Saturday 9: Feliz Navidad (1970)
Unfamiliar with this week's song? Hear it here.
1. "Feliz Navidad" is Spanish for "Merry Christmas." Can you wish us happy holidays in a language other than English or Spanish?
Joueux Noel! I know a few more words in French.
2. According to ASCAP (the American Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers), this is one of the 20 most played holiday songs of the last 10 years. What's the most recent carol that you heard?
We have a classical station that is playing a lot of instrumental and choral Christmas music and in the afternoon and I love turning on the radio.
3. Which Christmas song do you hope you never hear again? The one where Grandma gets run over by a reindeer.
It is awful and then it becomes an earworm all day long. Oops! There it is!
4. This week's featured artist, Jose Feliciano, was honored to perform this song at the tree lighting ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. If you were to win a trip to our nation's capital, which sites would you visit?
I have been to DC and have seen everything I want to see. I have other places to visit. I especially liked the National Art Gallery.
5. As a very young child, Jose taught himself to play the accordion. If you could suddenly, easily learn to play any instrument, which would you choose?
I guess the piano or guitar.
6. Jose says that hearing early 1950s rock on the radio made him want to become a singer. What's your favorite music genre?
Almost any thing except jazz or rap.
7. At 17, Jose had to drop out of school to help support his family. Too young to enter bars, he played guitar in coffee houses for tips. Have you ever worked a job where you regularly received gratuities?
No, although when I was a bank teller, I was regularly given money....couldn't keep it! As a side note, I saw Feliciano in one of those coffee houses in Pasadena. I was impressed, by his music and his beautiful dog, who sat quietly at his feet. I wasn't aware I was seeing someone who would be famous one day, though, I should have known.
8. Jose and wife Susan have been together for more than 40 years. Who is the happiest married couple you know?
Mr BC and I come to mind....also our best friends Maggie and Jiggs.
9. Jose wrote and performed the theme of the 1970s show, Chico and the Man. What's your current favorite TV show? On network...The Middle....
We are currently streaming many favorites we like Time Team, each episode featured a team of British specialists carrying out an archaeological dig over a period of three days. I am also hooked on A Place to Call Home, an Australian melodrama, Set in Country New South Wales in the period following World War II. Both of them we watch on Acorn, a streaming channel of British TV. I also am catching up on Foyle's War. I started watching that on Masterpiece Theater and did not know there were several seasons.
