Rockin' All Night: The Very Best of Ritchie Valens

Ritchie Valens | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 17, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Del-Fi Records
• ASIN: B000001JIP
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,206 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. That's My Little Suzie

2. Cry Cry Cry

3. Ooh! My Head

4. La Bamba

5. We Belong Together

6. Framed

7. Bluebirds over the Mountain

8. Come on, Let's Go

9. Donna

10. Ritchie's Blues

11. Boney Maroney

12. Little Girl

13. Hi-Tone

14. Fast Freight

15. Stay Beside Me

16. Hurry Up

17. Paddi-Wack Song

18. Dooby Dooby Wah

19. In a Turkish Town

20. Rockin' All Night

See all 22 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This CD is a TOP SELECTION!, May 13, 2000

By 

Timothy Wittman (Guemes Island, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rockin' All Night: The Very Best of Ritchie Valens (Audio CD)

I purchased this CD primarily as an addition to my growing collection of rock & roll varieties, and also for the selection "Oh Donna" that I wanted for nostalgia purposes. Wow, did I ever have a surprise in store for me, and for anyone else who opts to buy this incredible CD! I was hooked from the first bars of the first tune, right through to the end; La Bamba, Let's Go!, Oh Donna, Hurry Up. Fantastic! Each time a song comes up you find your spirits lifting and your body starting to shake and move. It is clearly one of the "Happiest" pieces of music I've owned in a long time. Further, unlike other recordings from the 50's, the quality of this CD is very, very good. It's easy to close your eyes and imagine that you are in a large dance hall with the music vibrating through your head and couples rockin' and rollin.' This CD is as much for now as it was for listeners 41 years ago. Were it to be marketed to the degree that current music is advertized, it would be a best seller. If you are on the fence about buying this CD, do it. You won't regret your purchase.

Tim

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All His Hits And Their B-Sides Are Here, October 1, 2007

By 

AvidOldiesCollector (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rockin' All Night: The Very Best of Ritchie Valens (Audio CD)

One reviewer asks the question that has been debated since his tragic death at age 17, along with Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson (The Bog Bopper) on February 3, 1959. And I suppose it will go on endlessly.

The fact is, you'd have to think he would at least have been more successful than his protege Chris Montez, whose own success was modest in the face of the changing times. By 1960 the original R&R, which had been a distinctive blending of Rockabilly/R&B, had begun to change with the arrival of the ubiquitous "Bobbies" (Rydell, Darin, Vee, Vinton, Curtola, Lewis, et al), followed in 1964 by the British Invasion.

Would Ritchie have been able to change at the same time? Gene Vincent couldn't and never had another hit after 1957, and Eddie Cochran was already fading from the scene when he died in that 1960 automobile accident. One thing Valens did have going for him was that he wrote most of his hits and it's nice to think that that combined talent would have seen him through the 1960s and beyond, much like it did for Paul Anka.

As to this release from Del-Fi, it has all five hits he registered in his young life in 1958/59 for that label, plus the three ubcharted B-sides, beginning with self-penned Come On, Let's Go which reached # 27 R&B/# 42 Billboard Pop Top 100 in the fall of 1958 b/w the Lieber & Stoller tune, Framed. Then came his biggest hit, a double-sided smash that was still climbing up the charts the day he died - Donna (# 2 Billboard Pop Hot 100/# 11 R&B) b/w La Bamba (# 22 Hot 100).

Whether a reaction to the shock of his sudden death we'll never know for certain, but in April That's My Little Suzie could only manage to get to # 55 Hot 100 b/w In A Turkish Town, while in July, Little Girl fared even worse, managing only a # 92 b/w We Belong Together. And that would be it insofar as hits were concerned, although his unreleased material would continue to appear on the market occasionally over the next few years.

This release has excellent sound quality and with the insert are four pages of background notes written in 1994 by R&R historian Art Fein along with several nice photos of Ritchie and some poster/record reproductions. Judge for yourself whether any of the other material included here would have been commercial successes had he lived. I think it would have.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RITCHIE VALENS IS THE BEST!, December 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Rockin' All Night: The Very Best of Ritchie Valens (Audio CD)

This is just about the best album you can find of Ritchie Valens. If you're looking for the hits, start here! Of all my CDs, this is my favorite.