And according to writer Ned Sublette, Bob Keane also hired New Orleans musician extraordinaire Earl Palmer to play drums on "La Bamba." (And "Come On Let's Go.")
latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bob-keane1-2009dec01,0,2711217.story
OBITUARY
Bob Keane dies at 87; discovered Ritchie Valens
A musician in his own right, Keane founded L.A. label Del-Fi Records and helped nurture the budding career of the young rocker Valens. He also worked with Bobby Fuller, Frank Zappa and Barry White.
By Dennis McLellan
7:33 PM PST, November 30, 2009
Bob Keane, who founded the West Coast independent label Del-Fi Records in the 1950s and is best known for discovering and recording rock legend Ritchie Valens, has died. He was 87.
Keane, who survived non- Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosed when he was 80, died of renal failure Saturday in an assisted living home in Hollywood, said his son, Tom Keane.
"He was like the original independent record man in those days," said Tom Keane, a songwriter and record producer. "He was the guy going out and finding talent and developing it and getting it out to the masses."
A clarinet player who once led his own 18-piece orchestra, Keane briefly headed Keen Records in 1957 and released Sam Cooke's No. 1 hit single "You Send Me" before launching Del-Fi Records.
In May 1958, Keane heard about Valens, a 17-year-old Mexican American singer and guitar player from Pacoima.
"I saw him at a little concert in a movie theater," Keane recalled in a 2001 Times interview. "There he was, a Latino kid doing just a few riffs and a couple of songs. But I was very impressed by his stage demeanor. The girls were going crazy, screaming."
Keane invited Valens, born Richard Valenzuela, to record demos at his home studio.
"We horsed around for a while and he started singing 'Come On, Let’s Go,' "
Keane told the Times in 1980. "All he had was this title -- he kept playing the same riff over and over. . . . I helped him put an ending and a beginning to it and added lyrics. Then we took it into Gold Star [Recording Studios] and recorded it."
With his name shortened by Keane, Valens was on his way.
"Come On, Let's Go" peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard chart and was followed by "Donna” at No. 2 and “La Bamba” at No. 22.
"I promoted the hell out of him," Keane said. "The key in those days was to get the [radio] jocks. We took care of them, made friends with them. I took Ritchie out on hops for free. That way, the jocks could charge a head charge and made some dough, then they'd turn around and play our records.
"In August, I took Ritchie back East for an 11-city tour and got him on 'American Bandstand.' "
In his autobiography "The Oracle of Del-Fi," Keane wrote that Valens "needed my guidance, and I needed his unpolished musical talent to help us both learn and go forward. We needed each other to complete the circuit."
Their working relationship, however, did not last long.
On Feb. 3, 1959, while on tour, Valens was killed in a plane crash in Iowa that also took the lives of Buddy Holly and J.P. " The Big Bopper"
Richardson.
"I still miss him," Keane told The Times in 1994. "He was like a son to me."
Keane, who was played by Joe Pantoliano in "La Bamba," the 1987 film biography of Valens, went on to record artists including Little Caesar and the Romans, Brenda Holloway, Johnny Crawford, Frank Zappa, Barry White, and surf bands including the Impacts, the Sentinels, Bruce Johnston's Surfing Band, the Lively Ones and Dave Myers & the Surftones.
Keane also had success in the '60s with the Bobby Fuller Four, which recorded "I Fought the Law" and other songs for Keane's Mustang Records.
That association ended with Fuller's mysterious death in 1966.
"After that happened, I was kind of burned out," Keane told The Times in 1994.
Keane folded his labels in 1970 and later worked with his young sons, Tom and John -- the Keane Brothers -- as they launched their careers as performers.
He revived Del-Fi in 1993 to issue new compilation albums by Valens and the Bobby Fuller Four.
He was born Robert Kuhn on Jan. 5, 1922, in Manhattan Beach -- he changed his last name to Keen before changing it to Keane -- and started playing the clarinet at age 5. At 14, he was a guest star with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
He was leading his first band locally at 17 when he was signed by MCA, which promoted him as "The World's Youngest Bandleader."
After serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, he returned to Los Angeles and led his own orchestra. He later took over Artie Shaw's band and had his own TV variety show on Channel 2 in Los Angeles in the early '50s.
