ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT : Stamp to Honor Valens Among 7 Early Rockers

Ritchie Valens’ aunt remembers the youthful singer saying that one day he would be “right up with Elvis.”

Although a plane crash ended Valens’ recording career a mere eight months after it had started and he did not reach the stature of Elvis Presley, Valens left his mark on rock ‘n’ roll.

Now, 33 years after Valens’ death, Ernestine Reyes, says “it’s fabulous” that her nephew will be joining Elvis and five others next June in a booklet of U.S. stamps commemorating early rock ‘n’ roll stars.

When she got her first look at a brochure with a photo of the Valens stamp, Reyes said: “It’s a big thrill. There are no words to express how I feel. It’s something big for us, like when (Valens’ songs) ‘La Bamba’ and ‘Donna’ hit the million mark.”

Reyes said she and her husband, Eliodoro, were very close to Valens. “He lived in our house for the last month of his life,” said Ernestine, 55, of Pacoima. She said she was not sure whether the likeness on the Valens stamp was just right, but she did not want to quibble. “It’s fabulous,” she kept repeating.

The stamp is an appropriate way to “keep the memory of Ritchie alive,” said Gil Rocha, a musician who led Valens’ first band, the Silhouettes.

“I’m so excited, so happy” about the stamp, said Rocha, who with his wife, Judy, and other San Fernando Valley friends led an effort to get Valens enshrined on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990.

After studying a photo of the stamp, Rocha said: “That’s fantastic. That’s how he used to look down from the stage when he sang.”

The U.S. Postal Service series featuring pop music legends will be launched Jan. 8 with an eagerly awaited stamp honoring Presley. The Elvis stamp will return for an encore in June in a 20-stamp booklet with Valens and five other early rock and rhythm and blues legends: Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Clyde McPhatter, Otis Redding and Dinah Washington.

Valens was 17 and his career was just getting started when tragedy struck. He was killed Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash in a snowy Iowa field that also took the lives of Holly and J. P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson.

Rocha remembers that Valens and the Silhouettes played their first gig on Oct. 19, 1957, in a Panorama City union hall. Valens, 15 at the time, played guitar and belted out rock hits made famous by Little Richard. Soon Richard Steven Valenzuela (the singer’s real name) was being billed as “Little Richie,” Rocha said.

In May, 1958, a tape featuring Valens reached music promoter Bob Keane, who recognized the young singer’s potential. Keane met with the young man and recorded his music under the name “Ritchie Valens.” Two songs written and sung by Valens, “Donna” and “Come On, Let’s Go,” quickly hit the pop charts.

Next, Valens decided to record “La Bamba,” putting a rock imprint on the Mexican folk standard. “The reason he did that song,” Rocha said, “is that Keane had taken his (Valenzuela) name away. Ritchie wanted to have a way to show that he was Mexican. So he told me that he would do a rock ‘n’ roll Mexican record.” The song was rocking from radios across the nation in just a few weeks.

“La Bamba” was also the name of a 1987 film that chronicled Valens’ life. The film brought a resurgence of interest in the pioneer Mexican-American rocker. Memorializing him in a stamp booklet with Elvis is certain to extend that interest in Valens.