![]() “La Bamba,” the song, also became one of the surprise hits of 1987. On the year-end 1987 box office list, La Bamba is at #14, right between Dragnet and RoboCop. La Bamba isn’t a big-budget movie, and it doesn’t look or move like a summer blockbuster, but that’s what it was. La Bamba, the film, went on to become one of the surprise hits of 1987, pulling in $54 million after opening in July. ![]() In the movie’s version of events, Ritchie Valens first hears “La Bamba” at a Tijuana brothel, and the band playing the song is Los Lobos. Phillips didn’t really look anything like Valens, but that ultimately didn’t hurt the movie, which tells Ritchie Valens’ short life story as an American tragedy, weaving in bits and pieces of Mexican folklore. The role of Valens went to Lou Diamond Phillips, a young actor of Filipino descent. The crash that killed Ritchie Valens became a part of rock ‘n’ roll mythology, enshrined on songs like Don McLean’s “ American Pie.” Twenty-eight years after the young star fell out of the sky, the playwright Luis Valdez, one of the driving forces in a new Chicano arts movement, made his cinematic debut, directing the Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba. “Donna” didn’t reach #2 until he’d been gone for weeks. One day later, Ritchie Valens died in the same airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. In February of 1959, “La Bamba” reached its peak at #22. Even though it was a B-side, “La Bamba” still gained popularity on its own, getting enough airplay to rise up the Billboard charts. “Donna” became Valens’ biggest hit, peaking at #2 on Billboard‘s pre-Hot 100 singles chart. In “La Bamba,” you can hear echoes of lots of things that would become running rock ‘n’ roll tropes in the years ahead, like the Latin-influenced counter-rhythms of garage rock and the overdriven pyrotechnics of surf guitar. Working with session musicians like Carol Kaye and Earl Palmer, Valens turned “La Bamba” into a twangy, simplistic rock ‘n’ roll rave-up. The song’s B-side was Valens’ version of “La Bamba,” a song that he grew up hearing at family gatherings. The second of those was “ Donna,” a swoony ballad that Valens wrote about his girlfriend Donna Ludwig. Ritchie Valens only had time to release two singles during his lifetime. In 1958, around the time Valenzuela turned 16, Bob Keane, owner of the small indie label Del-Fi, signed Valenzuela as a solo act and gave the young musician a stage name that sounded less Mexican. Eventually, he took over as that band’s leader. By 15, he was in a local rock ‘n’ roll band called the Silhouettes. Valens, born Richard Steven Valenzuela, was a son of Mexican immigrants who started playing guitar as a small child in LA’s San Fernando Valley.
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