Keane and Valens (shortened at Keane's request) made a great team. Valens was full of energy, charisma and ideas; the Spanish-speaking, veteran musician Keane was able to relate to Valens personally, culturally and to shape his ideas into songs. Keane used his growing knowledge of the studio (the recording equipment was in his Silverlake home) to create "Donna" in his basement.

Keane's great innovation was to match the voice recording with a copy of itself milliseconds apart, thereby spreading and thickening the vocal sound across the listener's ears - the technique of "doubling" used to this day.

Valens' rockers were recorded at Hollywood's Gold Star studios with professional jazz and R&B musicians; the combination of Ritchie's raw vocals, wild reverbed guitar and the musician's solid grooves made classics out of "Come On Let's Go" and "La Bamba," and inspired generations of Mexican-Americans (from Chan Romero to Los Lobos) to take up arms and rock out in a Latino mode.

Ritchie's death (with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper) in a plane crash in early-59 devastated Keane personally and nearly killed the label; but he soldiered on, and his open door policy generated over 500 singles of every stripe including 17 Top 50 national hits by the likes of Chan Romero (the classic "Hippy, Hippy Shake"), Ron Holden ("Love You So"), Little Caesar and the Romans ("Those Oldies But Goodies"), Bobby Curtola ("Fortune Teller") and teen actor Johnny Crawford ("Cindy's Birthday," "Rumors").

Says Keane, "If I heard something I liked I'd either buy it from them if they'd already cut it, or I'd go into the studio and redo it or change it around. That's how I picked up David Gates and Leon Russell: they had just arrived from Oklahoma.

"Barry White walked in one day and Frank Zappa another with his doo wop stuff. That's how we did it. If I liked it, I put it out."

But it was the surf and hot rod instrumentals by the likes of the Centurians ("Bullwinkle Part ll"), the Lively Ones ("Surf Rider"), the Sentinels, the Impacts, Bruce Johnston's (later of the Beach Boys) Surfing Band, and the Darts (with lead guitarist Glen Campbell) that established Del-Fi as the indigenous L.A. label.

The surf tunes, with their throbbing rhythm and super-charged picked electric guitar or sax leads, are party music galore, and a pure recapitulation of the feelings generated by contact with the wet, the waves and the wild of the sea. Hence, their timelessness.