Jose Feliciano - Light My Fire (1968)

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One of the big surprises of the summer of 1968 was not a rock song, but a most unusual cover of one. In fact the song, “Light My Fire,” was already a legendary classic by The
Doors from exactly one year earlier in the summer of 1967. Good covers of rock songs were rare and tended to be done by long-established pop singers and pop romance orchestras for the adult contemporary audience. A lot of us younger rock listeners didn’t know how to react at first when a cover for “Light My Fire” by newcomer Jose Feliciano hit the airwaves and jukeboxes. But I can tell you that it was overall with a sense of awe, admiration, and a strange surreal delight. We could never imagine a song such as this being played acoustically and by such a gifted guitar player AND singer. If the summer of 1967 was “the Summer of Love” then the summer of 1968 was “the Summer of Love (Part Two)” because the giants of contemporary music were that much more numerous than they had been the previous year. And this song by Jose Feliciano, like the surprise vocal by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, “This Guy’s In Love With You,” was a sheer romance of loveliness that wafted on the summer breeze of sandy beaches and glowing embers of campfires. This was not merely a cover of “Light My Fire” … it was a one of a kind re-invention of the song. This is what immortality SOUNDS like.