Extremely rare Del-Fi Records 45 RPM record for the single ‘Donna / La Bamba’ by Ritchie Valens, who has signed on the A-side label in blue ink. In fine condition. Accompanied by a full letter of authenticity from REAL and by a letter of provenance from a past owner:
“This record signed by Ritchie Valens was obtained in person during the 1959 Winter Dance Party Tour in Mankato, Minnesota. The Kato Ballroom show was attended by the original owner Barbara (last name unknown) on January 25, 1959…[who] described her recollections [of the concert] as this: She attended the concert with two friends and was there to see Buddy Holly. They snuck in records they had of the artists with hopes to get them signed. She said it took quite a while to get to the front of the stage because it was a packed dance floor…Later on during the show, the performers would be off stage talking with fans, in which she was able to briefly meet Ritchie Valens and get his signature on this record.”
A month after leaving the Crickets, Buddy Holly made plans to move to New York with his pregnant wife to further his fast-rising musical career. Short on funds, he signed on with General Artist Corporation and organized a 24-day tour barnstorming the Midwest during one of the region’s worst winters on record. Accompanying him were Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Frankie Sardo. After opening night on January 23rd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the caravan zigzagged wearily across state lines before stopping in Clear Lake, Iowa—350 miles from the previous day's concert in Green Bay—where the tour’s 10th show was arranged on the fly.
Fed up with freezing on the tour bus, Holly chartered a plane, a four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza, for his band to leave that night after the Surf Ballroom show and head to Fargo, North Dakota, the closest city to their next stop in Moorhead, Minnesota. With takeoff imminent, the seating plan needed to be set: Holly was in, as was the flu-ridden Richardson (bassist Waylon Jennings offered up his seat); the third seat was taken by Valens, who won it on a coin flip with guitarist Tommy Allsup. Shortly after embarking from the Mason City Municipal Airport just shy of 1 a.m., the Bonanza disappeared, its wreckage and the bodies of its passengers found the next morning less than six miles from the airstrip. Anything signed by Valens remains quite rare and collectible, with 7-inch single records of his two biggest songs, signed roughly a week before his tragic death, existing in a rarified space all their own.
