Ritchie Valens Biography

The Early Years

Latino rock legend Ritchie Valens was born Richard Steven Valenzuela on May 13, 1941 in a largely Hispanic community north of Los Angeles known as the San Fernando Valley.His father, Joseph "Steve" Valenzuela, was a jack of all trades. Among other things he worked as a tree surgeon, an itinerant minor and a part time horse trainer. Steve loved a variety of music, expressing interest in flamenco music as well as various forms of the blues music and he instilled this love of music into his son.

Ritchie's mother, Concepcion "Connie" Valenzuela, worked in a munitions plant in Saugus just to the north of the San Fernando valley. Connie already had another son from a previous marriage named Robert Morales who was four years old at the time of Ritchie's birth. For a few years the Valenzuela family lived a fairly "steady" life at 1337 Coronel Street in San Fernando.

When Ritchie was three years old his parents separated, with Ritchie spending most of his time with his father in a house Steve had bought on Filmore Street in Pacoima. It was at this house that Steve first began to encourage Ritchie's musical talents. Of course this involved learning to play the guitar as well as keeping up his natural talent for singing. Steve wanted Ritchie to make something of himself and encouraged him continuously. In 1951 when Ritchie was ten years old Steve died of diabetes.

After Steve's death Connie moved into the house on Filmore with her oldest son Robert, and her two young daughters Connie and Irma. During this time, until he was eleven, Ritchie stayed with his uncle, Henry Felix, in Santa Monica. It was rumored that Ritchie was sent to live with his uncle to prevent him from "running wild". But on the flip side of that, many have said that Ritchie had always been a quite boy almost on the shy side.

With the little house in Pacoima so overcrowded by his growing family Ritchie spent a great deal of time at his Aunt Ernestine and Uncle Lelo Reyes house when he returned to Pacoima. Ernestine and Lelo were an integral part of Ritchie's life and career. To this day it is with great love that they have kept his memory and music alive, passing it on to newer generations.

At the age of thirteen Ritchie entered Pacoima Junior High as a seventh grader. He was an average student, a bit quiet and well liked by his classmates. By this time Ritchie brought his guitar with him everywhere. During lunchtime at school he would sit on the bleachers and practice or entertain his friends with his music. Many different relatives influenced Ritchie with a wide variety of music.He had great exposure to Latin songs, including "La Bamba". It is told that Ritchie's cousin Dickie Cota played a main part of this along with his Uncle Lozano teaching Ritchie several chords on the guitar. By the time Ritchie entered high school he had succumbed to the excitement of Rock-n-Roll imitating Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and most often Little Richard! Ritchie ultimately became known as the Little Richard of Pacoima.By age sixteen, after more than a year of playing for friends, the shy and somewhat reclusive Valens was asked to join the Silhouettes, who played high school hops, church dances and local parties.

They were a typical high school garage band who covered the popular tunes of the day at high school sock hops, church dances and local parties. The one difference that the Silhouettes had over other high school bands was that one founding member, Gil Rocha, was a twenty one-year-old musician. He was a vibe player who understood songwriting, arranging and production and because of Rocha, the Silhouettes had a professional band. They were also a racially mixed band, which included two black brothers, a Japanese American and the Hispanic Valens. Eventually, sixteen separate musicians passed through the Silhouettes, and some were exceptionally talented. A female vocalist, Emma Franco, was featured and another vocalist, Phyllis Romano, sang plaintive wailing ballads. Ritchie was a shy kid, but he was the featured vocalist with the group.

Ritchie's guitar playing showed a strong Bo Diddley influence and he fused the passionate, overtly rhythmic style of Little Richard with a frenetic originality of his own. Choosing to disregard mimicking a flamboyant stage personality, Ritchie instead opted for a more humble, almost awkward stage presence that was closer to his true personality. Fronting for The Silhouettes helped Ritchie overcome his shyness and bolstered his confidence as a performer.

Ritchie knew that making music was what he wanted to do more than anything else does. While his own musical abilities reveal a talent beyond his seventeen years, Ritchie's yearning voice on his ballads tells us he sang from the heart. The emotion wasn't faked. He was simply too young and too innocent to do otherwise.

THE DEL-FI YEARS:

One Friday evening in the summer of 1958, Bob Keane drove over to his printer's office in the Valley to pick up some printed business cards. He'd just started and he was looking for new artists to sign. A twenty-two year old printer assistant named Doug Macchia, who was a former student at San Fernando High School, told him about a then-current high school student named Richard Valenzuela, whom he thought could be a possible top-selling act for Keane's new label. Macchia was really impressed with the way Ritchie belted out R&B-style rockers in the style Little Richard, and he raved to Keane about the artist until Keane was convinced. He was playing there again on Saturday morning,Keane drove up from his Hollywood office to see "The Little Richard of San Fernando" for himself.

