He had a string of pop and country hits in the 1960s and 1970s, including his signature No. 1 hit "Honey," which sold over one million copies in the United States.
Goldsboro left college after his second year to pursue a musical career.
He played guitar for Roy Orbison from 1962 to 1964 while releasing a few unsuccessful singles.
Career
Goldsboro's solo career picked up steam with the top tenhit
"See the Funny Little Clown."
The single, written by Goldsboro, reached
No. 9 on the U.S. national charts in early 1964.
It sold over one
million copies and was awarded a gold disc.[2]
It was to be the first of a string of similar awards.
Goldsboro would go on to have 11 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and 12 on the country chart.[1][3]
In 1966 he recorded "Too Many People" with "It's Too Late" on the B-side.
Although Goldsboro was not a prolific performer of dance music, both of these songs were popular within Northern soul and were played at Wigan Casino.[4]
His biggest hit was 1968's "Honey," a maudlin tearjerker about the death of a man's young wife.[1][3]
The song, written by Bobby Russell, was recorded in one take.[5]
It topped the Hot 100 for five weeks, reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart on two separate occasions (1968 and 1975),[6] and was a No. 1 single in Australia, selling in excess of one million copies there.[2]
It also became his first country hit and marked a career transition, as
his songs became more successful on the country chart than on the pop
side.
Bobby remained a fixture in the country top 40 into the early
1980s.
One of Goldsboro's compositions, "With Pen in Hand," was recorded by several artists, including a Grammy-nominated pop version by Vikki Carr that reached the "Top 40," in 1969; Johnny Darrell had taken the song to No. 3 on the US country chart a year earlier.
Goldsboro's "The Cowboy and The Lady" became a "Top 10" country hit as "The Cowgirl and The Dandy" for Brenda Lee in 1980; Dolly Parton had also covered it in 1977, and John Denver had a hit with the song in 1981.
"Summer (The First Time)", a 1973 reminiscence about a first sexual
experience, was a Top 25 hit in the U.S. and reached number 9 in the UK
Top 50 and was Goldsboro's last top 40 hit on the Hot 100.[6]
Using a powerful repeating piano riff, 12-string guitar, some organ
playing, and a dramatic orchestral string arrangement, the song was
suggestive enough to spark some controversy.
A followup, "Hello
Summertime," was written by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway and hit No. 14 in the UK in late 1974.[6]
Goldsboro retired from full-time performing in the 1980s.
In 1995, he launched the children's television series The Swamp Critters of Lost Lagoon. Besides his musical activities, Goldsboro sells his paintings on his official website.[7]
Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela; May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959) was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist.
A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted only eight months.[1]
During this time, however, he scored several hits, most notably "La Bamba", which was originally a Mexican folk song, transformed by Valens with a rock rhythm and beat, that became a hit in 1958,[2][3] making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement.
His parents were Joseph Steven Valenzuela and Concepcion Reyes. Brought up hearing traditional Mexican mariachi music, as well as flamenco guitar, R&B and jump blues,
he expressed an interest in making music of his own by the age of 5.
He
was encouraged by his father to take up guitar and trumpet, and later
taught himself the drums.
One day, a neighbor came across Ritchie trying
to play a guitar, that had only two strings.
He re-strung the
instrument, and taught Ritchie the fingerings of some chords.
While
Ritchie was left-handed, he was so eager to learn the guitar that he
mastered the traditionally right-handed version of the instrument.[citation needed]
By the time he was attending junior high school, his proficiency on the
guitar was such, that he brought the instrument to school and would
sing and play songs to his friends on the bleachers.[citation needed]
When he was sixteen years old, he was invited to join a local band
named 'The Silhouettes' as a guitarist.
Later, the main vocalist left
the group and Ritchie assumed this position as well.
In addition to the
performances with The Silhouettes, he would play solo at parties and
other social events.
Career
A completely self-taught musician, Valens was an accomplished singer
and guitarist.
At his appearances, he often improvised new lyrics and
added new riffs to popular songs while he was playing.
This is an aspect
of his music that is not heard in his commercial studio recordings.
In May 1958, Bob Keane, the owner and President of Del-Fi Records, a small Hollywood record label, was given a tip by San Fernando High student Doug Macchia about a young performer from Pacoima by the name of Richard Valenzuela (Little Richard of the Valley).
Impressed by the performance, he invited Ritchie to audition at his home in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles,
where he had a small recording studio in his basement.
The recording
equipment comprised an early stereo recorder (a two-track Ampex 601-2 portable), and a pair of Neumann U-47 condenser microphones. He also had a nephew named Magdalena Joya in Sacramento, California.
After this first audition, Keane decided to sign Ritchie to Del-Fi,
and a contract was prepared and signed on May 27, 1958.
It was at this
point that he took the name Ritchie, because, as Keane said, "There were
a bunch of 'Richies' around at that time, and I wanted it to be
different."
Similarly, it was Keane who decided to shorten his surname
to Valens from Valenzuela, in order to broaden his appeal.
Several songs, that would later be re-recorded at Gold Star Studios
in Hollywood, were first demoed in Keane's studio.
The demos primarily
consisted of Ritchie singing and playing guitar, but some of them also
featured drums. These original demos can be heard on the Del-Fi album Ritchie
Valens — The Lost Tapes'.'
As well as the aforementioned demos, two of
the tracks laid down in Keane's studio were taken to Gold Star Studios
and had additional instruments dubbed over to create full-band
recordings.
"Donna" was one track (although there are two other preliminary versions of the song, both available on The Lost Tapes), and the other was an instrumental entitled "Ritchie's Blues."
After several songwriting and demo recording sessions with Keane in
his basement studio, Keane decided that Ritchie was ready to enter the
studio with a full band backing him.
The first songs recorded at Gold Star Studios, at a single studio
session one afternoon in July 1958, were "Come On, Let's Go," an
original (credited to Valens/Kuhn, Keane's real name), and "Framed," a Leiber and Stoller
tune.
Pressed and released within days of the recording session taking
place, the record was a success.
Valens' next record, a double A-side,
which was the final record to be released in his lifetime, had the songs
"Donna" (written about a real girlfriend), coupled with "La Bamba."
At this point, in the autumn of 1958, Valens quit high school to
concentrate on his career.
December 27 saw a return to American Bandstand, this time for a performance of "Donna."
Upon his return to Los Angeles, Valens filmed an appearance in Alan Freed's movie Go Johnny Go! In the film he appears in a diner miming his song "Ooh! My Head" using a Gretsch 6120 guitar, the same model Eddie Cochran
owned.
In between the live appearances Ritchie returned to Gold Star
Studios several times, recording the tracks that would comprise his two
albums.
In early 1959, Valens was traveling the Midwest on a multi-act rock-and-roll tour dubbed "The Winter Dance Party."
After the February 2, 1959, performance in Clear Lake, Iowa,
Holly, Richardson and Valens flew out of the Mason City airport in a
small plane that Holly had chartered. Valens was on the plane because he
had won a coin toss.
Ritchie Valens
is interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills,
California.
Tributes
In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless-steel monument depicting a steel guitar
and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three
performers.
It is located on private farmland, about one quarter mile
west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, approximately
eight miles north of Clear Lake.
He also created a similar stainless
steel monument to the three musicians near the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
It did not credit Ritchie Valens or Bob Keane.
Eventually, a lawsuit was filed by Bob Keane and half of the award went
to Valens' mother, although she was not part of the suit.[10]
Monument at Crash Site, September 16, 2003.
Source: Wikipedia.org
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