The Story of 'La Bamba': Ritchie Valens’ Legacy and the Coin Flip That Changed History

You can’t make this up… a foreign language song that was originally released as a B-side all of a sudden became a massive worldwide #1 smash nearly 30 years after it was released. How does that happen? Well, it helps when one of the great rock and roll stories comes back into the zeitgeist. Ritchie Valens was a mere 16 years old when he recorded La Bamba. He came in a time of teen idols who had their own songwriters, but he was one guys who wrote his own stuff and had a world of possibilities ahead of him... until he was killed in a tragic accident. Since then, we have all wondered what might have been. 'What ifs’ are always hard, but this one is even worse because his fate was determined by a coin flip. Join us for a great tribute to Ritchie Valens, an original guitar hero next on Professor of Rock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .