Chris Montez – Lets Dance (1963)

The Headliner Who Asked “Who Are These Guys The Beatles?”

Released in June 1962 on Monogram Records, “Let’s Dance” shot to number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, where it spent four weeks just below the top spot. The song spent 14 weeks on the American chart and 18 weeks on the UK chart. A 1972 reissue pushed it back to number nine in Britain, proving the track had legs far beyond its initial run. Both “Let’s Dance” and its follow-up “Some Kinda Fun” sold over one million copies each and earned gold discs. For a 19-year-old Mexican-American kid from Hawthorne, California, who had met Ritchie Valens at a dance hall four years earlier, this was the dream made real.

The single dominated charts across Europe and established Montez as one of the leading figures in the Los Angeles Hispanic rock community following Valens’s death. He toured with Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Platters, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. In March 1963, he co-headlined a 21-day UK tour with Tommy Roe. The Beatles were booked as the support act. From the very first show at the Granada Cinema in East Ham, it became clear the billing was wrong. The audience went wild for the Liverpudlians and booed Tommy Roe after the interval. Montez reportedly asked backstage that first night, wondering aloud about these unknown British musicians stealing his show.

Jim Lee wrote and produced the track on his own Monogram Records label, which he had built specifically around Montez after meeting him in Hollywood while working at Indigo Records. The song captured the high-energy spirit of early 1960s rock and roll with its infectious rhythm and lyrics celebrating popular dances like the Twist and the Mashed Potato. Montez had wanted to be a crooner like his hero Ritchie Valens, but Lee pushed him toward uptempo rock. That meeting with Valens at a local hop in 1958 had shaped everything. Standing at the back of a crowd of 200 people, young Ezekiel Montanez looked to his right and there stood the man himself. Valens smiled, said hello, and shook his hand. Montez later said it felt like receiving a blessing.

The session musicians included Joel Hill on guitar, who later worked with Canned Heat, Ray Johnson on Philicorda organ, Ray Pohlman on bass, who would become a frequent collaborator with The Doors, and Jesse Sailes on drums. That raw energy captured on tape reflected Montez’s roots in the Los Angeles Hispanic rock community, where rancheras sung at kitchen tables with his brothers mixed with rhythm and blues pouring from neighborhood radios. His father had passed when Chris was eleven, leaving his older brothers to raise him. They taught him guitar and harmony around that kitchen table. He attended Hawthorne High School alongside members of the future Beach Boys, with Brian Wilson sitting in his science class.

The song appeared on his 1963 debut album Let’s Dance on Monogram Records. By 1964, Jim Lee had abandoned the label to pursue his own singing career, and Montez’s subsequent releases flopped. He returned to school to study music at El Camino College, where professors advised him to quit the industry entirely. Then Herb Alpert offered him a contract at A&M Records. Alpert wanted to transform him into a middle-of-the-road ballad singer. Though reluctant, Montez agreed, and “Call Me” in 1966 gave him a second career. Radio DJs unfamiliar with his rock past often announced him as female because of his high falsetto. The confusion cleared up once his photo appeared on the album sleeve.

Tony Sheridan recorded a cover with The Beatles in Hamburg on October 18, 1962, released as a B-side that December. The Ramones covered it. Ola and the Janglers took their Swedish version to number one in 1968. Status Quo included it in a medley that hit number two in the UK in 1990. The song appeared in John Landis’s Animal House and was used in a DSW Shoe Warehouse commercial in 2013. Montez has spent decades promoting education and healthy living in Mexican-American communities, earning the SOPA Wellness Award in San Antonio in 2011. El Camino College named him a distinguished alumnus in 2012.

Ritchie Valens died on February 3, 1959, but his influence never left that kid who stood at the back of a dance hall hoping just to hear him sing. Montez built a career on that handshake, treating fans the way Valens had treated him, carrying forward a kindness he never forgot. Sometimes the biggest gifts come from the smallest gestures. A smile, a hello, and suddenly a teenager from Hawthorne believes he can be something. The song still sounds like that moment of possibility, two minutes of pure joy from someone who almost didn’t believe he belonged.