The Boy Behind “La Bamba”: The Story of Ritchie Valens

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West Begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Ritchie Vallens was a seventeen year old
rock and roll pioneer who died in a plane crash
just eight months after his breakthrough in nineteen eighty seven.

(00:31):
Lou Diamond Phillips starred his Valleins in the highly successful
film La Bamba You to Tell. The Story is Our Own.
Greg Hengler and Bob Keene. Bob discovered, recorded, and managed
Richie Vallens under his Delphi Records label Take It Away.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Greg.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Richie Vallens had the most rapid career ascent in the
history of rock and roll. Fellow Winter Dance Party singer Dion,
who would go on to write the hits The Wanderer
and Run Around Sue, said Richie was one of the
greatest rhythm guitarists he had ever heard. Because he became
an international star, Richie Valens has been referred to as

(01:14):
the first Chicano rock star.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Baby Let’s.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Little Where.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Love, Come On, Come On, Let’s Go. It’s one of
the first songs that he sang when he came up
to play for me at my home. Ritchie’s material was
never written down on paper. He had only to lean
back in his chair and start playing and singing. One
day someone said to him, come on, Richie, Let’s go.

(01:47):
And from that simple beginning, his first hit, come On,
Let’s Go, was born. In July nineteen fifty eight, I
felt Richie was ready to record, and I set up
our first session a gold Star Studio in Hollywood. Gold
Star began as a demo studio, which became popular with
independent record companies because it only cost fifteen dollars an
hour to record there. In nineteen fifty eight, the owners

(02:11):
expanded the premises by building another larger studio, in which
they installed a new echo chamber with a sound that
created gold Star’s future reputation. Later, that chamber played a
real great part in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and
also enhanced such pop classics as Rhythm of the Rain
by The Cascades, Sonny and Cher’s number one hit I

(02:31):
Got You Babe, and the Righteous Brothers classic that Love
and Feeling. You can hear this sound on the final
version of come On, Let’s Go.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, mom On, little.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Little hand on me that never I’m a.

Speaker 5 (02:53):
Willowing please wing me all the way down there.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I’m all this.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Left home.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I ever legend Mardy Baby, I thought of his own legs.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
I first heard about Richie Valezuela from a young man
who was preparing my new business cards for del Fire Records.
The date was May nineteen fifty eight. My offices were
in Studio City, California, a small town located in the
San Fernando Valley just outside Los Angeles. He asked me
if I would be interested in hearing a young Latin

(03:40):
boy from the town of a Coyman named Richard Valenzuela.
He said, the kids out there calling the little Richard
of San Fernando, and I told him I’d very much
like to hear him, since Little Richard was a very
popular singer at that time, along with Sam Cook, who
I had recorded in my first label, Keen Records.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Much like the man who discovered Elvis, Sam Phillips, who
sought out black artists, Bob Keen had another genre in mind.
Here’s what Keene said. I discovered that young Latin musicians
in East LA had their own unique rock sound. I
like a lot of what I heard so I initiated
an open door policy. The working class music of Mexican

(04:20):
American Los Angeles included rockabilly and rock and roll, Mexican
folk songs in a wide range of black styles, from
the amplified guitars of urban blues to the vocal harmonies of.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Rhythm and blues.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
I caught him on a Saturday morning at a theater
where he stood up in front of the screen before
the matinee started. He was this bull like kid with
an opera tenor’s torso, and he banged on a beat
up guitar and had a little beat up amp worth
about thirty dollars.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
It was clear to Keen that Richie had talent, Yet
what impressed him most was the crowd’s reaction to his playing.
The kids were going nuts, especially the girls, but Richie oblivious.
He was in his own world, awash in his music,
focused totally on the riffs and lyrics he was making
up on the spot.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
After the concert, I met Richie and invited him to
my home. I remember the day he arrived along with
a carful of his friends from a band who was
playing with in Pacoima. He didn’t know one song all
the way through, but he had written some titles and
words that he always played. He was very unschooled and
very raw. He knew only three or four chords, and
everything he wrote and played was based on those chords.

