Ritchie Valens (Richard Valenzuela) was the first Latino rock star in music history. He died at age 17 in a tragic plane crash in 1959 along with two other rock legends, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly. The story of Ritchie’s brief career is told in the motion picture La Bamba, written and directed by Luis Valdez. What few know is that it was Luis’s brother, actor/musician Daniel Valdez, who spent many years pursuing the Ritchie Valens story and finally securing the right to tell the story from Ritchie’s family. Here Daniel recounts how the making of La Bamba came about.