RITCHIE VALENS His Greatest Hits VG RARE 1964 DelFi DFLP 1225 1st Press LaBamba

$

48

Vinyl:  VG  Play Graded. Sounds Great with some occasional warm vinyl crackle.  Del Fi Labels are Clean except side 1 has a name written very lightly, not obscuring any of the credits.   This is the Original 1964 Del Fi 1st Pressing!  DFLP 1225.  One of the very first Latin contributors to Rock 'N Roll, this, one of the first and best Compilations has all of Ritchie's most crucial cuts on Del Fi Records, the only record company Valens recorded for in his lifetime.  This record also has "Malaguena" and "From Beyond", rarities not found on the 2 original Del Fi releases.  Crucial Rock 'N Roll, Version 1.0!
See Biography Below!
Matrices:  Side 1:   DFLP 1225 A  Side 2:  DFLP 1225 B

Cover: VG+ (see photos; price sticker on rear cover)  Nice high gloss on cover. Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright. Seams and spine are solid and clean.  No splits.  No writing.  Spine print is clear.  
Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every record that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate an LP accurately by just visually inspecting an album.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.  (I also operate a Vinyl Record Cleaning business for your dusty/dirty records--if interested, send me a message).
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All records are packaged securely with the vinyl outside the jacket (to avoid seam split in transit). The vinyl and jacket are sandwiched between two cardboard stiffeners and shipped in a custom cardboard record mailer box. 
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First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.  

 On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.

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BIOGRAPHY

Ricardo Esteban Valenzuela Reyes was raised in a Mexican-American household in the San Fernando Valley. He played several instruments as a child and eventually devoted most of his focus to the guitar, learning a right-hand version of the guitar despite his own left-handedness. Valens' musical influences were diverse, running the gamut from Little Richard and rockabilly to traditional Mexican genres like mariachi, and his talent on the guitar earned him a spot in a local band, the Silhouettes, when he was 16. Valens eventually became the band's frontman. While playing at a local movie theater in 1958, he was discovered by producer Bob Keane, who signed Valens to his Del-Fi label and convinced him to shorten his surname to "Valens," claiming the abbreviated version had broader appeal than "Valenzuela." Under Keane's wing, Valens entered a Los Angeles recording studio in July and emerged with "Come on Let's Go," which climbed to number 42 on the national charts. 

By the end of 1958, Valens had quit high school in order to focus on his career, which had skyrocketed after his second single, "Donna," climbed to number two. Also enjoying a good amount of popularity was the single's innovative flip side, "La Bamba," a rocked-up Mexican folk song performed entirely in Spanish. "La Bamba" featured some fierce guitar work, as well as the thick sound of the Danelectro bass, which gave the instrument more electric presence than it had previously enjoyed on any rock & roll disc. Valens was subsequently hailed as one of rock & roll's teen idols, and he hit road in early 1959 alongside Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Dion & the Belmonts, and Frankie Sardo. 

Billed as "the Winter Dance Party," the tour was originally scheduled to hit 24 Midwestern cities over the course of three weeks. The musicians all shared a single bus, whose heater broke several days into the tour, worsening the long drives between each show. By the time the Winter Dance Party rolled into Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, Buddy Holly had grown tired of the chilly conditions and decided to book a plane in order to fly to the show's next stop. After that evening's show at the Surf Ballroom, Hollyboarded the plane along with Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. The aircraft crashed several minutes after takeoff, though, instantly killing pilot Roger Peterson along with all three of his passengers. Ritchie Valens was 17 years old. 

Valens only had about two albums' worth of material in the can, as well as some lo-fi live tapes of a gig at a local junior high, before his death; undoubtedly, some (or many) of these were demos or unfinished tracks. Other singers emulated Valens' Mexican-American brand of rock in the following years, most notably Chan Romero (originator of "Hippy Hippy Shake," who also recorded for Bob Keane's Del-Fi label and used some of the same musicians who had backed Valens) and Chris Montez. In the 1980s and 1990s, the L.A.-based Latino rock band Los Lobos were often cited for reflecting Valens' influence, and groups like Los Lonely Boys carried the torch of Chicano rock into the 21st century. Meanwhile, the 1987 film La Bamba (whose soundtrack heavily featured Los Lobos) gave his story a glossy Hollywood makeover, exposing Valens' legacy to millions even as it introduced the usual distortions and factual errors in its dramatization of his brief life.