José José is a Mexican singer. Referred in the entertainment world as “El Príncipe de la Canción”, José José is best known for his romantic ballads and renowned for his gifted vocals. He is regarded as one of the most talented singers of Latin American popular music, recognizable by his pure vocal tone and his ability to sustain high and low notes. In a career that has spanned over forty years, his performance and distinctive vocal style have influenced several Latin pop artists.

Born into a family of musicians, José José started his musical career in his early teens playing guitar and singing in serenades. He later joined a jazz and bossa nova trio where he sang and played the bass and double bass. José became a successful solo artist in the early 1970s. Demonstrating his vocal ability with a masterful performance of the song “El Triste” in a Latin music festival in 1970, he climbed the most important Latin charts during the decade. In the 1980s, after signing with Ariola Records, José José gained international fame for being one of the most talented and successful singers of Latin America. His 1983 album Secretos is one of the best sellers in the history of Mexican music, it has sold over 11 million copies around the world. With a series of huge hits, he received several nominations to the Grammy and numerous recognitions worldwide. He sold out in venues such as the Madison Square Garden and the Radio City Music Hall. His music reached non Spanish-speaking countries like Japan, Israel and Russia. During the 1990s, after several hits, his career began to decline as his voice started to falter due to his alcoholism and health issues. José has also forged a career as an actor, starring in movies like Gavilán o Paloma and Perdóname Todo.

Due to his wide-range vocals, his career in Latin music and the high popularity he achieved, he is considered by the media, the press and the people as one of the most important Latin singers from the 1970s to the 1990s.

José Rómulo Sosa Ortiz was born on February 17, 1948 in Azcapotzalco, Mexico City. He was raised into a Roman Catholic family of gifted musicians; his father, José Sosa Esquivel, was an operatic tenor and his mother, Margarita Ortiz, was a classical pianist. They never achieved relative large success, and when José began to show interest in singing, they tried to discourage him, claiming that it was too difficult to achieve success in show business.

José Iturbi was a Spanish conductor, harpsichordist and pianist. He appeared in several Hollywood films of the 1940s, notably playing himself in the 1943 musical, Thousands Cheer and in the 1945 film, Anchors Aweigh. He was involved in a complex family custody battle in the 1940s that culminated in his former son-in-law kidnapping Iturbi’s two granddaughters.

Born in Valencia, Spain, of Basque descent, Iturbi studied in Barcelona and at the Valencia and Paris conservatories on scholarship; at this time, he also undertook extensive private studies in keyboard technique and interpretation with the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. His worldwide concert tours, beginning around 1912, were brilliantly successful. He excelled as an interpreter of French as well as Spanish music. He made his American debut in New York City in 1929. He made his first appearance as a conductor in Mexico City in 1933 when presented by donon Ernesto de Quesada from Conciertos Daniel. He was also conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in upstate New York from 1936 to 1944. He also led the Valencia Symphony Orchestra for many years. He often appeared in concert with his sister, Amparo Iturbi, who was also a renowned pianist.

Iturbi was a noted harpsichordist, and made several short length instructional films utilizing the re-emergent early 20th C. French Pleyel et Cie pedal, metal-framed harpsichord made famous by Wanda Landowska. He appeared as an actor-performer in several filmed musicals of the 1940s, beginning with 1943’s Thousands Cheer for MGM. He usually appeared as himself in these films. He later was featured in MGM’s Anchors Aweigh, which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, as well as several other MGM movies. In the biopic about Frédéric Chopin, A Song to Remember, Iturbi’s playing was used in the soundtrack in scenes where Cornel Wilde, as Chopin, was playing the piano.

Unfortunately, while these films made him very popular during his lifetime, his musical exhibitionism and Hollywood appearances caused many connoisseurs to undervalue him as a serious musician.

Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of the Oscar-winning All About Eve. He was brother to the equally famous screenwriter and drama critic Herman J. Mankiewicz who also won an Oscar ? for co-writing Citizen Kane. Joseph Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Franz Mankiewicz and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish immigrants from Germany. He had a sister, Erna Mankiewicz, and a brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz, who became a screenwriter.

At age four, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City where he graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. In 1928, he obtained a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. For a time he worked in Berlin, Germany, as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper before being lured into the motion picture business.

Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylised mise en scène. Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount and as a producer for MGM before getting a chance to direct at Twentieth Century-Fox. Over six years he made 11 films for Fox, reaching a peak in 1949 and 1950 when he won consecutive Academy Awards for Screenplay and Direction for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve.

José Montserrate Feliciano García is a blind Puerto Rican singer, virtuoso guitarist and composer, known for many international hits including the 1970 holiday single "Feliz Navidad".

Feliciano was born in Lares, Puerto Rico, one of twelve children. He is blind because of congenital glaucoma. He was first exposed to music at age three. When he was five, his family moved to Spanish Harlem, New York City and, at age nine, he played on the Teatro Puerto Rico. He started his musical life playing accordion until his grandfather gave him a guitar. He reportedly sat by himself in his room for up to 14 hours a day to listen to 1950s rock albums, classical guitarists such as Andrés Segovia, and jazz players such as Wes Montgomery. He later had classical lessons with Harold Morris who earlier had been a student with Segovia.

At 17, he quit school to play in clubs, having his first professional, contracted performance in Detroit.

In 1963, after some live performances in pubs and clubs around the USA, especially in Greenwich Village, NY, where he played at the same time as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, he was signed at RCA Victor. In 1964, he released his first single "Everybody Do the Click". Later, in 1965 and 1966, he also released his first albums The Voice and Guitar of Jose Feliciano and A Bag Full of Soul, two folk-pop-soul albums that showcased his talent on radio across the USA, where he was described as a "10 finger wizard". He also was invited to the Newport Jazz festival in 1964.