TV Dance Party

Ritchie Valens released just two 45’s but still showed incredible versatility.  His first, “Come On, Let’s Go” is now regarded as a straight-up rock and roll classic, but it failed to chart.  Writing in 1998, Billy Vera recalls “first hearing [“Come On, Let’s Go”] on Alan Freed’s TV Dance Party, a local New York equivalent of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.  It was a record which really grabbed my teenaged ears.  I had never heard anything quite like it.  It had a much ‘thicker’ sound than anything by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, or even Eddie Cochran.  For thickness, the only thing that came close was Bo Diddley.” 

(June 2013/1)