(05:31):
I set up a microphone and Richie sat in a
chair and started playing and singing. Richie was born Richard
Stephen Valenzuela, a Mexican Indian American, in Pacoima, California, a
Los Angeles suburb, on May thirteenth, nineteen forty one. His parents,
Joseph and Concepcion, separated when he was a child. He

(05:54):
went to live with his father, who died several years later.
Richie then returned to live with his mother. Nothing indicates
that Richie’s boyhood was harsh or unhappy, even though he
was raised in near poverty. Young Richie would spend evenings
on front porches and the company of family friends and
relatives who sang lively Mexican songs for ours. Ritchie himself

(06:15):
had a toy guitar made from a cigar box when
he was five, which his uncle John Lozano helped him build. Later,
Richie met a musician named William Jones Senior, who lived
across the street from his aunt Ernestine. When Jones saw
him trying to play an old guitar with only two
strings on it, he replaced the missing four and taught
him how to tune them. He also showed Richie how

(06:36):
to fret several chords. Richie was left handed, but he
learned how to play right handed and became an accomplished guitarist.
In junior high school, he built himself a green and
white electric guitar and wood shop class the same guitar
he would later use to launch his career.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
And you’ve been listening to our own Greg Hangler and
Bob Keene, who discovered Richie Valenzuela in May of nineteen
fifty eight, and he was known at the time as
the Little Richard of San Fernando Valley, where Bob Kane
had his studio. What happened next was the fastest most
rapid career ascent.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
In music history.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
When we come back more of the rise and fall
of Richie Vallens here on our American Stories, Lie h
Habib here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe
to our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,

(07:38):
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Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 2 (07:55):
It helps us keep these great American stories coming.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
And we continue with our American Stories and the story
of Richie Vallens as told by our own Greg Hangler
and Bob Keane.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Let’s pick up where we last left off.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
As Richie grew into his teens, he became a little wild.
His father had died and his mother couldn’t handle him.
He was running with the wrong crowd and there were
plenty of tough kids for companions in the north end
of the valley. He was sent to live with his
mother’s cousin, Henry Felix, who gave him the benefit of
old fashioned discipline, and that’s all Richie needed. When he
returned to the family home, he was a changed boy.

(09:00):
He was still tough. No one at Pacoima Junior High
dared to challenge him, but he was through as a
hell raiser. He knew that music was alive for him
now that we have one life to live. That was
a statement made by the president of the student body
at Pacoima Junior High during an assembly one day in
January nineteen fifty seven. Seconds later, there was an earth

(09:22):
shattering crash on the school grounds where a class of
young boys were just coming in from their physical education class.
Two airplanes had collided directly above the school, and one
of the planes, a jet trainer, fell to worth on
the playground. Three a Richie’s friends, were killed and seventy
others were seriously injured. As fate would have it, Richie
was not at school that day. He was attending his

(09:44):
grandfather’s funeral. From that day on, Richie had a fear
of small planes. There was an airport in the area
for private aircraft, and one day, as he and his
anne Ernestine, drove by, he said to her, You’ll never
catch me in one of those little planes. The next
couple of months, Richie and I were making appearances in
and around southern California to promote Come On, Let’s Go.

(10:06):
I first heard the song LaBamba while driving with Ritchie
to a San Francisco TV appearance. I had just purchased
a new Thunderbird and Richie was writing in the back seat,
strumming his guitar. Suddenly I heard this melody and I
asked Ritchie what it was. He said it was called LaBamba,
a folk song from Mexico. I felt it would make
a good Latin rock song, but Richie didn’t know the

(10:28):
words and he didn’t want to record it anyway. He
felt it might demean the music of his heritage. Several
weeks later he agreed to record the song, so He’s Anne.
Ernestine gave us the lyrics, and we were back in
gold Star.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Gold Star was a converted dentist office that was opened
in nineteen fifty by call owners David Gold and Stan Ross.
Until its closure in nineteen eighty four. Gold Star clients
included the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, led Zeppelin, and it
also became home to Phil Spector’s famous Wall of Sound.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
We were back in the studio several weeks later to
overdub Ritchie’s voice to.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
The track.

