Side B: the story of "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens

Ritchie Valens

The bamba

B-side of Woman

Del-Fi, 1958

Dying at the age of 18 is an insult, something that is enormously struggling to accept. Imagine if it happens when you have 17. When you are in full rise to become a super star of rock’n’roll. It is an absolute and undisputed idol for the entire Mexican community stationed in the United States.

Ritchie Valens was already a lot of all this, the night in which he embarked on a Beechcraft Bonanza plane together with Buddy Holly and Jiles Perry Richardson Jr., for all The Big Bopper. On the night of February 3, 1959, after their concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. The night when “The Music Diad“.

Richard Steven Valenzuela had both Mexican parents, but he was 100 percent American. At the Liceo di Pacoima, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, it was already a small celebrity: wherever there was a party there was also he who played for everyone. Charismatic, persuasive, with that touch of exotic that liked the Yankee girls so much. Richard was natural left -handed, but a little passion a little his natural ambition led him to master the classic version with his right hand. This did not go unnoticed by the silhouettes, a local band that at the time had a certain following and not to be confused with the silhouettes of Get a Jobwhich reached the number 1 of the Billboard Pop and R&B Singles Charts in February 1958 (the piece however was the B-Side of I Am Lonely).

The boys made a audition to Richard-Non-Ancora-Ritchie and immediately pulled him on board as guitarist. Shortly thereafter, with the singer’s exit from the scene, Valenzuela-Non-Ancora-Valens passed in front of the microphone. The debut with the new (and first, and unique) group took place on October 19, 1957. About seven months later, in May 1958, Bob Keane, owner of the small records records in Hollywood, learned that at the Pacoima Junior High School there was a 15 year old for which it was worth raising the buttocks and listening to him live. It was Doug Macchia, a student from San Fernando High School, who warned the producer of the existence of the “Little Richard of San Fernando”. Keane followed Ritchie during a morning show, was impressed by the boy’s performance and invited him to his home in Silver Lake for an audition. After his first hearing, the manager put Valenzuela under contract. It was May 27, 1958. Richard Steven Valenzuela signed the only and the only record contract of his life for Del-Fi Records. In that small studio in Los Angeles he changed his name to Ritchie Valens at Keane’s suggestion and prepared to record with a full band.

There were only two singles that the artist managed to see published in his very short yet bright career in the world of music. Instead, however, his first album Ritchie Valens, released posthumously in March 1959. The first song shot by the Californian Gold Studios was As on, let’s go (July 1958), a good success of the public and criticism that prepared the way for the actual bang.

Woman In fact, dedicated to her great love of the Liceo Liceo Ludwig, she reached the number 2 of the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and consecrated Valens as the first Latin Star of Rock.

To fill the B side, Bob had a strange idea. During a journey in the summer of 1958 in which he was accompanying Ritchie to play in San Francisco, the producer was captured by an old Mexican folk song. “We should do something, with this,” Keane said to him while Valens strumped on the back seat of the Ford Thunderbird together with the manufacturer’s son. “No, I can’t,” replied the musician. The reason was clear: Valens had enormous respect for its Mexican roots. Even if he ignored that that piece, originally, Mexican was not. Or rather, not entirely.

However Bob, after spending two or three weeks insisting, managed to take him to his side and The bamba He was finally engraved behind Woman and published on December 16, 1958 as a B-Side of the single. Valens never had the opportunity to fully enjoy its success because the maximum piece reached the number 22 position in the standings when it was alive. It was necessary to wait for 1987, the Los Lobos cover and the docu-film (The bamba in fact) on the life of the artist to see her splash at the top of the charts around the world. For Kean, however, he did not go so badly: “It was a great success from the beginning” he will remember in an interview from 1992. “Which for us was a surprise because we chose it simply as a B-Side. Woman It was the side A. But he was climbing the ranking of about ten positions every week when he died. He passed from 44, to 33, to 22. And he would continue to grow for sure. Woman At that point it was at number 2. But he was an absolute novelty at national level and that time, if it was not a big name that was forgotten, it was forgotten soon. The DJs in fact stopped planning him on the radio and this unfortunately ended his career. “

The bamba You all know it. From the late eighties until today, that fulminating incipit is one of the most powerful hook musical of all time, very recognizable instantly, damn Catchy. A deadly mixture of Mexican tradition that crosses the Spanish one. Up to stretch its very long roots in Africa of 1600. Those who study the history of music in fact trace its origin to the slaves trafficking between Spain and the port city of Veracruz in Mexico. Many of those slaves came from Angola and Congo, or the regions in which the Bamba tribe lived. Over the centuries, African music has been influenced by the Mexican and Spanish Latin rhythms creating a type of sound known as they are jarocho (the sound of Veracruz). The bamba In particular, it is thought to come from a slave revolt of 1683, known as Bambarria. It cannot be denied that in his DNA Valens’s song has the fire of the insurrection and the restless soul of the rock’n’roll. A fire of pyrotechnic emotions for which you cannot simply listen. But you are forced to dance.

Ritchie obviously left the school to pursue his already brilliant and ultra promising career of Rockstar. Just in his school, the one where he fell in love with a woman and where he began to build his dream as a musician, fate launched a disturbing warning. The boy from Pacoima was 15 years old when in the sky above the courtyard of the institute there was the collision between a Douglas DC-7b and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion. The pieces of the two destroyed planes crashed on the lawn and on the school athletics fields, creating large craters in the ground followed by the explosions of the aircraft engines caused by the escape of oil and fuel. The balance was terrible: three dead boys and at least another 75 more or less seriously injured. But Richard wasn’t there that day. He had gone to his grandfather’s funeral. And when they told him everything that had happened began to do nightmares, dreaming of continuously air disasters. Which he ran the terror of the flight in him. Ritchie then managed to slowly overcome this phobia as her career blossomed. He was not afraid, that night between 2 and 3 February 1959, when he embarked on the Beechcraft towards Fargo, North Dakota. And maybe he didn’t even remember more than his nightmares. Too tired after the concert in Clear Lake. He, Buddy Holly and Jp Richardson embarked at Mason City airport in Iowa. Together with them there was the pilot Roger Peterson. The small plane crashed a few minutes after take -off, around midnight and 55, for reasons still unknown. They all died instantly from the serious head injuries and the impact trauma sustained. Ritchie, 17, was the youngest of the four.

Ironically, he had risen aboard the Beechcraft Bonanza after winning a bet with Holly guitarist, Tommy Allsup, launching a coin in the air.

Today the name of Ritchie Valens is inextricably linked to The bamba And in Mexico he is still a cult artist, whose family continues to keep his memory alive. The fact that in 17 years of life had not learned a word of Mexican in 17 years. And that to sing The bambaValens asked for advice to his aunt Ernestina for the correct text and the exact pronunciation of words.