Daniel Valdez and the origins of ‘La Bamba’

Lea este artículo en español aquí.

Note: Daniel Valdez will participate in the Mexico y Tú panel discussion at 7 p.m. on March 14 at the Granada Theater in Hollister as part of the Poppy Jasper Film Festival. At 8 p.m., following the discussion, he will be given an Icon Award by the Festival.

“La Bamba,” the critically successful 1988 film written and directed by Teatro El Campesino founder Luis Valdez, has received a BMI Film Music Award, a Golden Globes nomination for Best Picture, a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year, an entry in the National Film Registry, and, last but not least, a Kid’s Choice Blimp Award. 

However, the film, which began as a project under Luis’s brother, Daniel Valdez, was nearly stalled out in a fight over the use of music by Ritchie Valens—the Chicano rock and roller who became a star in the late 1950s. This led to a series of maneuvers that finally brought the rights to his music back to his family after over 30 years.

“Bob Keane,” Daniel said, “was Ritchie’s manager and producer. He owned the music rights, and he had everything locked up. He wanted control of everything, and, for that reason, Ritchie’s story had never been told.”

Singer/songwriter Ritchie Valens was among the first artists to have a major US hit with a Spanish language song. “La Bamba,” released in 1958, stayed on Billboard for 22 weeks—49 weeks on Cashbox—reaching #2 on both charts. 

The film “La Bamba” chronicles his life and his career, which was cut short by his death in the 1959 plane crash that killed musicians Buddy Holly and J. P.. “Big Bopper” Richardson and their pilot, Roger Peterson.

“I was 12 years old when he died,” Valdez said. “He was one of those musical influences in my life that never went away. I was intrigued by who he was—I didn’t know anything about him. But the power of Richie’s music was right there in front of me.”

The film began as a discussion between Luis and Daniel after the opening night of the Broadway production of “Zoot Suit.” 

“He asked me what I wanted to do next,” Daniel said. “I said I wanted to do Ritchie’s story. He asked me, ‘Just how are you going to do this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but it’s what I want to do.’” 

Valdez started digging for information but was frustrated by the lack of documentation. Stopping in Mill Valley during a promotional tour for the film adaptation of “Zoot Suit,” he heard about a local record store owner, John Goddard, who was also a collector of rock memorabilia.

“He said, ‘I know it’s hard to find anything,” Valdez said. “Then he brought out a stack of binders with photographs and articles about Ritchie. It turned out that he was a member of his fan club when he was 16 and collected everything about him.”

Through Goddard, Valdez was also able to contact Beverly Mendheim, who founded the fan club when she was 17 years old.

“I finally had a connection with something that was real,” he said. “She told me who Ritchie’s mother was and that he had a brother and a sister. She had lost track of them but at least I had some names.”

As word got out that Valdez was looking for information about Valens, he got a break when a friend called him on Halloween night and told him to get down to Daisy’s Saloon in San Juan Bautista as fast as he could.

“‘There’s two guys here,’” he said. “‘They said they’re Richie’s brothers.’ I go to the bar and my friend said, ‘This is Bob and Mario. These are Richie’s brothers.’ I see these two guys, long hair, bikers.I see no resemblance to Ritchie at all.” 

Valdez explained his intentions in making the film, but after an hour of talking, he did not know if the conversation was going anywhere. Two weeks later, there was a knock on the door, and when he opened it, Bob, his brother Mario, and his mother, Connie Valenzuela, were standing there. 

“It took me five years to convince them,” he said. “But it was worth it. It was something intangible that they could not grasp yet, but Richie’s mom and I really started hitting it off. And I convinced them that it was important to get their support.”

Valdez had discussed the concept of the film with producer Taylor Hackford as early as 1973 but the idea did not go far. Then, after meeting the Valenzuela family, Valdez called him and said, “You’re not going to believe who I found.”

At a pitch meeting with Colombia Pictures it was decided that the next step would be to develop a film treatment. Valdez told them that Luis was the only one who could do it.  Hackford was put forward as a director, but he turned it down.

“He was concerned about doing it because it was a Chicano film,” Valdez said. “We approached Luis with the option of him writing and directing. So it became a decision at the last minute to have him do both.”

Having overcome the obstacle of getting Ritchie’s family onboard, Valdez ran into another roadblock: Bob Keane, Valens’ producer, had financed the recordings and owned the rights to all of his music. And Keane would not agree to the terms of its use. 

“We discovered that the copyright of Richie’s music was originally penned 1959,” Valdez said. “The copyright in 1959 was only good for 25 years. Taylor said, ‘If we convince Connie to not renew the copyright agreement with Keane, then all the publishing rights go revert back to her.’” 

Ultimately, the Valens family regained 100% of the rights to Ritchie’s music and secured a third of the movie’s proceeds, which Vadez said was life-changing for them.  In the meantime, however, the producers decided to re-record Ritchie’s music to skirt any possible legal problems.  

“Keane said, ‘You can’t use the music. You can’t touch it because I own it,’” Valdez said. So I arranged for Taylor to see Los Lobos in performance. It blew his mind he heard them.”

The next hurdle was to find a composer to write the film’s soundtrack score, with the film company pushing for musician Ry Cooder.

“I threw a fit,” Valdez said. “I told them, ‘It can’t be Ry Cooder.’ Cooder is a genius, he’s fantastic. But I just couldn’t see him doing it. It had to be a Chicano. So I threw out the idea of Carlos Santana, which everyone thought was nuts.”

Valdez sent the script to Santana’s office with no response and everyone assumed he had turned it down. But Valdez was not convinced he had even seen it.

“His manager, Bill Graham, was standing in the way,” Valdez said. “He did not want him associated with the film. But I knew somebody who went to church with Carlos and I asked him to take the script to him there.” 

Valdez got a response from Santana almost immediately.

“He read it and just flipped out,” Valdez said. “He loved the idea even though Bill was up in arms that he got the script. But Carlos had never done a soundtrack for a film before.”

Valdez took a rough cut of the film to Santana’s home in Santa Cruz, and for the next four months, they worked out ideas for various parts of the soundtrack. 

“He didn’t know exactly how the pieces were going to fit together,” Valdez said. “I told him, ‘Well, just go from this scene to this one and we’ll figure out where it goes.’ And that took a while.”

Once released, the film was a critical and financial success and Valdez was surprised at how quickly it caught on—and who it caught on with.

“We knew that the Chicano and Latino audiences were going to respond,” Valdez said. “But we didn’t know much beyond that point. The amazing thing is it turned out to be a family film as opposed to the niche of just rock and roll.”

The biggest moment of realization for Valdez came when he was working in New York shortly after the film’s release. He was struck by the sight and sound of two white kids with guitars at the base of an escalator singing “La Bamba.”

“At the premiere,” he said. “I saw people dancing in the aisles. It was quite interesting to see it happen and see how it started to build. When I saw those kids singing, I realized this thing had really touched people.”

“La Bamba” opened in 1,251 theaters and went on to gross over $54 million in its North American release. 

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