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Ritchie Valens: 1941-1959: Performer

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Although his career included just a handful of recording and concert dates, Ritchie Valens attained a place in music history as the first Latino rock-and-roll star. With a string of hit singles behind him at the age of seventeen, the musician's future was tragically cut short, however, when he died in a plane crash along with a group that included Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper"). February 3, 1959 became immortalized as "the day the music died" in rock history, yet Valens's legend grew after his death with the 1987 biographical film La Bamba, which took its name from Valens's most memorable hit song. The film's soundtrack, recorded by Los Lobos, sent the song to the top of the pop charts and familiarized a new generation of music fans with the work of the teenage rock star.

Early Interest in Music

Ritchie Valens was born Richard Steven Valenzuela on May 13, 1941, and grew up in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Pacioma, California. His parents, Joseph Steve and Concepción (Reyes) Valenzuela, were working at a munitions plant at the time of his birth. When he was three years old his parents separated, and young Richard Valenzuela spent the next several years with his father. The elder Valenzuela held a number of different jobs—tree surgeon, miner, and horse trainer among them—and introduced his son to a love of Latin music at an early age. While his father played the guitar, Valens plucked along on a ukulele, later adding the guitar, trumpet, harmonica, and drums to his collection of instruments.

Joseph Steve Valenzuela died from diabetes-related complications in 1951, and his mother moved back into the family home with her new husband and her other children. The family eventually included Ritchie's older half-brother, Robert Morales, younger half-sisters, Connie and Irma Ramirez, and a younger half-brother, Mario Ramirez. Valens's stepfather worked as an agricultural worker, and his mother worked as a waitress and housekeeper, yet money was tight in their household. Ritchie spent much of his adolescent years living with various relatives and as a result attended a number of schools throughout the Los Angeles area while he was growing up. After his step-father separated from his mother, the family was forced to move into a tiny house in Pacioma in the San Fernando Valley, but keeping up the mortgage payments was a constant struggle.

As a student at Pacioma Junior High and later at San Fernando Valley High School, Valens often brought his guitar to play and sing at the lunch hour and after class. Playing with the nine-piece Silhouettes from October of 1957, Valens gained a reputation throughout the region for his guitar work. The Silhouettes played small club dates and school concerts during the winter of 1957 and into the spring of 1958. One date, at the Pacioma Legion Hall on May 2, 1958, led to Valens's big break.

Valens's Big Break

There are several versions of the story of Valens's discovery. One version has Valens and his mother renting the Legion Hall for a Silhouettes date in order to raise enough money to pay off the family's mortgage; by chance, a friend of a record company executive saw the show and suggested that his friend audition Valens. Another version has his mother skipping a mortgage payment to rent the hall and have the concert taped as a demo recording to get the interest of a record company. After Bob Keane heard the tape, he went to a talent show where Valens was competing to check out the talented teenager in person. In any event, Valens's performance at the Legion Hall in May of 1958 indeed resulted in an offer to record some tracks for Bob Keane's Del-Fi label at Gold Star Studios in June of 1958. The resulting single, a Valens composition called "Come On, Let's Go," was released the same month and hit number 42 in September on Billboard's Hot 100. On Keane's suggestion, the singer adopted "Valens" as his professional name over his given surname, Valenzuela. While it was not quite a bona fide top forty hit, "Come On, Let's Go" sold over 225,000 copies and led to Valens's first appearance on American Bandstand on October 6, 1958. By that time Valens was in demand for concert appearances across the country and had dropped out of San Fernando Valley High School.

Valens's next release was a double-sided single, "Donna" and "La Bamba." A ballad that Valens wrote for his high-school girlfriend, Donna Ludwig, "Donna" was an immediate hit; it earned a gold record award and spent two weeks at number two on the Hot 100 in January of 1959. The song remains an early rock classic as a teenager-in-love ballad. The single's flip side, "La Bamba," also became a classic of a different sort. Based on a traditional tune popular at Mexican weddings, the lyrics of "La Bamba" were adapted from the huapango, which used nonsense lyrics in boastful exchanges among singers. In Valens's rock-and-roll version, the lyrics featured a drunken sailor insisting that he could dance la bamba better than anyone else. While the song was not as popular as "Donna," it hit the top 30 on the pop charts in February of 1959.

