“It Sounded Like a Hippie Was Singing It”: José Feliciano’s 1968 National Anthem Performance

On Oct. 7, 1968, Puerto Rican singer José Feliciano performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” to open Game 5 of the MLB World Series between the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals at Tiger Stadium. At just 23, Feliciano--a New York native and then-rising blind pop star--offered an unconventional, yet personalized, musical interpretation of America’s anthem. Accompanied by his guitar, Feliciano eschewed the anthem’s traditionally-standardized version for a re-composition that both slowed its phrasing and highlighted his own Latin Jazz and acoustic folk roots. In a year punctuated by momentous social and political upheavals, however--and closely following the fatal 1967 Detroit race rebellion--Feliciano’s performance became an unintended yet highly-controversial public “site of struggle.” Received by many as a political provocation, Feliciano’s rendition came to represent a challenge to conformity that reflected the decade’s “Hippie,” youth, and anti-war movements, as well as a musical re-interpretation that exemplified the very breaks from tradition--and fears of integration--that fueled American conservative, anti-communist, and nationalist sentiment at the time.

In the wake of this performance, Feliciano was blackballed by many American commercial radio stations; others revealingly called for him to be “deported.” At the same time, RCA Records commodified the controversial moment, distributing Feliciano’s live rendition as a single that would proceed to reach No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100. As a polarizing cultural artifact, Feliciano’s anthem rendition embodies the messiness and ambivalence of the 1960s; it became a musical catalyst for larger cultural conversations and debates about patriotism, politics, and American identity.In recent years, the performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at professional sporting events has again become the site and subject of controversy--the musical grounds upon which contemporary issues of injustice and inequality continue to be communicated, contested, and reframed.

We examine the role of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in constructing, communicating, and reifying dominant conceptions of America and Americanness. We consider the intertwined histories of baseball and the national anthem in the United States to explore how Feliciano’s performance reverberated across popular culture, echoing long after his live performance as a recorded single--a tangible and portable musical artifact. Feliciano's anthem rendition set new historical precedents as the first anthem recording to chart on the prestigious Billboard Hot 100, and the first stylization of a public anthem performance by a popular American artist. Nine days after Feliciano’s performance, the anthem took center stage again--this time on an international scale at the Olympic podium in Mexico City, where US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest against racial injustice and class divides, reigniting a larger national conversation about the practice and performance of patriotism in America. Since his polarizing performance in 1968, Feliciano has again been asked to perform the national anthem at MLB games, including in Detroit, and his original version today plays continuously in Cooperstown, NY at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. This project thus considers how Feliciano’s performance serves as the contested ground upon which questions of nationalism, naturalization, belonging, and “home” were--and are--actively communicated and negotiated.

By looking historically to Feliciano’s 1968 rendition, we consider the “afterlives” of his performance and the historical moment in which it was situated to consider: How might national anthem performances, like Feliciano’s--which remix, rearrange, and transcribe the “Star Spangled Banner’s” seemingly-standardized musical form--force us to consider larger questions of cultural belonging in America?

Related Projects & Publications

Johnson, P.B., & Cox, C.M. (2018). “It sounded like a hippie was singing it”: The Ambivalence of José Feliciano’s 1968 National Anthem performance. Critical Mediations: A Communication and Cultural Studies Conference. Los Angeles, CA.