What he saw was a crossover artist in the making. "I'll never forget the first time I saw Ritchie" Keane remarked, "He had a small, somewhat beat up amp and he stood on stage nervously looking out at the audience".Ritchie was a big, broad-shouldered young man, pale in complexion, and with his perfect "waterfall" hairstyle and hazel-green eyes, he looked like no other seventeen-year-old Keane had ever seen up on stage before.

Because there were absolutely no other teen recording artists of Latin-American descent at the time, Keane knew he had tapped into a new marketing possibility. Keane introduced himself to Ritchie after the show, and invited him to come to his home and record demos at his basement studio set-up. What he heard impressed him. He was certainly no guitar virtuoso, but he could rock like a rough street kid while simultaneously exuding a shy, appealing vulnerability. It was a combination that was driving the Valley teenagers wild, and Keane wasted no time in tapping its potential.

As Keane recalled there was no need to be wary because Ritchie Valens' fans were already rooted to his music. "I knew that he was a potential hitmaker" Keane recalled,"but like anybody else I wasn't sure how far he would go" Keane couldn't wait to record young Valens. [Interesting side-note: A month previous to this, a Capitol Records scout spent part of a night at a teen dance. His conclusion was that Valens was too shy, the music too non-commercial and Valens looked too old to fit into the teen market. The major labels Capitol, RCA and Columbia all had offices near 1823 N. Dillon Street location, but they were mammoth corporations unfriendly to young musicians. It was possible to walk into and leave a demo tape.]

Keane suggested that Ritchie shorten his surname--in an attempt to circumvent the racist programming attitudes which could cripple a new career-- and add a 't' to his first name to make it stand out. Ritchie was going to be so popular, Keane knew that he would be on first-name basis with everybody anyway, and it was true. Ritchie was "Ritchie" from then on.

THE LOST TAPES:

In these early basement sessions, Keane and Valens worked quickly and feverishly and found it relatively easy to work the songs into a commercial format. There were a variety of songs in Ritchie's repertoire-- slow ballads as well as mid-tempo and faster rock n' rollers; even a few unlikely cover songs, including Ersel Hickey's hillbilly classic "Bluebirds Over The Mountain".

After sifting through the slender portfolio of half-finished songs that Ritchie had, Keane knew that he had to craft them into viable, commercial songs that would get played on the radio. They rehearsed feverishly and Keane found it relatively easy to re-work Ritchie's songs into what he considered "hit" material. One of the most interesting songs cut in the basement was "Stay Beside Me" which features a hesitant Valens guitar solo and Keane fiddling with the tape delay on his Ampex. Another great Keane basement demo is "Gotta Girl Named Sue" which Keane had Valens rewrite and it became "That's My Little Suzie".

The Keane basement tapes deliver other jewels. A cover version of Robert and Johnny's "We Belong Together" bears a strong resemblance to DEL-FI's October 1959 release of "We Belong Together". The lost tape provides excellent examples of how quickly Keane and Valens cut "We Belong Together" as the b-side to "Stay Beside Me" "Blues With Drums" is another example of Valens' slow blues guitar accompanied by drums was another mellow, almost jazz inspired basement cut in which Keane later added drums and he released the master on the 1959 album Ritchie (DFLP1206)

The basement demo of "Come On, Let's Go" is interesting because it is a fragment of the original song. The words are blurred and uncertain. Keane stepped in and cleaned up his tune and when it was recorded in the studio the finished product bore the marks of this rehearsal tape. "In A Little Turkish Town" and "Dooby Dooby Wah" are examples of tunes in which Keane had so much input that Valens shared the songwriting credit with him. The cover version of Ersel Hickey's "Bluebirds Over The Mountain" was true to the original except for Valens' innovative guitar work. Rockabilly music was one of Valens' favorite listening pleasures but Keane convinced him to listen rather than to record the rockabilly sound.

As Valens was concluding his demo of "Donna" Keane interrupted him and Ritchie said "What".Then he went into a long and intricate musical riff he called "Blues Instrumental".Unfortunately, this lengthy guitar solo wasn't released until the 1990's. Following his demos of "Donna" and "Blues Instrumental Ritchie completed two versions of "Cry Cry Cry" and then segued into "Malaguena". This was followed by something called "Blues-Slow". Then "Stay Beside Me" and four more versions of "Cry Cry Cry" followed in frenetic pace.

What the LOST TAPES demonstrate is that Valens' playing and songwriting skill in tandem with Keane's production techniques created great music. It was clearly a partnership that worked well. Altogether, seventeen songs from these 'basement tapes' survive.

