Still On Fire

"It's something I've been wanting to do for a while,” Jose Feliciano admits, on the line from his 270-year-old riverfront colonial home in Fairfield County, Connecticut with regards to his latest album, The King – a tribute to the music of Elvis Presley. “I don't know of anybody that isn't, or wasn't let's say, in my time an Elvis fan. Elvis was like The Beatles, or The Beatles in their own way were like Elvis. When Elvis came back [in 1968], I was climbing the charts with Light My Fire, and later, in the '70s, I did meet Elvis, briefly – he was playing in Nevada at the Sierra in Tahoe.

“But approached this album in a different way. I didn't do what people thought I might do, like Hound Dog, but I did do Don't Be Cruel, All Shook Up, and then I picked songs like You Were Always On My Mind and Love Me Tender. But throughout, I wanted to reinterpret. I didn't want to copy Elvis because I'm not Elvis Presley – I'm me – but I wanted to do something hopefully to honour his memory, and I didn't take much from any of the guitar players that played with Elvis because, again, I wanted to produce something totally different and hopefully, the people who listen to it will enjoy it. It was a labour of love.”

44 years into an incredibly successful career that has seen Feliciano, born dirt poor and blind, one of 11 boys, in Puerto Rico and moving to New York City with his parents when he was five, release 37 English-speaking albums and 29 Spanish-speaking albums, pick up eight Grammy Awards and 45 gold and platinum awards for album and single sales, the singer and guitarist has the luxury of his own basement studio as well as his own label, so he can indulge his passion for making music pretty much all the time – and he's still touring a good eight months of every year. On The King, as on his previous English-language record, 2007's Soundtrack Of My Life, he played all the guitars, bass and percussion, sang everything arranged the string and horn arrangements and was the producer.

As to those guitarists that played with Presley – James Burton, Scotty Moore and Charlie Hodge – they weren't all that influential on Feliciano's own playing. “I liked Scotty Moore,” he admits. “I liked what they did but no, I was more influenced by Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix… In the jazz realm I was influenced by Wes Montgomery, Charlie Byrd and Kenny Burrell. Guitarists of today I admire, I think Australia has a very fine guitar player in Tommy Emmanuel, who is my dear friend.

“My singing, I was influenced by singers like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke… You know, I was influenced more by the black singers in America than any other singers. I mean, I enjoyed Frank Sinatra, I enjoyed Jack Jones, Vic Damone; I enjoyed all those singers, but the singers that taught me the most were the black singers, and I guess the reason why I could relate with them is because they were the sufferers of our segregation things and they were poor, they didn't have a lot of money and neither did I. But Ray Charles and Sam Cooke were the singers that I emulated, that I followed – they taught me the most.”

Feliciano had already released two albums in Latin America before he had an international hit with Light My Fire, and he admits, “I have to be honest in telling you that when Light My Fire became a hit, it caught me by surprise. I wasn't really ready for it because I wasn't the writer that I wish I had been in '68.” He was 23 at the time.