Filipino-American actor Lou Diamond Phillips’ breakthrough came at the age of 25, when he was cast as Ritchie Valens
Ritchie Valens
Richard Steven Valenzuela, known professionally as Ritchie Valens, was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted eight months and abruptly ended when he died in a plane crash.
La Bamba
Biographical story of the rise from nowhere of early rock and roll singer Ritchie Valens who died at age 17 in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.
Who did Lou Diamond Phillips play in La Bamba?
Lou Diamond Phillips performs in a scene from the film 'La Bamba', 1987. (Photo: Columbia Pictures/Getty Images) Eventually, Valdez decided he wanted Phillips as Valens. “The night that I switched from Bob to Ritchie, I remember walking down Pico Boulevard and going, ‘Oh God, now I gotta play Ritchie,’” recalls Phillips.
Who played the bass in La Bamba?
Trivia. The band playing the traditional folk version of "La Bamba" at the club in Tijuana is Los Lobos, which performed all of Ritchie Valens ' music for the film. The guitar player next to the bass player is David Hidalgo, who provided Lou Diamond Phillips ' singing voice.
Is the bar in La Bamba still in business?
The bar is still in business. Interesting? The band playing the traditional folk version of the song "La Bamba" at the club in Tijuana is Los Lobos, which performed all of Ritchie Valens ' music for the movie. The guitar player next to the bass player is David Hidalgo, who provided Lou Diamond Phillips ' singing voice.
Who sings La Bamba in'La Bamba'?
The band playing the traditional folk version of the song "La Bamba" at the club in Tijuana is Los Lobos, which performed all of Ritchie Valens ' music for the movie. The guitar player next to the bass player is David Hidalgo, who provided Lou Diamond Phillips ' singing voice.
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Who played the guitar in La Bamba?
In 1958 he recorded a rock and roll flavored version of "La Bamba", together with session musicians Buddy Clark (string bass); Ernie Freeman (piano); Carol Kaye (acoustic rhythm guitar); René Hall (Danelectro six-string baritone guitar); and Earl Palmer (drums and claves).
Did Lou Diamond Phillips sing the music in La Bamba?
Shall We Dance?The LetterFind Your Way HomeCowboyLa BambaWe're All Fruit Salad!Lou Diamond Phillips/Songs
How old was Lou Diamond Phillips when he filmed La Bamba?
age 24Lou Diamond Phillips was age 24 when he played teen-aged Ritchie Valens during filming in 1986. Marshall Crenshaw was age 33 when he played 22-year-old Buddy Holly.
Who performed the music in La Bamba?
Throughout this biographical film about the short-lived career of '50s rock singer Ritchie Valens, Phillips appears on screen, in close-up shots, singing Valens' songs. The voice is actually that of David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, the contemporary group that re-recorded most of Valens' hits.
Was Ritchie Valens really afraid to fly?
Eerily, singer Ritchie Valens, who perished in this accident, had an intense fear of flying and suffered from recurring nightmares about dying in a plane crash. His phobia developed after two airplanes collided mid-air over his junior high school in Pacoima, a Los Angeles neighborhood, in 1957.
How old was Lou Diamond Phillips when he played Ritchie Valens?
24-year-oldSkip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. TALK ABOUT PATIENCE. In 1986 Lou Diamond Phillips was a 24-year-old Fort Worth stage actor plucked from obscurity to play singer Ritchie Valens in the film La Bamba.
Are there any Native American actors in Longmire?
Native American Actor A Martinez, 69, Peaks in 'Longmire'
Are Lou Diamond Phillips and Kiefer Sutherland friends?
In 1988, Phillips starred on the cowboy hit film Young Guns with Kiefer Sutherland, and both returned on the 1990 sequel. Phillips and Sutherland became good friends and have appeared on several films together like Renegades, Teresa's Tattoo (also with Sean Astin and C.
Is La Bamba accurate?
This movie is often thought of alongside The Buddy Holly Story (1978), but La Bamba (1987) is far more accurate. For example, in the Buddy Holly Story they imply that the bus had broken down, when in fact it was the heater that had broken down.
What does Bamba mean in slang?
(slang, uncountable) cocaine.
Who first performed La Bamba?
