JOSE FELICIANO
''FIREWORKS''
1970
39:25
1/Fireworks (From Handel's "Fireworks Suite")
Handel/2:09
2/Destiny
José Feliciano/2:29
3/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Mick Jagger / Keith Richards/3:18
4/Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/4:31
5/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/3:20
6/Pegao
José Feliciano/2:46
7/Once There Was a Love
José Feliciano/3:23
8/Blackbird
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/2:22
9/Susie-Q
Eleanor Broadwater / Dale Hawkins / Stan Lewis/5:09
10/Yesterday
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/5:56
11/Let It Be
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/4:02
José Feliciano/vocals, electric guitar, classical guitar
Paulinho Magalhaes/drums, percussion
REVIEW
By Joe Viglione
The vinyl version of Fireworks by José Feliciano comes in an elegant brown cardboard album cover that feels like leather, his name and the title embossed in gold. An instrumental, "Fireworks," from Handel's "Fireworks Suite" transcribed for guitar by Feliciano, opens the album, followed by the pretty original "Destiny." Horns augment Feliciano's precise vocals on a very well-produced album that comes with no credit information. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" could be Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, the acoustic guitar again finding horns to answer the folksy accompaniment. RCA could have (and should have) released a Beatles tribute album by Feliciano, some earlier albums of Feliciano's containing a minimum of three Lennon/McCartney titles each on them and Fireworks giving the listener a whopping five songs made famous by the Fab Four. He follows the interesting Rolling Stones cover with a very beautiful instrumental version of "Norwegian Wood," stylish flamenco guitar giving a different flavor to Lennon's warped fantasy. Without the storyline, "Norwegian Wood" is exposed as the stunning melody it is. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" again has the folk guitar meeting understated orchestration that swells up at the end, the singer's rendition a far cry from Joe Cocker's sandpaper vocal Top 30 tour de force released this same year. Feliciano comes up with jazz-flavored folk that is as far removed from the Beatles' original sound as Cocker's bluesy howl was. The original "Pegao" opens side two with more instrumental magic, setting the stage for a beautiful pop ballad, "Once There Was a Love," different from the feel of the rest of the disc but fitting in perfectly. "Once There Was a Love" is in the style of his future minor hit, "Angela," and a couple more songs along these lines would have given the album a bit of balance. Much of what is here has that "Light My Fire"-style arrangement that worked so well for Feliciano, his version of the Hawkins/Lewis/Broadwater classic "Susie-Q" just one example of that. The disc concludes with three more Beatles numbers, a boss and uptempo "Blackbird," an instrumental "Yesterday," and a beautiful arrangement of "Let It Be" that shows the singer to be in great voice. As a showcase of José Feliciano's talents, Fireworks is very well put together, and wouldn't be a bad place to start for people who want to get to know his work.
BIOGRAPHY
by Jason Ankeny
One of the most prominent Latin-born performers of the pop era, singer/guitarist Jose Feliciano was born September 10, 1945, in Lares, Puerto Rico; the victim of congenital glaucoma, he was left permanently blind at birth. Five years later, he and his family moved to New York City's Spanish Harlem area; there Feliciano began learning the accordion, later taking up the guitar and making his first public appearance at the Bronx's El Teatro Puerto Rico at the age of nine. While in high school he became a fixture of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit, eventually quitting school in 1962 in order to accept a permanent gig in Detroit; a contract with RCA followed a performance at New York's Gerde's Folk City, and within two years he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. After bowing with the 1964 novelty single "Everybody Do the Click," he issued his flamenco-flavored debut LP The Voice and Guitar of Jose Feliciano, trailed early the next year by The Fantastic Feliciano.
Unhappy with the direction of his music following the release of 1966's A Bag Full of Soul, Feliciano returned to his roots, releasing three consecutive Spanish-language LPs -- Sombras...Una Voz, Una Guitarra, Mas Exitos de Jose Feliciano and El Sentimiento, La Voz y La Guitarra de Jose Feliciano -- on RCA International, scoring on the Latin pop charts with the singles "La Copa Rota" and "Amor Gitana." With 1968's Feliciano!, he scored a breakthrough hit with a soulful reading of the Doors' "Light My Fire" that launched him into the mainstream pop stratosphere; a smash cover of Tommy Tucker's R&B chestnut "Hi Heel Sneakers" solidified his success, and soon Feliciano found himself performing the national anthem during the 1968 World Series. His idiosyncratic Latin-jazz performance of the song proved highly controversial, and despite the outcry of traditionalists and nationalists, his status as an emerging counterculture hero was secured, with a single of his rendition also becoming a hit.
In 1969 Feliciano recorded three LPs -- Souled, Alive Alive-O, and Feliciano 10 to 23 -- and won a Grammy for Best New Artist; however, he never again equalled the success of "Light My Fire," and only the theme song to the sitcom Chico and the Man subsequently achieved hit status, edging into the Top 100 singles chart in 1974. Throughout the 1970s Feliciano remained an active performer, however, touring annually and issuing a number of LPs in both English and Spanish, including 1973's Steve Cropper-produced Compartments; he also appeared on the Joni Mitchell hit "Free Man in Paris," and guested on a number of television series including Kung Fu and McMillan and Wife. In 1980 Feliciano was the first performer signed to the new Latin division of Motown, making his label debut with an eponymous effort the following year; his recorded output tapered off during the course of the decade, although he occasionally resurfaced with LPs including 1987's Tu Immenso Amor and 1989's I'm Never Gonna Change. A school in East Harlem was renamed the Jose Feliciano Performing Arts School in his honor; in 1996, he also appeared briefly in the hit film Fargo.
