Image courtesy of Nuestro Stories.
Richard Steven Valenzuela, known professionally as Ritchie Valens, was a Mexican-American guitarist, singer, and songwriter; one of the first, if not the best.
A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens was just 17 years old when, with a unique voice that blended rock and roll with rhythms from South of the Border, he altered the landscape of pop music in the late 1950s.
He became the first Mexican-American hitmaker in the United States and the first Latino rock star.
Sadly, Valens’s career was short; it lasted just 18 months, but this was enough to make him one of those stars we will never forget. He died 63 years ago, at the age of 17, in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of two other iconic musicians — Buddy Holly and J.P. Richardson, a.k.a. The Big Bopper.
An eternal love affair with music
Born in Los Angeles in 1941, Valens grew up when Mexican-Americans faced profound discrimination in the U.S. He fell in love with music early on. Photographs and film stills show him as a chubby boy proudly displaying his guitar.
In 1956, Valens organized a group of friends from school into a band called the Silhouettes. They played all the new R&B and rock’n’roll songs, and the beginning of a unique sound was born.
Valens came to the attention of Bob Keene, one of LA’s most influential men in the music business then, not because of his ‘pretty’ teen star look a la Fabian or Frankie Avalon. No, Ritchie had something special that was marketable, apart from his talent. He had ethnic youth.
Valens was one of the first to introduce Chicano rock — a marriage of influences that included Mexican mariachi bands, country, blues, and even the swamp pop of Louisiana and East Texas. The music was popular in California and the Southwest, especially among the Mexican and Puerto Rican minorities.
Valens did what few Chicano artists could: he became well known nationally and internationally.
His first hit was “Come on, Let’s Go,” in 1958, shortly followed by “Donna,’ a ballad written for his ex-girlfriend, and “La Bamba,” a reworking a la rock and roll of a Mexican wedding song he learned from his mother and his aunt. He sang it in Spanish (way before Bad Bunny conquered the international market singing in Spanish) even though he hardly spoke it.
His legacy inspired legendary artists like Carlos Santana and Los Lobos and continues to do so with artists such as Cuco and DannyLux.
Valens was traveling with Holly and Richardson on the Winter Dance Party Tour that began in Milwaukee, Wisc., on Jan. 23, 1959, when the plane they were traveling in crashed because of bad weather. The pilot had no experience flying by instruments only. It was the day the music died.
He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Puerto Rican superstar Ricky Martin in 2001.
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