My Mother's Records

With all the interminable bollocks written about the "revolutionary" sounds of the 1960s (and still being written, I wish they'd shut up about it) it's often overlooked that the charts then were also full of the likes of Tom Jones, Dionne Warwick, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, and other "square" music bought by untrustworthy over-30s like my mother. Her generation was raised on Frank Sinatra and by the time rock and roll hit the scene (she was 21 when "Heartbreak Hotel" came out) their idea of cool sophistication had already been shaped by Ol' Blue Eyes. So even though she quite liked The Beatles, by the time the Summer of Love rolled around my mother was a bit too old to be a hippy and her idea of a swinging good time was cocktails and classy music, not drugs and dancing in a field (but thankfully she wasn't so square that she was into Val Doonican either). Besides, by then she had two kids to raise on her own and couldn't exactly go gallivanting off to see The Stones in Hyde Park.

So in our house "Light My Fire" was by Jose Feliciano, not The Doors. In fact it was years before I even knew that this was a cover version, my mother played this so often it still sounds like the original to me and I think of The Doors' version as the overheated, vaguely cheesy cover. Feliciano might not have worn leather trousers and written bad poetry but he sounded plenty soulful and intense on this, though I bet the hippies hated it.

Even better is his version of "California Dreaming" which transforms the breezy hippy anthem into something darker, The Mamas and The Papas were all cheery and sunny while Jose sounds very lonely and lost. I absolutely love the Spanish bit at the end, my O-Level Spanish is a bit rusty so I'm not entirely sure what he's saying. It sounds dead moody though.

Download: Light My Fire - Jose Feliciano (mp3)
Download: California Dreaming - Jose Feliciano (mp3)

Both of these are from his 1968 album "Feliciano!" which was a ubiquitous presence on the record shelves of just about everyone we knew back then (along with "Bridge Over Troubled Water") and one of the few records my Dad took with him when he left home which says something about its popularity — and something about its place in my memories.