DoWnLoAd
''FIREWORKS''
1970
39:25
1/Fireworks (From Handel's "Fireworks Suite")
Handel/2:09
2/Destiny
José Feliciano/2:29
3/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Mick Jagger / Keith Richards/3:18
4/Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/4:31
5/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/3:20
6/Pegao
José Feliciano/2:46
7/Once There Was a Love
José Feliciano/3:23
8/Blackbird
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/2:22
9/Susie-Q
Eleanor Broadwater / Dale Hawkins / Stan Lewis/5:09
10/Yesterday
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/5:56
11/Let It Be
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/4:02
José Feliciano/vocals, electric guitar, classical guitar
Paulinho Magalhaes/drums, percussion
REVIEW
By Joe Viglione
The vinyl version of Fireworks by José Feliciano comes in an elegant brown cardboard album cover that feels like leather, his name and the title embossed in gold. An instrumental, "Fireworks," from Handel's "Fireworks Suite" transcribed for guitar by Feliciano, opens the album, followed by the pretty original "Destiny." Horns augment Feliciano's precise vocals on a very well-produced album that comes with no credit information. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" could be Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, the acoustic guitar again finding horns to answer the folksy accompaniment. RCA could have (and should have) released a Beatles tribute album by Feliciano, some earlier albums of Feliciano's containing a minimum of three Lennon/McCartney titles each on them and Fireworks giving the listener a whopping five songs made famous by the Fab Four. He follows the interesting Rolling Stones cover with a very beautiful instrumental version of "Norwegian Wood," stylish flamenco guitar giving a different flavor to Lennon's warped fantasy. Without the storyline, "Norwegian Wood" is exposed as the stunning melody it is. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" again has the folk guitar meeting understated orchestration that swells up at the end, the singer's rendition a far cry from Joe Cocker's sandpaper vocal Top 30 tour de force released this same year. Feliciano comes up with jazz-flavored folk that is as far removed from the Beatles' original sound as Cocker's bluesy howl was. The original "Pegao" opens side two with more instrumental magic, setting the stage for a beautiful pop ballad, "Once There Was a Love," different from the feel of the rest of the disc but fitting in perfectly. "Once There Was a Love" is in the style of his future minor hit, "Angela," and a couple more songs along these lines would have given the album a bit of balance. Much of what is here has that "Light My Fire"-style arrangement that worked so well for Feliciano, his version of the Hawkins/Lewis/Broadwater classic "Susie-Q" just one example of that. The disc concludes with three more Beatles numbers, a boss and uptempo "Blackbird," an instrumental "Yesterday," and a beautiful arrangement of "Let It Be" that shows the singer to be in great voice. As a showcase of José Feliciano's talents, Fireworks is very well put together, and wouldn't be a bad place to start for people who want to get to know his work.
BIOGRAPHY
by Jason Ankeny
One of the most prominent Latin-born performers of the pop era, singer/guitarist Jose Feliciano was born September 10, 1945, in Lares, Puerto Rico; the victim of congenital glaucoma, he was left permanently blind at birth. Five years later, he and his family moved to New York City's Spanish Harlem area; there Feliciano began learning the accordion, later taking up the guitar and making his first public appearance at the Bronx's El Teatro Puerto Rico at the age of nine. While in high school he became a fixture of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit, eventually quitting school in 1962 in order to accept a permanent gig in Detroit; a contract with RCA followed a performance at New York's Gerde's Folk City, and within two years he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. After bowing with the 1964 novelty single "Everybody Do the Click," he issued his flamenco-flavored debut LP The Voice and Guitar of Jose Feliciano, trailed early the next year by The Fantastic Feliciano.
Unhappy with the direction of his music following the release of 1966's A Bag Full of Soul, Feliciano returned to his roots, releasing three consecutive Spanish-language LPs -- Sombras...Una Voz, Una Guitarra, Mas Exitos de Jose Feliciano and El Sentimiento, La Voz y La Guitarra de Jose Feliciano -- on RCA International, scoring on the Latin pop charts with the singles "La Copa Rota" and "Amor Gitana." With 1968's Feliciano!, he scored a breakthrough hit with a soulful reading of the Doors' "Light My Fire" that launched him into the mainstream pop stratosphere; a smash cover of Tommy Tucker's R&B chestnut "Hi Heel Sneakers" solidified his success, and soon Feliciano found himself performing the national anthem during the 1968 World Series. His idiosyncratic Latin-jazz performance of the song proved highly controversial, and despite the outcry of traditionalists and nationalists, his status as an emerging counterculture hero was secured, with a single of his rendition also becoming a hit.
In 1969 Feliciano recorded three LPs -- Souled, Alive Alive-O, and Feliciano 10 to 23 -- and won a Grammy for Best New Artist; however, he never again equalled the success of "Light My Fire," and only the theme song to the sitcom Chico and the Man subsequently achieved hit status, edging into the Top 100 singles chart in 1974. Throughout the 1970s Feliciano remained an active performer, however, touring annually and issuing a number of LPs in both English and Spanish, including 1973's Steve Cropper-produced Compartments; he also appeared on the Joni Mitchell hit "Free Man in Paris," and guested on a number of television series including Kung Fu and McMillan and Wife. In 1980 Feliciano was the first performer signed to the new Latin division of Motown, making his label debut with an eponymous effort the following year; his recorded output tapered off during the course of the decade, although he occasionally resurfaced with LPs including 1987's Tu Immenso Amor and 1989's I'm Never Gonna Change. A school in East Harlem was renamed the Jose Feliciano Performing Arts School in his honor; in 1996, he also appeared briefly in the hit film Fargo.
DoWnLoAd