Speaker 6 (11:29):
Knock Upsy Happy.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Happy, You’re Not Fine.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
By the end of September nineteen fifty eight, come On
Let’s Go and reached the top forty on the national charts,
and I felt it was time to make a tour
with Richie and introduce him to the nation on American bandstand.
I knew that the disc jockeys of America had never
seen an act like Richie, and I knew they’d be
surprised to see that he was a Latin American. I
shortened his name to Valens because in those days, if

(12:08):
you had a Latin name, you were a Latin act, which,
of course wouldn’t have a chance of even being listened
to by the DJs on the top forty stations.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Lobamba was in his blood, but singing in Spanish, which
was not Richie’s first language, was tough. Would he get
it right? Would it be accepted by the public. Plus
he was going to turn a folk song into a rocker?
What would his church think? You see, Richie was a
devout Catholic. This was a very big decision, and there

(12:39):
is irony in keenes push to shorten Richie’s name for
more mainstream appeal, and then his insistence to include the
first ever rock and roll song sung in Spanish on
just his second single. If you can’t follow Keene’s logic,
you can follow his ear. Keene knew LaBamba was catchy
and would work as a three chord up tempo dance number.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
And he wasn’t wrong.

Speaker 4 (13:03):
Back in Buffalo, New York, we were snowed in for
two days, which was a real treat for Richie since
he had never seen snow before. From Buffalo, we went
to New York City to do the Allen Freed Show.
There he met Fabian and Frankie Avalon, who were almost
standard fixtures. On the Freed Show, everyone lowed Ritchie, whose
humble and gracious manner really threw the New Yorkers for

(13:24):
a loop. From New York, we took a small commuter
planning to Philadelphia and the Dick Clark Show. Just before
arriving in Philly, we made a landing on a grass
field behind a large factory. There was snow all around,
and Richie said, if we lived through this, we can
make it anywhere. At that point he told me of
his dream of dying in a plane crash. After the

(13:45):
Clark Show, we returned to la and immediately started planning
Richie’s first album. By this time, Richie and I had
formed almost a father’s son relationship, and he would confide
in me about almost anything that was on his mind.
One night, Richie called me on the telephone and said, Babo,
I just wrote a song for my girl Donna, and
he played it over the phone. As usual, he only

(14:06):
had the first part of the song, so I told
him to come in next day. A final completed version
was recorded there in my studio. On October sixth, nineteen
fifty eight, we went into gold Star Studios and overdubbed
a drum, bass and guitar. Phil Richie had trouble finding
the harmony notes for the opening and closing of the song,
so I went into the studio and sang them for him.

(14:28):
I then cut a demonstration record and took it to
the program director at KFWB, the number one station in
LA at that time. To my surprise, the program director
flipped over the record and asked me to leave it
at the station.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Things never got too serious between fifteen year old Donna
Ludwig and Richie when they decided to see other people.
Donna decided to bring her date to one of Richie’s concerts,
well from pain COM’s art. After the show, Richie called
up Keen and told him he had an idea for
his next song. I had a girl, Donna was her name.

(15:04):
The lyrics began. The song reminded Keen of the hit
he produced for Sam Cook.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
You send me dolling, you.

Speaker 7 (15:14):
Send me.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Hallo, you.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
Send me dolling. You send me honest, you dude, honest.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Honest, you do.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
The harmonized Oh Donna. Repetitions at the beginning and end
of the song were to have Richie double tracked over
his own vocal, but Richie had trouble singing over his
own voice, so Keen jumped in front of a gold
Star Studio mike and delivered the harmony himself. You can
hear him come in at the seven second mark.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Oohn, and you’ve been listening to our own.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Greg Hangler and Bob Keene tell the story of Richie
Vallen’s and my goodness, the story of how Obama got recorded.
It tells you everything about the instincts of a record guy.
And can you imagine sending that out to some AI
robot or some marketing survey to decide whether a Latino

