Short Career, Long Shadow

When 17-year-old Ritchie Valens died with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in an Iowa plane crash in 1959, the pop world was left with two intriguing questions.

The first is the easy one: What kind of future would Valens--who already had three hits, including “Donna” and “La Bamba,” in his short, eight-month career--have had if he hadn’t made the last-minute decision to take the plane rather than ride the tour bus to the next city?

Chances are that the Mexican-American singer from Pacoima would have kept playing the snappy, tuneful rock songs he loved. Most likely, Valens would have also continued to explore his Mexican heritage by recording the traditional songs, such as “La Bamba,” that he had learned from his mother, Connie Valenzuela, and his aunt, Ernestine Reyes.

Some of the early demo recordings included in “The Ritchie Valens Story,” a 1993 compilation on Rhino Records, hint at the material the singer might have recorded on future albums. The most revealing is a rough, guitar-only version of the Mexican standard “Malaguena.” Although Valens didn’t even get to record his vocals on the track, this choice suggests that he would have continued transforming popular Spanish songs into rock anthems.

As it stands, however, Valens’ recorded legacy only hints at everything that could have been. That leads to the harder, more common question: Was his career enough to qualify him for membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside such luminaries as Elvis Presley and the Beatles?

Holly was elected to the Hall of Fame with the first inducted class in 1986, but he had nearly a dozen hits over two years. Valens was eligible for induction the same year but was bypassed by the voters for the next 15 years, much to the chagrin of his fans.

“Ritchie really didn’t have enough of a track record for the voters,” says Bob Keane, owner of Del-Fi Records and the man who discovered Valens. “They have their own way of evaluating these things. I mean, he wasn’t even nominated until two years ago.

“They didn’t consider the fact that somebody who had been a performing artist for only eight months had three Top 50 records, a motion picture on his life and a postage stamp of his very own.”

Keane and other Valens fans, including family members, launched an aggressive postcard campaign in the mid-’90s in hopes of persuading hall of fame voters of Valens’ artistic validity. The late singer certainly was getting attention elsewhere. Both the biographical film “La Bamba” and its soundtrack album by Los Lobos were big hits in 1987. Three years later, Valens was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His youthful face appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1993.

And the long wait for hall of fame membership ends Monday. Valens will be inducted by Ricky Martin at the annual dinner in New York, along with Aerosmith, soul singer Solomon Burke, the Flamingos, Michael Jackson, Queen, Paul Simon and Steely Dan. Keane, who has just finished a book on the history of Del-Fi Records, won’t be attending the ceremony, he says, because members of Valens’ family decided to accept the award themselves.

But he’s thrilled with the recognition.

“Ritchie was an exceptional person in a lot of ways,” says Keane, 79. “Coming from the barrio and growing up with delinquents, he managed to overcome all that, not get involved and still gain the respect of his people. He was a tough guy, but he didn’t want to fool around. He was into music like [nobody else]. Music was his life.”

Valens’ reputation rests chiefly on two recordings he made in Keane’s home studio in Silver Lake in 1958. “Donna,” a plaintive tune he wrote for the girl who stole his heart, is one of the quintessential ballads of the ‘50s. The single entered the national pop charts on Nov. 24, 1958, and soared to No. 2.

The flip side of “Donna” was “La Bamba,” a historic merging of soulful Mexican tradition and riotous rock ‘n’ roll, a wedding huapango from Veracruz reincarnated as an American party song. This side of the single entered the charts Dec. 29 and climbed to No. 22.

But Valens’ legacy goes much deeper than the two recordings. It also includes the influence he has had as the first Latino rock star.

“Ritchie Valens was the first Mexican American who took American music to the four corners of the world, and we’re very delighted he’s finally being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” says guitarist Carlos Santana, who was inducted himself in 1998. “He and Selena carried the dreams and aspirations of a lot of people.”

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Born on May 13, 1941, in Pacoima, Richard Stephen Valenzuela was one of four children of Steven Joseph Valenzuela, a native Californian, and his wife, Concepcion, who came from Arizona and was known as Connie. Steven, who suffered from diabetes, worked at a variety of jobs, including pipe setter, janitor and horse trainer. Connie (who died in 1987) was employed at a Saugus munitions plant and worked as a waitress.

The couple separated when Ritchie was about 3. He lived with his father until the latter’s death in 1951, then moved in with his mother and siblings.

He was fascinated by music at an early age, idolizing such rock pioneers as Little Richard and Bo Diddley. But Ritchie also absorbed the old Mexican canciones he would hear at family gatherings. In 1957, Valens, who built his first guitar, became a member of the Silhouettes, a Latin garage group from the San Fernando Valley (no relation to the group of the same name with the hit “Get a Job”). The following year, he was discovered by Keane, who also helped launch Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Sam Cooke.

“I saw him at a little concert in a movie theater,” recalls Keane, sitting in Del-Fi’s Hollywood headquarters surrounded by gold records and rock memorabilia. “There he was, a Latino kid doing just a few riffs and a couple of songs. But I was very impressed by his stage demeanor. The girls were going crazy, screaming.”

“Bob was like a dad to him,” offers Reyes, Valens’ aunt and president of his fan club, which she says numbers about 400. “He was the one who discovered him, and he was always taking care of him. We were very happy when we found out that he gave Ritchie money to buy a house for his mom. It was one of the biggest thrills he had in his life.”

Keane brought Valens to his home studio, where they began recording demos. Valens’ career got off to a fast start when his first single, the raucous “Come On, Let’s Go,” peaked at No. 42 on the national pop chart in November 1958. The next month Valens recorded an album at Pacoima Junior High School and lip-synced a song in the movie “Go, Johnny, Go.” The next month marked the beginning of the fateful Winter Dance Party tour.

On the tour, Valens was having a hard time adjusting to the merciless weather. Desperate to avoid a long ride from Clear Lake, Iowa, to the next show in Moorhead, Minn., on a bus with no heat, Valens asked Holly to take him on the small airplane that the Texas rocker had chartered for the night.

The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) had already claimed a seat, and Holly’s guitarist, Tommy Allsup, also wanted to fly, so he and Valens tossed a coin to decide who would take the coveted final seat. Valens won.

At about 1 a.m. on Feb. 3, the plane crashed in a frozen cornfield minutes after takeoff, killing everyone on board. The event was memorialized in Don McLean’s “American Pie” as “the day the music died.”

While many artists from the ‘50s with more hits than Valens have become forgotten names in the oldies bins, Valens’ stature has grown in the intervening decades--and not simply because of his cultural significance.

“Valens was more than just a teen prodigy,” says Tom Waldman, co-author of “Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roll from Southern California.”

“I’m always amazed at how many different styles of music he was comfortable with. He was also instrumental in the development of the California guitar sound, which you hear in surf music a few years later. Given that he died at 17, his body of work is pretty extraordinary. I mean, listen to everything he did and compare it to what John Lennon, Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan [did at that age]. Those guys were barely getting started at 17.” *

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony will be held Monday in New York and will be taped for airing on VH1 on Wednesday at 9 p.m.