One of the few foreign-language pop hits on the American charts, "La Bamba" was an unusual hit for its era. It was also an unusual choice for Valens to record, as he spoke only rudimentary Spanish and had to learn the lyrics to the song from his mother's relatives. Although he was aware of his Mexican heritage, Valens spoke only a couple of words of Spanish while he was growing up with his father, who was a native of California. Later on, he picked up a few more phrases, but he was never conversant in the language.

Fatal Crash Became a Legend

With three hit songs in less than six months, Valens appeared on the Alan Freed Christmas Jubilee of Stars in December of 1958. Freed also asked Valens to make a singing appearance of "Ooh, My Head" in his rock-and-roll movie Go Johnny Go. Valens then signed up for the Winter Dance Party tour of the Midwest with Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Big Bopper, and Dion and the Belmonts for January and February of 1959. The Winter Dance Party series would be Valens's first national tour. Symbolizing his success, the teenager put a __BODY__,000 down payment on a house for his family in Pacioma.

Before leaving on the Winter Dance Party tour, Valens entered the Gold Star studio for a final recording date in early January of 1959. With his first album, Ritchie Valens, slated for release in February of 1959, Valens joined the concert tour as it kicked off in Milwaukee on January 23rd. After playing a series of dates around the upper Midwest, the musicians played to about 1,200 fans at the Surf Ballroom at Clear Lake, Iowa, on the night of February 2nd. Hoping to catch up on some rest, headliner Buddy Holly decided to charter a plane to get to the tour's next gig in Minnesota, while the rest of the group traveled by bus. Valens and Richardson joined him for the flight, which was piloted by twenty-one-year-old Roger Peterson. Disoriented by poor visibility in the darkness, Peterson crashed the plane almost immediately after takeoff; there were no survivors of the February 3rd accident.

The sudden loss of three popular performers stunned music fans. The death of Valens, who was just seventeen years old, contributed to the poignancy of the tragic event; the young performer still had the double-sided hit "Donna/La Bamba" riding high on the charts. In the year after his death two more albums, Ritchie and Ritchie Valens in Concert at Pacioma Junior High, were released. Compilations of Valens's work have remained in print continuously.

In 1972 Don McLean's song commemorating the event,"American Pie," hit number one as it recalled "the day the music died." Valens's own music lived on, as it was performed by groups ranging from the Ramones to Led Zeppelin. Revived by Los Lobos in 1987, a remake of "La Bamba" eventually returned to the pop charts as a number one single. The song was included on the soundtrack to the film of the same name, which introduced Ritchie Valens to a new generation of music fans as the first Latino rock-and-roll star. In 2001 Valens was inducted by singer Ricky Martin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for his contribution to popular music.

Selected discography

"Come On, Let's Go" (single), Del-Fi Records, 1958.

"Donna/La Bamba" (single), Del-Fi Records, 1958.

"Fast Freight/Big Baby Blues" (single), Del-Fi Records, 1958.

Ritchie Valens, (album), Del-Fi Records, 1959.

"That's My Little Suzie" (single), Del-Fi Records, 1959.

"Little Girl/We Belong Together&rduo; (single), Del-Fi Records, 1959.

Ritchie, (album), Del-Fi Records, 1959.

Ritchie Valens in Concert at Pacioma Junior High, (album), Del-Fi Records, 1960.

Ritchie Valens's Greatest Hits, (album), Del-Fi Records, 1963.

The Best of Ritchie Valens, (album), Rhino Records, 1981.

Sources

Books

The Billboard Book of Top Forty Hits, 6th Edition, Billboard Publications, 1996, p. 626.

Lehmer, Larry, The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the 'Big Bopper' and Ritchie Valens, Schirmer Books, 1997.

Mendheim, Beverly, Ritchie Valens: The First Latino Rocker, Bilingual Press, 1987.

World Music: The Rough Guide Volume 2, Rough Guides, 2000, pp. 466-467.

On-line

2001 Inductees: Ritchie Valens, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Web Site, 2001, http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=1145.

—Timothy Borden