"People say, 'Why did you sign Ritchie Valens?'" explains Keane "And I say, 'Because I didn't know what the hell I was doing.' I liked what I saw; though I didn't know what the hell it was. Bo Diddley was one of his favorites, and Buddy Holly. When you listen to them play guitar, you'll find it's very similar". The truth is Valens was much like any other young aspiring rock and roll artist. He was a seventeen-year-old musically obsessed kid who loved to listen to rhythm and blues and rock music. From the time Valens hit the Billboard pop chart with "Come On, Let's Go", in the summer of 1958, he had less than a year of fame before his tragic death.

ROCKIN' ALL NIGHT: THE BEST OF RITCHIE VALENS:

On July 8th, 1958, Bob Keane and Ritchie Valens arrived at the legendary Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard to begin recording. One reason for Gold Star's popularity was that it could be rented for fifteen dollars and hour and had a newly constructed echo chamber. It was also a favorite with local session musicians because of its easy accessibility.

Stan Ross engineered the sessions, which Keane produced himself, utilizing the best session players available. They were known collectively as members of "The Wrecking Crew" and many were featured on hundreds of hit records in the late Fifties through the Sixties: Rene Hall (electric guitar), Earl Palmer (drums), Buddy Clark (upright bass), Irving Ashby (piano) and Carol Kaye, one of the very few women session musicians at the time, played a Danelectro electric bass--a six-string instrument tuned an octave lower than a guitar-- creating the unique "twangy" guttural sound you hear on.

Ritchie's first 45 release, "Come On, Let's Go" b/w Lieber & Stoller's &"Framed" (which had been a hit for The Robins--the theme of injustice and a corrupt police department appealed to young Valens. He was experiencing growing pains and was a shy kid who didn't mix with the tough guys), was released in late July. Keane pressed up the 45's with backing from a San Fernando record distributor who felt
he could sell two hundred of the single on the strength of Ritchie's local reputation.

By September, it climbed to Number 2 on the Billboard pop chart and this began Valens' national hitmaking career. He became the first Mexican-American to cross over into the lucrative pop market.

"We cut 'Come On, Let's Go", Keane says, "and that damn thing just went BOOM. It was just incredible how fast that record went to Number One here".

At the time, Ritchie was entering his last year of high school at San Fernando High, but with "Come On, Let's Go" 's immediate success, Ritchie moved to the head of the class of rock n' roll's second generation. He decided to take a break from school while the single was hot, and concentrated on playing shows up and down the West Coast, including several shows in the Pacific Northwest.

Bob Keane took Ritchie to San Francisco shortly after the release of "Come On, Let's Go" and he appeared on Jumpin' George Oxford's radio show on KSAN. Ritchie and Bob traveled together during these road trips in Bob's convertible T-Bird. Then he toured the East Coast and parts of Canada as part of an eleven-city promotional concert-tour.

In October 1958, Valens appeared at the Seven Cedars Ballroom in Sedro Wooley, Washington, and toured the Pacific Northwest. He had only one hit, but the audiences were large. The dance concerts were held in small towns, but the halls were nearly full. When Valens closed the show with the unreleased "La Bamba", the audience went wild and called for an encore. This prompted Valens to reprise his show with "Donna", or the Robins' "Framed".

They also made a trip to Hawaii. Teddy Randazzo, the former lead singer of the Chuckles, after performing with Valens in a Honolulu concert, took him to a local steak house. "The kid was polite, he loved the meal and obviously hadn't been to fancy restaurants", Randazzo remarked, "that movie sure didn't portray him honestly".

By the time they'd returned to Pacoima, Ritchie's popularity at school soared. With "Come On, Let's Go" playing on the local rock n' roll stations, everyone who barely knew Ritchie before had suddenly become his best friend, and because Ritchie was a friendly, likable kid anyway, he had thousands of new "best friends".

To this day, there are still people who remember Ritchie vividly, and it seems everyone has a story about him. It must've been quite a scene, fans patting the shy singer on the back wherever he went, telling their friends that they knew "Ritchie".

Bob and Ritchie returned to Gold Star to record Ritchie's follow-up single. The first song they recorded was "Donna", a simple love song Ritchie had tried to write for Donna Ludwig, a girl he liked at San Fernando High. He had even played an early version of it for her over the phone, though the song she heard surely bore little resemblance to the finished version released the next month.

Rene Hall, who played six-string bass on many Valens sessions, recalled "Donna" was originally just a throwaway B-side: "They did 'Donna' more or less for a demo, but it turned out so good that Keane used it as a record. The flip side, 'La Bamba,' was done at a regular recording studio, over at Gold Star. They needed a flip for 'La Bamba' so they just stuck on this 'Oh, Donna' thing we did in the basement"

Bob Keane remembers Ritchie was strumming "La Bamba" on his guitar while they were driving in his T-bird convertible to a show in San Francisco. He asked Ritchie what he was playing. "It's an old folk song of ours" Ritchie told him. He'd been playing it for years by then-- while at Pacoima Jr. High, and later at San Fernando High, he played the song at school lunchtime assemblies and at parties. Keane liked the song, but realized that it wouldn't fly in it's traditional form, so he suggested to Ritchie that they record a rockin' version of it.

