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In a recording career that spanned less than two years and produced only one album released during his lifetime, Ritchie Valens (1941-1959), born Richard Steven Valenzuela, has had an enduring influence on rock 'n roll music despite the fact that he died before his eighteenth birthday in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of rockers Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper). Valens's music is admired for his gritty proto-punk, garage-rock guitar style, lack of sentimentality, and embracement of his Hispanic heritage, which are apparent in his most successful hit single "La Bamba."
With the concurrent deaths of Holly and Valens, it has been argued that the evolution of the rock 'n roll genre stalled until the Beatles (a band whose name was inspired by the name of Holly's band, the Crickets) took up where the two American performers left off. Valens, inspired by Holly and Eddie Cochran to write and play guitar on his own compositions, displayed a tremendous degree of potential as a songwriter, guitarist, and showman as evidenced by the performances captured on his two studio albums, Ritchie Valens (1959) and Ritchie (1959), and a live recording, Ritchie Valens in Concert at Pacoima Junior High (1960).
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