys to open categories for us… But I support the Latin Grammys in the sense I’m glad that we have them.

I went through the immigration thing. But when I got to New York it wasn’t so tough for me. I went to school. I went to P.S. 57, then I went to the Lighthouse for the Blind on 59th St. I guess being blind is a great leveler.

In 1970, my label decided I should do a Christmas album and I put a bunch of tunes together. We couldn’t decide what to call it and so I said ‘Why not just say Merry Christmas in Spanish? Feliz Navidad.’ They said, ‘That’s cool, Jose, but we need a title song.’ So I just sat down and started to play.

When I first heard Bob Dylan, I’ll be honest, I didn’t like him. But I was shallow of mind and didn’t understand the poetry. I just judged him on his singing and his guitar playing.

I have very heightened senses – not just my hearing but my sense of smell.

I’m not like other guitar players. In fact, I’m not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock ‘n’ roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

When I did the national anthem, I did a soulful, kind of gospel-y version, but it was controversial with the war veterans, just the people who wanted to hear it the old, clinical, atmospheric way, and I didn’t want to sing it like that.

I was drawn to the guitar, and still am, because it struck me as the most soulful instrument.

I like Maroon 5, Swedish House Mafia and others.

I was a teen idol in Latin America.

I didnt go to the high school prom. Couldn’t get a date.

Actually, being blind is not so bad. If you’re born this way, you never know anything else and you don’t wonder about it. Though I’d hate to have lost my sight after being able to see.

I became a teen idol. At the time, it embarrassed me.

I don’t think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player – he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I’m an artist who happens to be Latin.

I’m very proud being Puerto Rican. I’m American. That is what America is made of – people from different lands.

RCA wanted me to change my name. They asked me around 1965, when they first signed me. They said, ‘Feliciano is too Latin.’ I said, ‘That’s who I am. I’m Jose Feliciano.’ They wanted me to change my name to Joe Phillips.

It is always good to make new friends.

God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and bitter. He gave me music, first to be my companion and then to be my salvation.

Now everybody has been doing the national anthem in their own style, but in 1968 I was the one that took the heat. It cut my career for quite a while.

I sang the National Anthem with soul.

I think I am different from most blind people because my agility is not that of a blind person – I don’t shuffle my feet when I walk. In fact, I have no, as I call them, ‘blindisms.’

I don’t think kneeling during the anthem is such a bad thing.

I always tell my wife she’s married to the Puerto Rican Elvis.

In 1966 I recorded my first bolero album. I was about 18 years old then and I recorded it because I wanted my parents to know that I hadn’t lost my identity of being Latino.

Pioneers will always get the stones, when everyone later gets the accolades.

Everyone is my equal, and that is transferred to my music.

Very few guitarists play nylon-string. They don’t know how to get the sound out of them. That’s something I’ve spent a lot of time on.

When I came on in ’68, I was really the lone wolf.

The fact I’m blind has been a great help to my career. If I’d been sighted I’d have played baseball and got into trouble like all other kids on my block.

I was growing up at a time when music was growing and changing so fast. I had learned all the big band sounds of the 1940s, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. But then along came Chuck Berry, Les Paul, Fats Domino and I figured out how to make their music as well.

When I did the anthem, I did it with the understanding in my heart and mind that I did it because I’m a patriot. I was trying to be a grateful patriot. I was expressing my feelings for America when I did the anthem my way instead of just singing it with an orchestra.

To me, my guitar has always been my orchestra.

I have genuine respect for women and I want to win their respect. I don’t want them to look at me and say, ‘Oh, another man with the same attitudes as most men.’

I’ve been playing in Israel since 1971.

I contend that if it wasn’t for Jimi, the gadgets we use for electric guitars now wouldn’t have happened. He was an inventor, in a sense – as well as being great artist.

I have no regrets, though I was the first artist to stylize the national anthem, and I got a lot of protests for it. I have no regrets. America has been good to me. I’m glad that I’m here.

When people don’t hear you on the radio they think ‘maybe he retired.’

I’m a musician first and sight has never had anything to do with it.

I just happened to be Latino, and like any artist, I was trying to forge a career. If I opened doors for others, that’s great, but nobody starts out with those aspirations.

Feliz Navidad’ has interfaced the English and Spanish cultures to come together and after all, we’re living in a multi-cultural world.

I never knew Mother Teresa, but I admired her, especially in this day and age when there aren’t many heroes.

I’ve been a fan of Elvis since I was 11, so for me, it was a real thrill to make an album of all my favorite Elvis songs.

I felt bad about the controversy because they stopped playing my songs on American radio stations. But there was nothing wrong with what I did. Now everybody sings the national anthem the way they want.

If I were to travel with all my instruments, I would need a truck.

There were screaming girls, I had to learn as a blind person how to run to a limousine otherwise they’d take my clothes off and stuff. I thought to myself ‘how could this happen?’ I mean I could see it, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, but Jose Feliciano? It was a mystery to me.

My parents did not want us to lose our culture and our language. And that was a good thing.

People are really surprised by the fact that I keep in touch with the latest trends rather than retreating to the distant past.

Music. It has always showed me that I could do what the other kids couldn’t do. So I will keep playing and singing and entertaining, as long as the good Lord lets me. That is my life.

I don’t know if it’s a legacy, but I love it. In my mind and other people’s minds, they know I was the first to stylize the national anthem.

God gave me a good voice. I have perfect pitch. I don’t sing flat.

I was very, very fortunate that ‘Chico and the Man’ was on TV, that helped me quite a bit. Of course, having the No. 1 Christmas song in the Spanish market, ‘Feliz Navidad,’ doesn’t hurt either.

I truly enjoyed the ’60s.

From 1969 to 1973, I was never played on radio stations.

New York will always be a part of me no matter where I go.

The only thing I can say to the people of Israel is that I love them and I am a strong ally.

You can’t write much quality, original music on a concertina.