I was messing around with the La Bamba riff on my button accordion the other day, trying to get it right, and I thought this song would be excellent to feature on my Daily Dose series. La Bamba is a Mexican folk song, although most people associate it with the 1958 rock ‘n’ roll version by Richie Valens. It’s often the case when folk material has been adapted by pop stars, that people think the pop version is the original. Other examples are Sloop John B, adapted by the Beach Boys and House of the Rising Sun, adapted by The Animals. Bob Dylan must have been thinking of La Bamba when he came up with Like a Rolling Stone, don’t you think?. I guess this is a folk music process at work in a world where business consider songs to be commodities.

Let’s get the Ritchie Valens version out there first… It’s still such a catchy riff, isn’t it?

Here’s Like a Rolling Stone (humour me)

Los Machucambos…

Trini Lopez

And now for a spectacularly bad version to close out the post, here’s Ray Conniff and his Orchestra