My first memory of playing music was when I was 3 years old in Puerto Rico. I played percussion on a tin can behind my uncle, who played the cuatro.

Actually, being blind is not so bad. If you're born this way, you never know anything else and you don't wonder about it. Though I'd hate to have lost my sight after being able to see.

The fact I'm blind has been a great help to my career. If I'd been sighted I'd have played baseball and got into trouble like all other kids on my block.

I thought I'd be spending my life making brooms, mops, chairs and things. That's fine for some blind people, but I wanted something more out of life. Music seemed the best way.

RCA wanted me to change my name. They asked me around 1965, when they first signed me. They said, 'Feliciano is too Latin.' I said, 'That's who I am. I'm Jose Feliciano.' They wanted me to change my name to Joe Phillips.

I always wanted to be the first true Latino to break the American barrier, to be on the American charts.

I became a teen idol. At the time, it embarrassed me.

I didn't have romances when I was in school. Girls didn't want to go out with me because I was blind.

I always tell my wife she's married to the Puerto Rican Elvis.

I was the first artist to put the national anthem on the charts, and I'm thrilled.