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Ritchie Valens music biography continued...

Los Angeles, California. He got his first guitar at 9, and started writing songs and performing locally by the time he was in his teens. In 1956 he joined a local garage band that performed in the suburbs of Los Angeles. During one of these performances, he was heard by Bob Keane, the president of Del-Fi Records, who offered to become his manager and signed him to a recording contract. Keane took Richard to his 'Gold Star Studios' in Hollywood, to record several songs, also shortening the singer's name from Valenzuela to Valens and adding the "t" to Richie. 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. 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," which would become a rock and roll classic. In early 1959, Valens was traveling the Midwest on a multi-act rock and roll tour dubbed "The Winter Dance Party." The bus they all were taking on the tour broke down and Buddy Holly decided to charter a small plane for himself and his back-up band. Valens won a seat on the plane by coin toss. What happened next is rock and roll history