Review: Ritchie Valens - Ritchie (1959)
Tracks: 1) Stay Beside Me; 2) Cry, Cry, Cry; 3) Big Baby Blues; 4) Paddi-Wack Song; 5) My Darling Is Gone; 6) Hurry Up; 7) Little Girl; 8) Now You’re Gone; 9) Fast Freight; 10) Ritchie’s Blues; 11) Rockin’ All Night.
REVIEW
Public interest in Ritchie’s music predictably soared for a while after his death, just as it did for Buddy Holly — but at least Buddy’s vaults, what with him making a much earlier start than Valens and all, contained plenty of material to be released (and more often than not, tampered with through unnecessary overdubs) in the upcoming years. Ritchie’s unpublished backlog, in comparison, was fairly small; for his second and last «proper» LP of studio material Del-Fi Records could only scrape together 11 tracks, barely amounting to 25 minutes of new music — furthermore, at least several of these songs are bare-bone lo-fi demos, put together by Ritchie in his hotel room and looking more like preliminary sketches, faint ideas of songs put down for later elaboration.
Even so, there are a few moments salvaged here that make the record more than a simple cash-grab and even more than a simple memorial to a prematurely departed artist. First, the stuff that still had the official «seal of approval»: ‘Fast Freight’, a gritty rock’n’roll instrumental that had already been released as a single in December 1958, though, for some reason, credited to «Arvee Allens» (an unsophisticated play on «R. Valens») — an excellent, crunchy groove that rocks harder and harsher than most possible competition at the tail end of the First Age of Rock’n’Roll, no small thanks to the fat, distorted, rock-steady bassline holding down the foundation for Ritchie’s soloing (at one point, the bass actually takes the lead itself, in what was still a relative rarity for a simple rock’n’roll track). There might be some inspiration here from Link Wray, who’d just emerged on the scene in 1958 and was already setting new standards for ballsy guitar players — although one short exercise of this kind cannot constitute good proof that Ritchie was truly heading into the «demonic» depths of rock and roll, instead of firmly clinging to its «fun», entertainment side. In any case, the B-side, ‘Big Baby Blues’, was already more Duane Eddy than Link Wray — a slow and playful bluesy shuffle, nowhere near as memorable as the A-side.
I do not know if ‘Little Girl’, released as a single in June 1959 and remembered as the very last time a Ritchie Valens song hit the charts, was already planned for such release while the man was still alive. It is very much a completed recording, for sure, but the melody is way too similar to Little Richard’s and Buddy Holly’s ‘Send Me Some Lovin’, even employing the same hook of raising the singer’s voice up an octave midway through the song for an extra punch. Arguably the most inventive thing about the track is how Ritchie deceptively begins it like a 12-bar blues — that’s Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Broom’ riff in the opening bars, isn’t it? — and then quickly brings it back into the pop sphere. But it’s just a couple of bars, so it doesn’t really mean all that much, just a teasy little gimmick.
The other two full-band, polished tracks would already be paired as a single in 1960, after their release on the LP. Of these, ‘Cry Cry Cry’ is the unquestionable highlight — even if its basic melody is just a slightly sped-up, Latinized take on ‘See You Later Alligator’, the band is fully revved-up all the same, and Ritchie’s thick, trebly guitar tone and jagged staccato picking on the solo sounds tremendously «modern» for the late Fifties: in fact, this is very much like George Harrison’s playing on all those early Beatle rock’n’roll songs, such as ‘One After 909’. The B-side, ‘Paddi-Wack Song’, is either a daring, dashing artistic move to synthesize traditional folk entertainment and the magical world of nursery rhyme with the new iconoclastic values of rock’n’roll — or a stupid and pointless waste of tape and studio time, depending on your priorities in life. But I must say I like how the rhythm section comes "rolling home" on that one, with more of that chuggin’ bass and the poor drummer probably sweating like crazy from the unending stream of those trills.
Somewhat less polished is the ballad ‘Stay Beside Me’, which would become the last single from the album; not particularly interesting from a musical standpoint, it focuses on the image of Ritchie as a gentle, echoey crooner — in which image he, like Gene Vincent and several other white rock’n’rollers from the era, possessed a certain rugged charm but not a lot of screeching individuality. Two more such ballads are also included as raw demos — ‘My Darling Is Gone’ and ‘Now You’re Gone’ (Ritchie must have had a real tough time getting all those girls not to dump him!) — and while many listeners would certainly appreciate the softness and vulnerability displayed therein, I do not find either of them nearly as «haunting» as the Ritchie Valens Legend would require them to be. The guitar strumming is too predictable and pedestrian, and the vocal ideas too derivative — in fact, on ‘My Darling Is Gone’ he directly quotes from ‘Send Me Some Lovin’ ("my nights are so lonely...") and it is clear that he is, essentially, just trying to riff on that tune once again, feeling out whether it can be used as an anchor for something different. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough time to get there.
Finally, there are some more second-rate takes on old ideas, such as ‘Hurry Up’, another tiny little Chicano rocker trying to marry R&B rhythms to Mexican ways of singing, but nowhere near as energetic as ‘La Bamba’; ‘Ritchie’s Blues’, a nice attempt to work out another Mexico-meets-Delta groove that is unfortunately only captured in its initial stage; and ‘Rockin’ All Night’, a crude rehearsal of a potentially solid rockabilly number à la Gene Vincent that, in this form, does not do much other than show us the brute strength with which Ritchie could shake up that acoustic guitar. Well, he was quite young and muscular, that’s for sure.
If there is anything thought-provoking or bizarre about this record, it is mainly the realization that one absolutely cannot predict in which direction this guy’s career could have gone, had he survived or avoided the plane crash. Would he have «sold out», like a Johnny Burnette, and become a teen idol? some of the softer songs on here could point in that direction. Would he have held on to his rock’n’roll soul and remain the crunchiest guy on the scene before the British Invasion? stuff like ‘Fast Freight’, which rocks heavier than anything in the Buddy Holly catalog, shows that it was possible. Would he have carried on the «Chicano Rock» crown, continuing to pioneer and promote the Latin spirit in his output? you have tracks like ‘Hurry Up’, proving that he still believed in such an approach. Perhaps he was going to be all these things at once — which is why God, heavily paid off by the British secret services, preferred to eliminate him and Buddy so as to clear out the scene completely in preparation for the Liverpool takeover. Then again, maybe not and we’re simply too easily swayed by the «epic» factor of each tragic event. In the meantime, it is at least good to have all these memories by our side.
Indeed much better record than it should be for the circumstances. Freight train indeed rocks hard, so My Generation ain't first bass solo? Move over, Ox!