Are you goin' away with no word of farewell?

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

17/11/68 : Feliciano! - José Feliciano

I'm aware of some of Jose's work and view it as pleasant enough guitar tunes, but not exactly ground-breaking - but I have no idea how representative of his work the stuff I've heard is.  I think he's still out there doing his music, so he's had quite a few years to do different stuff, I guess!

Hmmm - this is guitar stuff, but often not that pleasant.  It's a bunch of covers, most of which start with some inoffensive, but pretty average guitar work and then more on to some more skilful, but more offensive guitar work.  And there's generally some pretty ropey vocals involved as well.  There are some decent tracks on there ("California Dreamin'", "In My Life", "The Last Thing On My Mind"), but for each one I could easily find many better versions with minimal effort - I don't really understand the appeal of this album.

We're at #7 in the charts this week on his fourth week of a seventeen week run - it peaked at #6 in its fourteenth week.  It managed to spend another nineteen weeks on the charts across fifteen separate runs with it last being seen in '70 - easily making it his most successful album over here.  The top five this week were TSOM, The Seekers, The Hollies, TGTBATU and Simon & Garfunkel with the highest new entry being the Oliver! OST (#36), closely followed by the Camelot OST (#37) - people really loved their soundtracks in 1968, didn't they?

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album but the facts that are there surprise me - it was even more popular in the US than it was here, spending 59 weeks on the chart and peaking at #2.  And - even more bizarrely, it was nominated for the Album Of The Year Grammy, he won the Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for "Light My Fire" which is really not good).  Quite frankly, I'm astounded.  Wikipedia also tells me that he is still around and reminds me that he did "Feliz Navidad" - which is one of those facts I know but always forget.

"Customers also listened to" Aaron Neville, Vikki Carr and Harry Nillson - which seems like a random mix, but José seems a pretty random performer and one I very much struggle to see the appeal of on the basis of this one album.

10/11/68 - An odd album
24/11/68 - Not as good as its good bits

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