In addition to his son Tom, Keane is survived by his wife, Dina; his other sons Bob and John; his daughter, Chanelle Keane; his brother, Walker Kuhn; and seven grandchildren. No memorial service will be held.
den✧✧✧.mclel✧✧✧@lati✧✧✧.c✧✧
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/arts/music/02keane.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
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December 2, 2009
Bob Keane, Del-Fi Records Founder, Dies at 87 By WILLIAM GRIMES
Bob Keane, a record producer who discovered Ritchie Valens and helped start the careers of Sam Cooke, the Bobby Fuller Four and Frank Zappa, died in Hollywood, Calif., on Saturday. He was 87.
The cause was renal failure resulting from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his son Tom said.
Mr. Keane scored a coup for his fledgling Del-Fi label in 1958 after spotting Richard Valenzuela, a young Mexican-American singer and guitar player, performing at a movie theater in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles. His signature tune, “Come On, Let’s Go,” barely qualified as a song, but the audience, mostly screaming teenage girls, suggested big potential to Mr. Keane.
“He just had little riffs and stuff — he couldn’t put a song together, and he couldn’t write a bridge,” Mr. Keane told Rolling Stone in 2004.
Nevertheless, he continued, “I said to myself, ‘If I can put that guy on record, and get these girls like this, I’m gonna have something.’ "
Mr. Keane told the young singer to shorten his name to Valens and helped him develop his ideas into songs. Valens scored a modest hit with “Come On, Let’s Go” and then soared to the top of the charts with “Donna” and “La Bamba.”
His eight-month career ended when he died in an airplane crash on Feb. 3, 1959, with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.
Robert Verril Kuhn was born in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on Jan. 5, 1922. A Benny Goodman fan, he took up the clarinet at 5 and at 17 was fronting his own big band. The MCA talent agency, entranced by the idea of a teenage Goodman, signed him and promoted him as “The World’s Youngest Bandleader.”
In 1941 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and trained pilots in North Carolina. After the war he returned to Los Angeles and performed with several groups, including Artie Shaw’s band, for which he was the substitute frontman. In 1950 he was hired as the conductor for “The Hank McCune Show,”
a television sitcom, and changed his name to Keene, later changing the spelling to Keane.
In 1957, teaming up with a businessman named John Siamas, Mr. Keane started Keen Records. Acting as the label’s A&R man, he signed Sam Cooke, who was singing with the gospel group the Soul Stirrers, and released his first non-gospel hit, “You Send Me.” It reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, but Mr. Keane was pushed out of the record company. Undeterred, he started Del-Fi.
Mr. Keane maintained an open-door policy at his record label. Anyone could walk in and get a hearing. Over the years he recorded the soul singer Brenda Holloway (“Every Little Bit Hurts”), the doo-wop group Little Caesar and the Romans (“Those Oldies But Goodies”) and surf-music groups like the Surfaris, the Centurions and the Lively Ones.
In 1963 Zappa, a walk-in, brought Mr. Keane a collection of doo-wop and surf tracks that he had written and recorded in a studio in Cucamonga, Calif.
They were later released as the album “Cucamonga.”
In 1965 Mr. Keane started an R&B subsidiary, Bronco, and hired Barry White as producer and A&R man.
Mr. Keane’s biggest success at Del-Fi was the Bobby Fuller Four, which reached the Top 40 with a cover version of Buddy Holly’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You” and broke into the Top 10 with “I Fought the Law.” In 1966, Fuller was found dead in a car near his home in Los Angeles, and Del-Fi records went out of business soon after.
Mr. Keane went on to sell accordion lessons door to door and, with more success, home burglar alarms. In the 1970s he devoted his musical energies to managing the career of his sons, John and Tom, who performed as the Keane Brothers. In the 1980s he resuscitated Del-Fi, whose catalog Quentin Tarantino ransacked for the soundtrack of “Pulp Fiction.”
In addition to his son Tom, of Los Angeles, Mr. Keane is survived by his wife, Dina, also of Los Angeles; a brother, Walker Kuhn of Riverside, Calif.; two other sons, Bob, of London, and John, of Los Angeles; a daughter, Chanelle, of Manhattan; and seven grandchildren.
In 2006 Mr. Keane published a memoir, “The Oracle of Del-Fi: My Life in Music with Ritchie Valens, Sam Cooke, Frank Zappa, Barry White and Other Legends.”
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― curmudgeon, Thursday, 3 December 2009 00:44 (fourteen years ago) link