Jose Feliciano Quotes

I'm so old, I can remember before rock 'n' roll come along.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

Rock and roll and swing never quite mixed. Rock and roll came in and just blew everything out of the water. Big bands were dead.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

I'm sort of standing on T-Bone Walker's shoulders, Les Paul's shoulders, Lightnin' Hopkins' shoulders, Muddy Waters' shoulders, you know? And if I've inspired other people, I'm pleased. That pleases me greatly.

Black people created rock music, it's a fact. Black people created bluegrass and rock and roll way before Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.

My musical taste has always been wide. I started out as a folky before I moved on to blues and soul.

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

Elvis Presley's music never meant anything to me. Mambo was the music I loved - it spoke to me.

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Darlin... be-bop is the music of the future.

Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.

Little Walter I would've liked to have played with.

I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles. I was asked, 'What kind of music do you like to listen to?' and I said, 'Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles,' and they literally said, 'Either forget about that or leave.'

Even though I loved the Fifties doo-wop, you couldn't hold on to it. You had to change, or you was gon' be antique real quick, like the Ink Spots. And then we were at Motown and you had the Rolling Stones, simple rock & roll became the new thing.

I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.

The music of the Clovers and Spaniels and the rest was like candy to me. I couldn't get enough; my teachers probably thought I had attention deficit disorder.

Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

I love blues, mellow rock 'n' roll.