Ritchie Valens was only 17 when he died in 1959 in the same plane crash that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, and he had only been working in a recording studio for about seven months when the tragedy occurred; thus, his musical legacy rests on about an album-and-a-half of completed studio material, a poorly recorded high school concert, and a handful of demos and rehearsal tapes. This set combines Ritchie Valens, Valens' first album for Bob Keane's Del-Fi label (essentially the only truly finished work Valens recorded), with his second, Ritchie, which was cobbled together from demos, rehearsal sessions, and other odds and ends, and ended up with an internal coherence that is pretty remarkable given the circumstances. The set then adds in eight additional tracks, mostly solo demos and live tracks, to present a pretty complete look at Valens' woefully short career. Virtually everything is here.

After two critically acclaimed but only moderately selling albums, los Lobos were hired to record songs for the film biography of Hispanic '50s rocker Ritchie Valens, resulting in this soundtrack album, which, in addition to eight los Lobos recordings, features tracks by Marshall Crenshaw, Brian Setzer, and others. los Lobos' remake of the title song topped the charts, as did this album, which went on to sell two million copies. The result has been something of a career dilemma for the band, who went back to being a critically acclaimed, modest seller afterward.