LA BUMBA

LA BAMBA (1987)
dir: Luis Valdez

LA BUMBA
Cracked #244, May 1989
w: Terry Gentile
a: Frederick (Rick) Altergott

Bio pic of musician Ritchie Valens, his rise to the top, and eventual demise.

In the late 50s Richie Valenzuela (Lou Diamond Phillips) and his family are fruit pickers in Southern California. He is an aspiring teenage guitarist and has nightmares of dying in a plane crash. His brother Bob (Esai Morales) has just been released from prison. He's earned enough money to buy a home for the family. Richie's first day in high school he meets future girfriend Donna (Danielle von Zemeck). Her father doesn't like her seeing him because he's Latino and plays music.

Richie's mother (Rosanna DeSoto) becomes his manager and rents out a veteran's hall for him to play his music and he becomes a hit. His brother is jealous of his success. Bob Keane (Joe Pantaliano) is President of Adelphi Records and sees Richie as a star. He won't play without the rest of the band but eventually gets convinced and also gets convinced to shorten his name. La Bamba, based on a traditional Mexican folk song, wouldn't become a hit for him until later.

Record stores used to have booths similar to photo booths, where you could cut your own record. Even by 1987 a reader wouldn't know that.

Bob takes Richie to a bordello to get laid, but he's only interested in Donna and more interested in the band playing there. This is where he first hears La Bamba and things click. He wakes up on the land of an Indian shaman. Later, he gets a gig in Philadelphia on American Bandstand.

Ritchie is now a famous musician and Bob is getting increasingly frustrated trying to get the attention of their mother showing he's taking an art correspondence class. At a family get together, they get into a fight, and mend fences before he's killed on tour in the airplane accident with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

Everybody knows the plane crash really went like this...