PHOTOS: Bell Gardens honors rock ’n’ roll roots with Eddie Cochran car show
BELL GARDENS, CA — Classic cars, rock ‘n’ roll, and hometown pride filled Ford Park on Oct. 4 as the Eddie Cochran Memorial Car Show returned for its second year.
The city-sponsored event honors hometown legend Eddie Cochran, an innovator of early rock ‘n’ roll, whose guitar-driven sound influenced everyone from The Beatles to the Sex Pistols. Cochran moved to Bell Gardens with his family in 1953 and began his career performing locally, including gigs at American Legion Post 465 still located on Eastern Avenue.
The event is also dedicated to raising awareness and funds for SELA Kiwanis student scholarships. The day featured pre-1964 classic cars, a pin-up contest, food trucks, and a rockabilly music showcase.
Councilmember Francis De Leon Sanchez, who has sponsored the event both years from the dais, said the idea began as a way to merge her passion for education with her husband’s love of car culture and Eddie Cochran.
“What can we do to raise funds for student scholarships?” De Leon Sanchez said, “We thought, ‘Let's do a car show.’”
A major reason the show continues to thrive, she said, is the support of Parkwest Bicycle Casino, which has donated $10,000 each year toward the event.
“John Park is all about helping youth and students,” De Leon Sanchez said of the Parkwest CEO. “Collaborating with them… really helps because we're able to use that money to continue raising funds as we're putting on this event together.”
Isac Reid, Parkwest’s food and beverage director, said the casino’s sponsorship reflects a broader commitment to giving back.
“We're in the city of Bell Gardens, so it's very important that we invest back into the community,” Reid said. “It helps everybody. It helps the casino. It helps the residents. It helps the city.”
Event organizer Enrique Vega of the Basin Bombers Social Club said the show’s purpose is to honor Cochran’s legacy while also celebrating Southeast LA’s car and rockabilly culture.
Rockabilly—a style of early rock ‘n’ roll that fuses rhythm and blues with country—reflects the sound Cochran helped popularize in the 1950s and one that continues to influence artists today.
“We wanted to honor both Eddie Cochran and also give a little bit back to the custom car, rockabilly community,” Vega said, noting that the event’s focus on pre-1964 cars and rockabilly music helps preserve the spirit of the 1950s.
Vega said car culture runs deep in SELA, pointing to other local legends like Ed “Big Daddy” Roth of Bell, whose shop in nearby Maywood helped launch the Kustom Kulture movement and the now-iconic Rat Fink character. Longstanding clubs like the Long Beach Cavaliers and the Sultans Car Club of Long Beach, he said, have kept that history alive for generations.
“We want to highlight that too here in Southeast LA,” Vega said. “It's not just out like in Huntington Beach and some of the more affluent areas. We have that culture here as well.”
Among the dozens of cars displayed across Ford Park was a 1956 Chevy Nomad owned by Richard Mageno’s son, Chris, who runs Mageno Kustoms and is a custom car builder. The cream-colored station wagon—with its chopped roof, whitewall tires, and gleaming chrome trim—earned the show’s “Cavaliers Pick” award, chosen by the Long Beach Cavaliers, a car club that’s been around since 1948.
The Nomad has been in the Mageno family for more than 50 years—traded for a 1954 Chevy hardtop in the 1970s to make room for a growing family before its engine blew in the early 1980s. Richard said his son took over the project as a teenager and has since transformed it through his custom work, completing the front end just a few weeks before the show.
Richard recalled telling his young son that “if he would behave and get (it) together, I would give him the car.”
“He's changed it a lot, you know, he made it his own,” Mageno said. “He's worked in a couple custom shops, and of course, he does work on stuff himself at the house.”
Richard can remember, as a young man growing up in a Paramount barrio, having a car was critical.
“We worked in gas stations, we worked in fields, we worked wherever we could (to) make money,” he said. “Because we only had one goal (which) was to get transportation, get us a car."
On stage, the day’s music lineup included Bebo & the Good Time Boys, Hillbilly Wolves, Los Apaches, Hot Rod Trio, and Los Motosaicos—a band from San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, Mexico, that fuses rockabilly, blues, and Mexican rock influences.
Lead singer and guitarist Moses Montoya of Los Motosaicos said the band’s style grew from the border-town mix of sounds and cultures that shaped them.
“I don't even consider this a rockabilly band,” Montoya says about Los Motosaicos. “I consider this a border-town band, you know? It's a mix of rockabilly, country, Mexican music, everything, brother, Mexican rock ‘n’ roll.”
“I like the sound that we have,” he said, “And if people dig it? Cool.”
Montoya, who came up in the 1990s SoCal rockabilly scene, citing the 1990 compilation “L.A. Rockabilly” as an early clarion call, said the crossover between cars, motorcycles, and rockabilly has always been inseparable.
“It's always been the cars and the music, this music, go together, bro,” he said. “It's always been like that.”
Montoya loved performing in honor of one of the genre’s forefathers in Cochran’s hometown.
“I love Eddie Cochran. I love his music,” Montoya said. “When it comes to rockabilly, he’s one of the top-notch m-----f-----s, you know what I mean. He died too young, but s--- happens. But brother, that's what inspires us, and we love coming here.”
Cochran, often described as “James Dean with a guitar,” recorded hits like “Summertime Blues” and had a budding Hollywood career before a car accident while on tour in the United Kingdom took his life at just 21.
His influence grew and would help shape the British Invasion a few years later. When Paul McCartney auditioned for John Lennon’s skiffle group The Quarrymen in 1957—a band that would later evolve into The Beatles—he played Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock.”
Here are some photos from the event.
