Salsa Legend Cheo Feliciano Dies : Alt.Latino : NPR: Three days of mourning have been declared in Puerto Rico following the death of salsa great Cheo Feliciano in a car accident there early Thursday. The singer was 78. "His music embodied the rhythm of Puerto Ricans living in New York City," U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) said in a statement, "and his lyrics helped tell our collective story."
José Luis Feliciano Vega was born in 1935 to a working class family in the southern Puerto Rican city of Ponce. At 17 the family joined the massive Puerto Rican diaspora of the 1950s, and moved to New York. That's where Cheo started to train with the big Latin dance orchestras and develop the sound that would make him an icon in both New York and Puerto Rico.
