Ritchie Valens was only 17 when La Bamba made rock history
Ritchie Valens took a Mexican folk song, gave it a rock beat and turned La Bamba into a 1958 hit that helped launch Spanish-language rock and roll. Eight months after his breakthrough he was dead, aged 17, in the plane crash later known as The Day the Music Died.
He was born Richard Steven Valenzuela on May 13, 1941, in Pacoima, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. His parents came from Vicam in Sonora and were of Yaqui descent; many Indigenous Mexican families had taken the surname Valenzuela during the Porfiriato dictatorship to avoid being driven from their land. At home he heard mariachi, flamenco guitar, R&B and jump blues, and by five he wanted to make music. His father encouraged guitar and trumpet, he taught himself drums, and although left-handed he learned to play guitar the conventional right-handed way.
At Pacoima Junior High he played for friends on the bleachers. He missed school on the day of the 1957 Pacoima mid-air collision because he was at his grandfather's funeral, but nightmares about the disaster left him afraid of flying. At 16 he joined a local band, the Silhouettes, first on guitar and then as lead singer after the vocalist left, debuting with them on June 19, 1957. He liked to improvise new lyrics and riffs on stage.
In May 1958 a student tipped off Bob Keane of the small Hollywood label Del-Fi about a kid known locally as the Little Richard of San Fernando. Keane watched him play a Saturday matinee at a cinema and invited him to audition in a basement studio at his Silver Lake home. As well as La Bamba, Valens reached number two in the US with Donna.
On February 3, 1959, his plane crashed in Iowa, killing him along with Buddy Holly, J. P. Richardson, known as the Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson. His first album appeared nine days later and a second, Ritchie, that October. Remembered as a forefather of Chicano rock, he was honoured after his death by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and California's own hall of fame, and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star bears his name.
Source: Ritchie Valens
