"Donna" is a song written and sung by Ritchie Valens featuring the 50s progression. The song was released in 1958 on Del-Fi Records. It reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the following year, becoming Valens' highest-charting single. The song was covered by another Del-Fi artist and western actor, Johnny Crawford, in 1962. It was also covered in 2003 by American punk band The Misfits on their album Project 1950, which was a cover album of 1950s songs.

It was written as a tribute to his high school sweetheart, Donna Ludwig, now known as Donna Fox.

"Donna", the second Ritchie Valens single released, was the A side of the influential and much more famous song "La Bamba". This single was only one of three, along with the previous single ("Come On, Let's Go"/"Framed" – Del-Fi 4106) and the follow-up ("Fast Freight"/"Big Baby Blues" – Del-Fi 4111) ever released in Valens's lifetime.

Original Del-Fi pressings of "Donna"/"La Bamba" include black and sea green labels with circles, later replaced with solid sea green or solid dark green labels. Early 1960s pressings have black labels with sea green "sawtooth" outer edge.

Donna may refer to:

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics (words) of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, though they may be religious verses or free prose.

A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc.), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc.).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocal forms including opera and oratorio. However, the term is, "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)." The noun "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word to mean "that which is sung" or "a musical composition suggestive of song." The OED also defines the word to mean "a poem" or "the musical phrases uttered by some birds, whales, and insects, typically forming a recognizable and repeated sequence and used chiefly for territorial defence or for attracting mates."

Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela; May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959) was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist.

A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted only eight months. During this time, however, he scored several hits, most notably "La Bamba", which was originally a Mexican folk song that Valens transformed with a rock rhythm and beat that became a hit in 1958, making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement.

On February 3, 1959, on what has become known as The Day the Music Died, Valens was killed in a small-plane crash in Iowa, a tragedy that also claimed the lives of fellow musicians Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Valens was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Ritchie Valens was born in Pacoima, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on May 13, 1941. His parents were Joseph Steven Valenzuela and Concepcion Reyes. Brought up hearing traditional Mexican mariachi music, as well as flamenco guitar, R&B and jump blues, he expressed an interest in making music of his own by the age of 5. He was encouraged by his father to take up guitar and trumpet, and later taught himself the drums. One day, a neighbor came across Ritchie trying to play a guitar that had only two strings. He re-strung the instrument, and taught Ritchie the fingerings of some chords. While Ritchie was left-handed, he was so eager to learn the guitar that he mastered the traditionally right-handed version of the instrument.^{[citation needed]} Valens had attended Pacoima Junior High School (now Pacoima Middle School). By the time he was attending junior high school, his proficiency on the guitar was such that he brought the instrument to school and would sing and play songs to his friends on the bleachers.^{[citation needed]}

Eldra Patrick "El" DeBarge (born June 4, 1961) is an American R&B/pop singer-songwriter, known as the lead singer and co-founder of the R&B/soul music family group DeBarge throughout the early to mid-1980s. As a solo artist, he is best known for the hits "Who's Johnny" and "Love Always" and for his collaborations with Tone Loc, Quincy Jones, Fourplay and DJ Quik. DeBarge is a three-time Grammy nominee.

A native of Detroit, Michigan, El was the sixth of ten children born to Robert Louis DeBarge, Sr. (1932–2009) and Etterlene (née Abney) DeBarge. DeBarge was already singing in his local church choir and playing piano as a child. Later after his family moved to Grand Rapids, he and the rest of his family began performing at their uncle's Pentecostal church. At thirteen, his parents divorced after a difficult and stormy marriage. El is of African American, English, French Canadian and Native American descent. Growing up, he was closest to eldest brother Bobby and began imitating his brother's vocal styling.