(16:45):
artist could sing a song in Spanish and have it chart.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
That took Bob Keene.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
There was something about Bob Keene’s instinct that got Richie
Valenzuela to record this song. And then of course he
had to change his name because the name Valenzuela would
have meant no rock charts and instead a Latin act.
It was highly segregated radio stations back in the day.
There were black stations, urban stations, and white stations. In

(17:14):
the Twain well, it was hard to cross, actually impossible
to cross. When we come back more of the rise
and fall of Richie Vallens here on our American stories,

(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Richie Vallens told by our own Greg Hengler and
Bob Keen. Let’s pick up when we last left off.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
On the way back to my office in the car,
I heard Donna on the air for the first time,
and it was played every hour for the rest of
the day. The phone reaction was instantaneous by this time.
Come on, Let’s go and reached what I felt was
the top position on the national charts. So I pressed
up the demo version of Donna, backed it with what
I thought was a B side, La Bamba, and pressed

(18:40):
it up and shipped nationally. Donna was an instant hit
all over the United States. The record went to number
one in Chicago first, after Los Angeles, of course, still
in La About the middle of October nineteen fifty eight,
Richie performed his first concert at his school, Pacoima Junior High.
This concert was recorded on US small portable machine, but

(19:02):
it turned out to be good enough to later release
on an album title Richie Allen’s in Concert at Pacoima
Junior High.

Speaker 7 (19:08):
Now a success story of one of Raski’s graduates from Pacoima.
His first trick I sold over a million copies and
Donna his USC lease is backed by a terrific song
called the Bamba. He has been on America bands then
and has made numerous appearances with Al Javis and Joe
Yoga now presenting Richie Vallence was Tomorrow mats Out.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
Richie meant you to me many times how his aim
in life was to buy his mother a home where
she could be happy with no more worries. There had
been no money coming in yet from sales of his records,
but I could see there would be, and I gave
Richie the money for a down payment on the house
that he had found to buy for his mother. Through
October and November and in December we were in and
out of gold Star Studios recording Richie’s first album again.

(19:56):
I used the demos he had made at my studio
in my home to select the songs. Even though Ritchie
could really bell it, when he sang a rock and
roll song, he had a beautiful, clear voice. His haunting
melancholy sound on his record Donna instantly captured the hearts
of millions of people. On December twenty seventh, nineteen fifty eight,
Ritchie appeared on the Alan Fried Christmas Show in New

(20:16):
York City. From there, he went to do American Bandstand
for the second time. While in New York City, he
was staying with Carl Bloomberg at Allied Distributing. Carl had
four little girls and the girls wanted Richie to sing
at their school. Ritchie had only a couple of hours
before plain time, but he sent all the baggage out
to the airport and went all the way out to

(20:37):
their school in Hazel, New Jersey, just to sing for
those kids. That’s the kind of person he was. He
had a big heart and he was very kind. Returning
to Los Angeles, we continued to finish his album. He
appeared in his first motion picture, Go Johnny Go, with
Alan Freed, Jimmy Clinton, and Chuck Berry. On January nineteenth,
nineteen fifty nine, he threw a party for all his

(20:59):
friends his mother’s new house. This was to be a
going away party. He left the next day for Chicago,
and then on January twenty first, he joined the Winter
Dance Party in Milwaukee with Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper,
and Dion and the Belmonts. For the next twelve days,
the tour took Richie to a different city each day.
It was winter in the Middle West and it was

(21:20):
freezing cold. They traveled by bus, but Richie, having lived
all his life in sunny California, felt the cold more
than the others. Only seventeen years old, he was learning
the touring life the hard way. On the night of
February second, nineteen fifty nine, I talked with Richie by phone.
At that time he told me the bad conditions of
the tour, the bitter cold, the bus breaking down, and

(21:43):
he wanted to come home. So I said, Okay, Richie,
come home tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Buddy Hawley refused to continue traveling on buses with faulty heating,
so he secured a private plain to Fargo, North Dakota.
After the Surf Ballroom show in clear Lake, Iowa. The
plan was that he Tommy Alsop and Whale and Jennings
would fly together, but news of the flight spread among
the performers. The big Bopper, who had the flu, got

