Performing the national anthem is often one of the highlights of major sporting events in the United States. Sometimes, it is even more anticipated than the game itself. Who will sing? How will it be sung? Will it surpass Whitney Houston’s historic performance at Super Bowl XXV? In 1991, the late R&B legend’s rendition reached the Top 20 of the Billboard 100 — a first for the national anthem — while being widely considered as its greatest version of all time. Will it join the exclusive “league” in which Mariah Carey or Lady Gaga play?
These are some of the recurring questions surrounding current renditions of the patriotic song.
However, there was a time when that ceremony was not only a solemn occasion but also a strict, “conventional and old-fashioned” protocol. People took advantage of the moment to get up, yawn, and almost fall asleep. The name or popularity of the guest artist mattered little. But everything changed thanks to a 23-year-old Puerto Rican singer, born blind because of congenital glaucoma and who, accompanied by his guitar, dared to push boundaries in an era marked by intolerance.
FROM THE FIRST NOTE that came out of José Feliciano’s acoustic guitar, the play-by-play voice of the Detroit Tigers Ernie Harwell knew something wasn’t quite right on that chilly evening of Oct. 7, 1968, at gigantic Tiger Stadium.
Game 5 of the World Series between the Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals — with the Redbirds leading the best-of-seven contest 3-1 — hadn’t even started, and already Harwell was in a state of stress.
It was Harwell, and no one else but him, who had the idea of inviting the young and blind Puerto Rican musician to sing the national anthem. Feliciano was quite popular back then, thanks to his rendition of the Doors’ classic hit “Light My Fire.” He was also nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy Award.
Harwell hadn’t had time to miss a play on the diamond or call a player by the wrong name. He simply broke out in a cold sweat while he listened to a lucid (according to what he learned later) and daring Feliciano doing his free interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” during pregame ceremonies.
Harwell never imagined that this young man, raised in New York as an immigrant despite owning an American passport, would “play” with the song that, in 1931 and by an act of Congress, had become the official anthem of the United States.
Those were not times to experiment with the symbols of a nation divided by the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., framed by the nationwide unrest over the civil rights struggle.
Despite all that, Feliciano sang the anthem as no one had ever sung it before. And he did in one of the biggest stages possible, with about 56,000 people in the stands and millions of TV viewers and radio listeners paying close attention to the game that could decide the fate of the World Series, and the season of America’s pastime.
Feliciano’s ground-breaking performance, closer to blues and Latin jazz, strayed away from the strict and neat pomp and circumstance with which Margaret Whiting and Marvin Gaye, also invited by Harwell, sang the national anthem before Games 3 and 4 in Detroit.
At the time, Tigers catcher Bill Freehan said, “I know one thing. [Feliciano] made Marvin Gaye, who sang the national anthem on Sunday, sound conventional, old-fashioned.”
“[HIS PERFORMANCE] WAS TRANSCENDENTAL because it was, first and foremost, a pioneer in terms of free interpretations of the national anthem of the United States,” explained Javier Santiago, executive director of the National Foundation for Popular Culture of Puerto Rico, about the milestone.
However, in 1968 Detroit — and all the United States — people weren’t prepared for that new sound.
“It caused a huge stir in conservative sectors because they weren’t used to hearing a person play the national anthem in the way José Feliciano did at the time,” Santiago added during an interview with ESPN. “He was the one who put, as we say, the pike in Flanders.”
About the moment, Feliciano recalled during an interview with Boston Public Radio station WBUR in 2019, “Well, I heard some cheers, but they were sparse. And I heard a lot of boos. And I said, ‘Wow, what did I do? Why are they booing me?'”
Harwell later wrote that, besides being fearful for his job, he was called a communist. “The country seethed over José’s performance. Editorials lambasted it, civic groups passed angry resolutions. Patients at a veterans’ hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, threw shoes at the TV set during the rendition of the song.”
“It was a disgrace, an insult,” Arlene Raicevich, a baseball fan from Detroit, told The Associated Press back then. “I’m going to write my senator about it.”
The baseball players also had mixed reactions.
“I don’t think it was the right place for that kind of treatment. Maybe I’m a conservative myself,” Cardinals outfielder Roger Maris told the Boston Globe.
However, Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, a Puerto Rican just like Feliciano, and who played for the Cardinals at the time, recently told ESPN that “seeing that guy singing the anthem the way he sang it and finding out later that he was a Puerto Rican, it was a big thrill. I didn’t know him. I didn’t like his music very much, but I loved it when I heard him there.”
“When patterns are broken, there are always problems with acceptance,” said Santiago, while adding that several U.S. radio stations stopped playing Feliciano’s songs. “He paid the price for having been a pioneer. [His rendition] has transcended, and after José Feliciano, how many others haven’t sung it in different ways? Nowadays, we even have a Spanish-language version of the U.S. national anthem.”
The executive director of the National Foundation for the Popular Culture of Puerto Rico pointed out that the controversy, although not in an ideal setting, allowed Feliciano to reach out to other markets such as Australia, Europe and Latin America.
The RCA Records label reacted to the row and launched Feliciano’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a single. It didn’t take long to land on the No. 50 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first time that the national anthem of the United States hit the music charts.
That irreverent reinterpretation, which almost cost Harwell his job, forever changed the way artists approached the poem written by Francis Scott Key in September 1814.
“To reinterpret the anthem in the way he did speaks of the historic moment he was living through,” Santiago said. “There were people who didn’t want to go to the draft, to fight an undeclared war like Vietnam. There were people burning flags. There was a lot of unrest on the racial side and [Feliciano] really wanted to break the mold at that time and he had the opportunity to do it in front of an audience of millions of people, so broad. He wanted to do it differently, the way his generation and him, as an immigrant, felt it back then.”
Feliciano encouraged other musicians to explore and externalize their patriotic sentiments through the national anthem, with no creative strings attached. In the end, there is no original, traditional, or official version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” anyway. Thanks to him, we can also enjoy the memorable interpretations by Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock Festival, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga and Marvin Gaye himself, who stuck to the status quo in 1968 but delivered a one-of-a-kind rendition at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, widely considered as a gem.
Since then, singing the national anthem at major sporting events in the United States has become one of the most anticipated moments. It stopped being, as former Cards first baseman and catcher Tim McCarver said of Feliciano’s historic performance, “Why not like this? People go through a routine when the anthem is played. They get up, yawn, and almost doze off. That way, at least they listened.”
Years later, Feliciano admitted to Boston Public Radio, “[I did it] because I was sick and tired of hearing it the old way and the audience, kind of, not being into it. Get to the end of the song, and the audience would start clapping as if to say, ‘Thank God this thing has passed.’ And I got tired of that. I did. I really, really did. And I said, ‘I’ll fix it.'”
“I feel great respect for him, I feel admiration, I feel grateful as a Puerto Rican because the moment when José Feliciano dared to do this, was not an easy moment in history,” Javier Santiago told ESPN Deportes. “He achieved things that even today when being Latino is fashionable, many don’t dare to do. I think he left that legacy for posterity as an example to the new generations, that we can sing the anthem the way we feel it.”
Indeed. If a young musician from Puerto Rico had the courage to “fix it,” and most of today’s American music stars and celebrities follow his example, although many might not know the origins of the change that allowed us to enjoy such breathtaking renditions, as the one Houston sang at Super Bowl XXV.
Detroit won Game 5 of the World Series 5-3 at home. The Tigers did not stop until beating the Cardinals in Game 7 and lifting the trophy.
Source: www.espn.com