By Noe Duran
At a spot well-known to locals, just shy of the railroad tracks on San Fernando road, four young
men stand opposite an old burger joint, grinning, smiling, gawking at you as you pull up to and
away from the Bobo's drive-thru window; Buddy Holly, J.P Richardson, Ritchie Valens, and
Robert Peterson are their names, Levi Ponce the name of the artist who decided to immortalize
them on a store-side mural. He, like Valens, is a native son of the San Fernando Valley, a
populous suburb just North of Los Angeles with no appreciable shortage of talent.
Ponce's work is titled "The Day the Music Died", a name by which February 3, 1959 came to be
known after a tragic plane crash claimed the lives of all four of Ponce's subjects.
They had been on tour, Buddy Holly headlining, Valens and Richardson the supporting acts, all
of them playing what concert promoters dubbed "The Winter Dance Party", an ill-conceived
series of gigs strung along the Midwestern United States. Almost from the start, the enterprise
was beset with all manner of logistical problems, most of them related to the cramped,
unheated transportation used to shuttle artists from place to place.
On February 2, anxious to avoid yet another hitch aboard the tour's decrepit buses, Buddy
Holly chartered a private flight out of Fargo's Hector Airport with 21 year old Robert Peterson as
his pilot. Richards and Valens tagged along, lucking into their respective seats aboard
Peterson's Beechcraft Bonanza.
By the time all this happened, Buddy Holly was already a star, his blend of country and R&B , at
times stripped down, at times elegantly layered up, was undeniable, as were the throngs of
white teens who consistently mobbed the young pop idol. J.P, the senior of the group at just 28
years of age, was without doubt a journeyman, his talents for songwriting far outdistancing his
technical skill, but even then he had two smash hits under his belt, "White Lightnin" and
"Chantilly Lace". For Ritchie though, the tour was something else altogether; having just recently
broken into the mainstream, the "Winter Dance Party" was to consolidate his status as heavy.
That ,at least, was the hope. Just how much a string of barnstorming gigs could have actually
helped in widening Ritchie's popular appeal is highly questionable. Certainly as much as
ditching his given name of Richard Valenzuela, which the young Ritchie did at the behest of
manager Bob Keane who'd grown concerned over questions of 'marketing'.
Valens was all of 17 when the plane went down, having chosen to forego his senior year of
highschool in favor of a life on the road. Ritchie, who grew up around the valley's legendary
orange groves, was to die in the remote and frigid North, in a field of golden Iowa corn.
Since the crash, much has been made of the invident's cultural significance, and much of it is
little more than fruitless myth making.Though it is fair to say that when the Beatles finally jumped
the pond some 5 years later, they were confronted with an American rock scene not quite at its
fighting weight, it would be a mistake to overlook the lasting musical influence that Valens and
his contemporaries had.
In 1971 Don Maclean recorded his hit single "American Pie", a song which deals in part with the
events of February 3,1959 , but which is in many ways the direct antithesis to what Holly,
Richardson, and especially Valens represented. Maclean's song is an ode to a simpler time, to
the innocence of yesteryear, an overly nostalgic, saccharine recounting of America's lost glory
days.
Valens' music, however, was not saccharine, and though it could be elegantly simple at times it
was never simplistic.It could be sentimental, sure, heartfelt in a way that only a teen could
manage, but it always throbbed with live emotion. Rock being still a burgeoning genre at the
time, what defined Valens' music the most was the dynamism of its influences, the visceral
nature of the feelings at play. He borrowed heavily from such innovators as Little Richards,
whose brash, energetic vocals found their way into many of Ritchie's songs, particularly the
faster, more rollicking ones like "Ooh! My Head", but he was likewise unafraid to experiment for
himself, adapting folk standards like "La Bamba" , originally a son Jarocho song from Veracruz,
and "Malaguena", a Spanish flamenco tune, into fun new rocked-up versions of themselves.
Like Buddy and J.P, who were both Texans, Valens was a product of the Southwest, a Californio
with family roots in Arizona, and as such he had a unique understanding of Rock's Western
component. He embodied the romance and duality of the Western spirit, of the cowboy, and
could with equal talent sing a ballad about loss and heartbreak, as was the case with "Donna" ,
or lay into his guitar, careening into the primal freedom of a track like "Fast Freight''. In either
case , he strove to keep things fresh, if not always technically, then at least in the sense that his
songs always touched upon the intensity of adolescence, that period of life during which nothing
is still.
If we wish to see Ritchie's true influence then we must look to the scores of young chicanos who
made studios out of their stuffy garages, to the scrappy kids with more guts than talent who
wished more than anything to form a band, to the self-taught amateurs and malcontents who
kept feeling and edge and attitude alive within rock. When the punks finally came along, they did
so in response to the vapid frivolity they saw around them, and what they finally tapped into was
that raw, primal stuff that Ritchie and his friends knew so well, a purity of feeling that supersedes
all else.
To me it is comforting that on Van Nuys and Telfair, a spot well-known to locals, Ritchie and his
friends can look upon the angsty, loud-mouthed, no-good kids they once played for, as they peel
out in fast cars, steal kisses from their sweethearts, and stuff their faces with cheeseburgers.
Have any questions? Reach the writer noeduran620@gmail.com!
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