Early Life
Montez grew up in Hawthorne, California, influenced by the Latino-flavored music of his community and the success of Ritchie Valens.
In 1962, he recorded the single "Let's Dance" on Monogram Records (written and produced by Jim Lee). It went to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the U.S. and to #2 on the UK Singles Chart. The follow-up, "Some Kinda Fun", was a lesser hit. However, both records sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs.
Montez toured with Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Platters, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and The Beatles opened London, York and Northampton concerts for him while performing with Tommy Roe. Montez commented "Who are these guys The Beatles? I try to keep up with the British scene, but I don't know their work".
Read more about this topic: Chris Montez
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“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
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“My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that’s walked
A song that’s spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke
When I think about myself.”
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