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Jose Feliciano Quotes
“It is always good to make new friends.”
“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”
“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 sang the National Anthem with soul.”
“I'm a one-man band!”
“I'm very proud being Puerto Rican. I'm American. That is what America is made of - people from different lands.”
“I know Ritchie Valens in 1959 had 'La Bamba' but to be totally Spanish - because, you know, Ritchie didn't speak Spanish - but to be a total Latin artist like myself, to be out in a field where there weren't any categories for Latinos... I felt good that”
“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.”
“I became a teen idol. At the time, it embarrassed me.”
“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”
“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.”
“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 didn't have romances when I was in school. Girls didn't want to go out with me because I was blind.”
“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 was the first artist to put the national anthem on the charts, and I'm thrilled.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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”
“People are really surprised by the fact that I keep in touch with the latest trends rather than retreating to the distant past.”
“I just do my thing, what I feel.”
