LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ritchie Valens: Bob Keane
built 296 days ago
In addition to focusing on Valens' music career, writer/director Luis Valdez spends time showing the tense relationship between Ritchie and his older brother Bob who is played excellently by Esai Morales. As Ritchie becomes famous Bob begins to resent him and that provides the film with some of its most powerful and heartbreaking scenes.
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After several songwriting and demo recording sessions with Keane in his basement studio, Keane decided that Ritchie was ready to enter the studio with a full band backing him. Amongst the musicians were Rene Hall and Earl Palmer. The first songs recorded at Gold Star, at a single studio session one afternoon in July 1958, were "Come On, Let's Go", an original (credited to Valens/Kuhn, Keane's real name), and "Framed," a Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller tune. Pressed and released within days of the recording session taking place, the record was a success. Valens' next record, a double A-side which was the final record to be released in his lifetime, had the songs "Donna" (written about a real girlfriend), coupled with "La Bamba."
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Keane, swayed by the Little Richard connection, went along to see Ritchie play a Saturday morning matinee at a movie theater in San Fernando. Impressed by this performance, he invited Valens to audition at his home in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, where he had a small recording studio located in the basement. The recording equipment comprised an early portable tape recorder – a two-track Ampex 6012 – and a pair of Telefunken U-87 condenser microphones.
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Bob Keane