Ritchie Valens’ musical legacy
Photo Courtesy of General Artists Corporation- Wikimedia Commons
People of all ages know and love Don McLean’s 1972 hit, “American Pie.” It is sad, sweet, and mysterious lyrics have a charm that crosses generational boundaries. While the lyrics may be hard to interpret, they consistently mention an event McLean has deemed “the day the music died.” According to Forbes, this refers to a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959, which killed three pioneering rock-and-roll musicians: JP “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens, along with their pilot, Roger Peterson.
At just 17 years old, Ritchie Valens was the youngest casualty of the crash. A year before, he had dropped out of high school to pursue his music and was met with great success from hits like “La Bamba” and “Donna,” as confirmed on the website of Valens’ old high school, San Fernando Senior High. Considering the relative newness of his fame compared to superstars like Buddy Holly, he was the least known artist both at the time of his crash and now. But despite only recording music for the last two years of his life, Valens was a hit machine.
“La Bamba” was Valens’ first major hit, and perhaps a surprising one. Valens’ version of “La Bamba” took a traditional Mexican folk song and added a rock-and-roll charm. As a Mexican man forming fame in the 1950s, Valens embraced his heritage and found success in it; still, he was pressured to adopt the stage name Valens rather than use his real last name, confirmed by the Ritchie Valens website to be Valenzuela.
Another of Valens’ hits, “We Belong Together,” is in a very different mood from “La Bamba.” You may not recognize it by name, but this song is very popular on TikTok, and most people will recognize it immediately upon hearing it. “We Belong Together” is one of Valens’ ballads, a style that I believe Valens’ excels in above anything else.
Despite all of these great songs, my favorite is his best charting, “Donna.” According to Songfact, “Donna” was written for Valens’ longtime girlfriend Donna Ludwig, who he met in high school. While their relationship faced ups and downs due to the time Valens spent away touring and the difficulties of an interracial relationship (Donna was white while Valens was Hispanic) in the 1950s, the love shown through the song is almost tangible. In just over two minutes, “Donna” communicates love and longing better than almost any other song I have heard.
If you want a more comprehensive view of Ritchie Valens’ life, watch La Bamba (1987), a biopic starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens, according to IMDb. The film centers around his relationship with Donna Ludwig, the inspiration for his most popular song of the same name. It tackles Valens’ family life, his rise to stardom, the difficulties he and Donna faced as an interracial couple in the 1950s, and his untimely death.
According to Find a Grave, Ritchie Valens is buried with his mother in Mission Hills, California. He is further memorialized with Buddy Holly and the other victims of the plane accident at the crash site in Grant Township, Iowa, which is discussed in an article by Atlas Obscura. Despite his untimely death and his career of only two years, Valens had a hand in shaping rock-and-roll as a genre. It would seem that even Elvis wanted to know more about him, based on an article on Grunge. Valens demonstrated the beauty of his culture’s music, and left a legacy that did not end in that plane crash.