(22:10):
fellow Texan Whale and Jennings to give up his seat. Buddy,
Holly joke to Jennings, I hope your old bus freezes up,
to which Jennings replied, well, I hope your old plane crashes.
Richie was also fighting the flu and had been asking
Alsop throughout the evening if he could have his spot
on the plane. Alsop refused, so once the band’s gear

(22:34):
was all packed onto the bus, Holly asked Alsop to
do one more sweep of the dressing room. Back inside,
Alsop saw Richie signing autographs. Seeing Alsop, Richie looked up
from his pen and made one more plea for his
seat on the plane. Come on, guy, let me fly,
Richie said. As for what happened next, Alsop described it

(22:55):
like this. For some reason, I reached into my pocket
rabbed a silver dollar and said call it Richie called
heads heads it was. Also went back outside and told
Holly that Richie would be taking his place on the.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Plane next morning. Driving to my office at del Fire records.
I had the car radio on as usual, listening to KFWB.
All of a sudden I heard the disc jockey say,
and now Donna by the late great Richie Vallens. Instantly
I fell a sharp pain in my stomach, as though
someone had hit me with a baseball bat. I couldn’t

(23:34):
believe it. I thought that maybe I had misunderstood what
the DJ had said. So when I arrived at the office,
it was in turmoil, with people swarming all over and
the phones were ringing off the hooks.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin. Three
young singers who soared to the heights of show business
on the current rock and roll craze were killed today
in the crash of a light plane in an Iowas
snow flurry. The singers were identified as Richievallen seventeen, Bubby
Holly twenty two, one J. P. Richardson, known professionally as
the Big Bumper. Cause of the christ was due to

(24:05):
inclement weather conditions. The tales up coming from Pats in
Central News.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
I remember how he would sit up in his bed
in the hotel room after the day’s performances were over.
He’d play his guitar, softly humming melodies from his boyhood.
He said, I’ll ever record any of these Mexican folk songs.
They belong to my people. One song he did want
to record was Malagania, but he never lived to fulfill
that wish, though there is no vocal. Fortunately, he played

(24:34):
what he knew one day in my studio.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
One of Richie’s greatest records was a Mexican folk song
titled LaBamba, which he adapted. This next track was to
be the follow up to LaBamba its title Malaguenia. This
song also is a great American Mexican standard, and as
you can hear, would have been another million seller, We’re sure.
Although Richie had not put his voice to the song
as yet, if you try, you can picture him singing

(24:57):
it with all the fire that was in his good playing,
playing a foundation for his great voice.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
At Richie’s funeral, people came from all around the press,
DJs from the radio stations, celebrities, and even the mayor
who later proclaimed Richie Vallen’s Day in Los Angeles. But
Richie is still with us. There’s the motion picture of
his life as a young musician.

Speaker 6 (25:32):
You’re Filipino and white in your first major role playing
Richie Vallence, who is Mexican.

Speaker 8 (25:38):
Yeah, it’s really wonderful because the story maybe is even
more relevant today. You know, of a farm worker following
his dream and the American dream, that talent and determination
can actually get you very far, you know, in this country.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
His star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame still to come,
the Record Hall of Fame, and now for all the
world to see his very own United States postage stamp.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
And terrific work on the production, the editing, and the
storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and Bob Kean who
discovered Richie Valenzuela in May of nineteen fifty eight. And
my goodness, his storytelling, that first person narrative, there’s nothing
like it. We love doing that on this show whenever possible.

(26:26):
And what a story we hear, My goodness, that beautiful,
beautiful melody in Donna.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
What a voice, what a guitarist, he had it all.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
And to hear that screaming entourage of students at his
old high school, just to hear their joy seeing their
own local hero perform in their high school gymnasium and
sing these massive hits. They were massive hits. And then
of course, that decision on February second, nineteen fifty nine,

(26:55):
to get on that plane with Buddy Holly and with
the Big Bopper the day the music died, cutting short
what would have been a magnificent recording career. The story
of Richie Allen’s here on our American Stories