The double A-sided single floated to the top of the national charts and stayed there for three months, becoming an instant rock and roll classic. Both "La Bamba" and "Donna" have become oldies radio staples; the former, Valens' exuberant electric arrangement of a traditional Mexican folk song, has been covered by everyone from Neil Diamond to Los Lobos, and is one of the most recognized songs worldwide.

In December, Ritchie played concerts at both of the school's he'd attended in the local area: San Fernando High, and Pacoima Jr. High, which was recorded and released in 1960. (One of the first "live" albums ever released, LIVE AT PACOIMA JR. HIGH [DF 1214, released posthumously] represents Ritchie in his rockin' prime.) Ritchie also played shows on the East Coast and the eastern part of Canada on an 11-city tour, which included an appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in Philadelphia (on December 27th).

Bob Keane also negotiated to have Ritchie appear in what turned out to be rock and roll DJ Alan Freed's last movie showcase. If you want to see the real Ritchie, there's only one place to go: rent the video of Go, Johnny, Go! (Hal Roach Studios, released right after Valens' death in 1959) and fast-forward to the last ten minutes of the tape, when Ritchie appears with a prop guitar and mimes his way through "Ooh! My Head".

Valens performed no more after the evening of February 2, 1959, when the small aircraft carrying him, Buddy Holly, and The Big Bopper crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa. The musicians had boarded the plane as a way to escape, even for an evening, the miserable frozen bus rides that were a daily fact of life on the "Winter Dance Party" package tour the three were headlining.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED:

Everyone remembers "the day the music died". The deaths of Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and "The Big Bopper" sent shockwaves throughout the nation. That Valens was playing a grueling series of one-nighters as "Donna" was topping the charts caused many partial observers to blame Keane for his death; Keane, whose office is highlighted by an original poster from that ill-fated tour, maintains that Valens could have left the tour at any time but felt an obligation to his fans and colleagues to stay on. Valens was supposed to receive a gold record for "Donna" upon his return to Los Angeles; Keane presented it, instead, to Valens' mother.

Only a handful of Latino rockers were heard from in the following decade, and none of them were more popular Ritchie Valens was.Many of his fans have come to know, or think they know, Ritchie Valens by watching the motion picture called LA BAMBA (Columbia Pictures, 1987), which was based loosely on both real and surreally fictional events in his life. New interest in his music was sparked by the release of the film's soundtrack (including Los Lobos' version of the title track, which reached #1 Nationwide), and a new generation began hearing Ritchie's music, some of them for the first time, in multi-plex theaters across the country. At the time, Bob Keane hadn't re-issued Ritchie's complete recordings for more than twenty years. Suddenly there was an instant demand for the original albums. Record collectors had pushed the price of both full-length releases --- Ritchie VALENS (DFLP 1201) and Ritchie (DOLP 1206)-- into the stratosphere, and Keane realized that he had an obligation to his fans to release the music on Compact Disc at prices everyone could afford.

Ritchie Valens has also been featured prominently in literally hundreds of articles and a more than a dozen books written about the early days of Rock n' Roll, including a biography (Ritchie VALENS: The First Latino Rocker) first published in 1987 and in Larry Lehmer's "The Day The Music Died. In other sources, however, Ritchie is little more than a footnote in the career of Buddy Holly, who died in the same single-engine plane crash in a snowy Iowa cornfield, February 3, 1959, that also took the life of J.P. Richardson, "The Big Bopper".

Ritchie was also one of only a few rock n' roll artists to have been honored with a U.S. postage stamp, and he is the only Latino rock n' roll artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he has influenced and inspired several generations of musicians who have followed in his footsteps. In 2001 Ritchie Valens was awarded his rightful place and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

We probably know as much about the legacy of his music as we ever will, given the conflicting memories of those who knew Ritchie best, and the opinions of countless others (music historians, critics, et al.), some of whom are still seeking to affirm his importance to, and influence on, Rock n' Roll history. Still, the facts themselves have not changed, and everyone agrees Ritchie Valens would have been a tremendous forerunner in rock n' roll had he lived longer. Since his death, Ritchie's contribution to music has still become legendary. Ritchie was the first of a second generation of rock n' rollers to take up a guitar and, in trying to emulate his own musical heroes, became one himself.

Sources:
Ritchie Valens, The First Latino Rocker: Beverly Mendheim
Del-Fi Records: Bob Keane
Rockabilly Hall Of Fame (edit)

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