Ritchie Valens. Courtesy of the artist. It was the late 1950s when a 17-year-old boy took an old Mexican folk song and set it to a rock 'n' roll beat. "La Bamba" made rock 'n' roll history when it became the first Latin-based song to cross over to the pop and rock audience.
What is Ritchie Valens most famous song?
“La Bamba” is Ritchie Valens' most influential recording as it has appeared and reappeared on the music charts on more than one occasion. Upon the song's original release in 1958, it was on the B side of his record that featured “Donna” on the A-side.
Do the actors in soundtrack actually sing?
But in contrast to something like 2018's A Star Is Born, where the music was recorded live, Soundtrack features actors 100 percent lip-syncing to pop songs. Lip-synced performances were always part of creator Joshua Safran's original pitch for the show.
Does Lou Diamond Phillips sing?
The guitar player next to the bass player is David Hidalgo, who provided Lou Diamond Phillips' singing voice.
Was Lou Diamond Phillips ever a singer?
In the mid-1990s, Phillips was a vocalist with the Los Angeles-based rock group The Pipefitters.
What was the instrumental song in La Bamba?
Perhaps those reasons are why “Sleep Walk” is so often used in movies to evoke the 1950s, such as when the song pops up at the end of La Bamba (1987) after Ritchie Valens's family learns of his death in February 1959.
How many versions of Los Lobos are there?
Sobel said Los Lobos recorded 30 versions to the first verse and middle section of that number, each slightly different in musical phrasing or actual wording. Some versions were made up in Sobel’s studio of bits and pieces from the others.
What does the editor do in Los Lobos?
The editing process is technologically complicated, but as Sobel explained it, the editor has the ability to stretch or shorten the music to fit the actor’s lip movements (or his guitar strumming). When the Valens songs were being rerecorded, Hidalgo’s voice and each instrument in Los Lobos’ band were captured on separate tracks, allowing Sobel to painstakingly sculpt the entire song to synchronize with the performance.
Why was Valens not used in the movie?
When Valens was recording in 1958, the singers’ voices were not routinely isolated as they are now, which Sobel said is the reason the original recordings were not used in the movie. Without a voice track, Sobel wouldn’t have been able to shape the real Valens voice to Phillips’ lips.
Who is Ritchie Valens' voice?
The voice is actually that of David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, the contemporary group that re-recorded most of Valens’ hits. But only Hidalgo and the film-making crew would know the words aren’t coming out of Phillips’ mouth.
Is La Bamba dubbed?
Most of the news interest in Columbia Pictures’ current hit movie “La Bamba” has focused on the studio’s successful penetration of the Latino film-going audience through the release in certain theaters of a dubbed Spanish-language version.
Can an actor go far with lip syncing?
“An actor can only go so far (with lip-syncing), he can get you in the ballpark,” said Curt Sobel, music editor on “La Bamba.” “Lou did a great job. He practiced constantly. But when everything was shot, there was still a lot of work to do.”
Did Phillips sing in Los Lobos?
On the set, Sobel said, Phillips sang and strummed to the prerecorded Los Lobos music, usually a verse at a time. By shooting scenes from different angles, Phillips did not have to be perfectly in sync for long stretches of a song and the music and film editors could patch numbers together from a series of short bursts.
How did La Bamba die?
La Bamba follows Valens (born Richard Valenzuela), who quickly became a rock ‘n’ roll sensation with three consecutive hits (“Come On, Let’s Go,” “Donna” and “La Bamba”) over an eight-month span between 1958 and 1959 before he was killed at the age of 17 in a plane crash while on tour with fellow ill-fated stars Buddy Holly and J.P.
When will La Bamba be back in theaters?
La Bamba will be back in movie theaters as part of TCM’s Big Screen Classics series April 18, 21 and 22.
Where did Valens fly to?
That lead to one particularly surreal moment for Phillips on the night they shot the harrowing sequence in which Valens boards the single-engined plane Holly chartered to fly them from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Fargo, N.D., while on tour. Valdez and producer Taylor Hackford cautioned Valens’s relatives not to come to the Burbank Airport set that night, but his younger sister, Connie Valenzuela Jr., didn’t heed their warnings.
Who plays Ritchie's brother in the movie?
Phillips impressed the casting director enough to be flown to Los Angeles for a screen test, where writer-director Luis Valdez initially planned to cast Phillips as Ritchie’s troubled brother Bob Morales, a role that would eventually go to Esai Morales in the biopic.
