Ritchie Valens Lyrics

The Brill Building Sound

To me, the day the music died was Feb. 9, 1964, when The Beatles took the stage of ’s Ed Sullivan Show .

For many decades, I believed that date was when rock was revived and reborn after the post-Holly years. Then Dylan came along to wed rock with lyrical relevance.

But rock and the British Invasion (and even Dylan) may have killed something far more daring—the Brill Building Sound. And that musically and socially progressive youth-oriented genre of the early 1960s looms with each passing year as the best popular music since the classic Great American Songbook composers.

While “the Brill Building Sound” is a rather broad term, it most narrowly refers to songwriters—especially the youthful teams of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil—who wrote for the Aldon Music publishing company. It was actually located nearby rather than inside Manhattan’s Brill Building, itself a long-established home to publishers.

Yes, this music was better than The Beatles—at the time when the Fab Four and their British brethren first mounted the invasion, undermining the Brill Building’s heyday and ushering in a new self-contained-rock-band era that never went away. Just put “She Loves You” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand” up against the sensual “Spanish Harlem,” a 1961 Brill Building Sound classic written for singer Ben E.

Ritchie Valens – La Bamba | CrazyWaiter

"La Bamba" is a Mexican folk song, originally from the state of Veracruz, best known from a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a top 40 hit in the U.S. charts and one of early rock and roll's best-known songs. The traditional aspect of "La Bamba" lies in the tune itself, which remains almost the same through most versions. The name of the dance, which has no direct English translation, is presumably connected with the Spanish verb bambolear, meaning "to shake" or perhaps "to stomp". The traditional "La Bamba" is often played during weddings in Veracruz, where the bride and groom perform the accompanying dance. Today this wedding tradition is not done as frequently as in the past, but the dance is still popular, perhaps through the popularity of ballet folklórico. The dance is performed displaying the newly-wed couple's unity through the performance of complicated, delicate steps in unison as well as through creation of a bow from a listón, a long red ribbon, using only their feet. The traditional song inspired Ritchie Valens' rock and roll version "La Bamba" in 1958. Valens' "La Bamba" infused the traditional tune with a rock drive, in part provided by session drummer Earl Palmer and session guitarist Carol Kaye, making the song accessible to a much wider record audience and earning it (and Valens) a place in rock history (inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001). The song features a simple verse-chorus form. Valens, who was proud of his Mexican heritage, was hesitant at first to merge "La Bamba" with rock and roll but then agreed. Valens obtained the lyrics from his aunt Ernestine Reyes and learned the Spanish lyrics phonetically, as he had been raised from birth speaking English.

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