Blind guitarist José Feliciano has been making music for over 50 years, but he’s best known for two songs, one of which is the only Spanish elementary school students in Maine are taught: his cover of the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and the Christmas miracle known as “Feliz Navidad.” But Feliciano recently opened a lawsuit against his former manager Ray Sciacca, according to the Hollywood Reporter, who “took advantage of his visual impairment.”
“Roy Sciacca describes himself as a ‘God’ and ‘mogul’ in the music business with ‘top’ industry credentials,” says the lawsuit. “However history indicates that he is actually a repeatedly failed entertainment entrepreneur, judgment debtor, and a fraud as set forth herein, to the extent that perhaps only a blind man could have missed the signs.”
To get his money back, Roy Sciacca will sue Kanye West, claiming he’s the one and only God.
Feliciano says that among the things that induced him to sign up with the guy was word of a potential 18-month worldwide tour, a booking on the New Years’ Rockin’ Eve Special, an annual Christmas special featuring a star studded cast to be possibly featured on Telemundo or Univision, entrance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inclusion onto Rolling Stone‘s “100 Greatest Guitarists Edition” and more.
It was so enticing that Feliciano says he began discussing terms of the management agreement. But the musician adds that he didn’t find the first proposal acceptable insofar as he wanted the relationship to work the way it had with his prior manager: First, the ability to terminate at will. Second, that the manager would only be entitled to to a commission on income negotiated and received during the term of the agreement.
Sciacca allegedly responded that he would make the changes, but didn’t. “Unfortunately,” says the lawsuit, “Feliciano is blind, did not have the ability to read the Agreement, no one read him the Agreement and he was not otherwise informed of the specific language of the final revision of the Agreement.” (Via)
Meanwhile, no one wants credit for any Hanukkah song, the first time ever a Jew hasn’t been embroiled in a lawsuit.
