Whatever Happened to the Day the Music Died

It has been 65 years since rock and roll’s earliest tragedy, much later known as the “Day the Music Died” when three influential rockers, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens perished in a small plane crash. The youngest was teenaged Valens, who was riding the crest of his double sided 1958 hit, “Donna” and “La Bamba.”

This year, unlike signpost years previously, little has been noted in the media or elsewhere about this important anniversary.

There are competing Buddy Holly museums in his Lubbock, Texas hometown and a Holly museum in his recording home, Clovis, New Mexico. There is no similar museum for Ritchie Valens, the first Chicano rock and roll hit maker.

A Pacoima park, a swimming pool and the Ritchie Valens Skate Plaza were named after him. In 1990, Valens received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There is a Ritchie Valens 29 cent postage stamp issued in 1993 and the Ritchie Valens Post Office in Pacoima named in 2022. Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, on May 13, 2016, the Los Angeles City Council declared “Ritchie Valens Day” on his 75th birthday. The Interstate 5 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley was dubbed the Ritchie Valens Memorial Highway in 2018, the most recent example of the “memorial” appellation.

A product of the working-class suburb of Pacoima, Ritchie Valens was known as the “Little Richard of the San Fernando Valley,” He first appeared with Gil Rocha’s band the Silhouettes at a car club gig for the Lost Angels in October 1957. In 1958, he was signed by Del-fi Records without the band. After “Come On Let’s Go” charted on Aug. 1, 1958, his popularity was on the rise.

His major hit was about his girlfriend, Donna Ludwig. “Donna” backed with “La Bamba” hit big in November 1958. After an 11-city East Coast swing involving several Dick Clark shows, Valens appeared at a Pomona show on January 16, 1959 with Jan & Arnie, just before they became Jan & Dean. On January 17, 1959, Valens played at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium. Guitarist Dick Dale, who placed fourth in an Elvis sound-a-like contest at the Long Beach UA Theater in 1958 said, “We did a lot of concerts together. I remember playing our guitars backstage the night he got four standing ovations at the Long Beach Arena.”

A week later, on Jan. 23, 1959, Valens joined the Winter Tour featuring Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Dion & the Belmonts in Milwaukee. After appearing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3, 1959, Valens died when a small plane crashed in a snowy Iowa cornfield. All too soon, the term “memorial” became a sales tool when Del-fi’s owner Bob Keene issued the Ritchie Valens Memorial Album. Ritchie Valens’ postmortem rocker, “That’s My Little Suzie” was issued on the Del-fi “Memorial Series” hit in April 1959.

On Mar. 5, 1959, the Valley News opined about Valens’ retailing. “Several individual record stores have been using the death of the singers to boost sales figures. These shops are throwing up big sales display, which play up the fact the singers were killed recently, hoping to pull in more ‘sentimental sales.‘ Valens’ album has been the top seller in this area for a couple of weeks. This is partially due, probably, to the fact he was a local boy. It’s doubtful that sales figures would have been as high if the accident had never happened.”

The Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance was held at the El Monte Legion Stadium on February 25, 1961. Valens’ longtime friend Gil Rocha, who gave Ritchie his start with his band, the Silhouettes got a call from DJ Art Laboe who asked, “You played with Ritchie, didn’t you?” He then booked Rocha for the well-attended dance.

In November 1961, the Beach Boys invented a whole new rock and roll genre with the hit, “Surfin’.” On December 23, 1961, they debuted in-person at the Rendezvous Ballroom on Balboa Island supporting Dick Dale & The Del-Tones. As surfer dancers demanded instrumental bands, urban legend purports the vocalizing of the Beach Boys got them booed off the stage.

A week and a day later, on Dec. 31, 1961, almost three years after Valens’ only Long Beach date, the Ritchie Valens Memorial Concert at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium featured the Rivingtons promoting their new “Papa Oom Mow Mow,” the Beach Boys plugging “Surfin’,” Ike & Tina Turner and the Wilmington-based Carlos Brothers who Valens discovered in El Monte.

On the Feb. 3, 1962, third anniversary of Valens’ death, the Beach Boys returned to the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium. After a second auditorium show on February 10, on March 2, 1962, the Beach Boys appeared with a showing of the Don Brown movie “Surf’s Up” at Millikan High School.

On Dec. 6, 1962, the Beach Boys opened the Cinnamon Cinder at the Traffic Circle supporting Jan and Dean, with whom Ritchie performed in 1959. Finally, on Aug. 1, 1963, the Beach Boys appeared at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa where Ritchie Valens made his final appearance four years previously.