Buddy Holly
is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll -- he had
his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but
his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of
any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded. Holly
was unique, his legendary status and his impact on popular music all
the more extraordinary for having been achieved in barely 18 months.
Among his rivals, Bill Haley was there first and established rock & roll music; Elvis Presley
objectified the sexuality implicit in the music, selling hundreds of
millions of records in the process, and defined one aspect of the youth
and charisma needed for stardom; and Chuck Berry
defined the music's roots in blues along with some of the finer points
of its sexuality, and its youthful orientation (and, in the process,
intermixed all of these elements). Holly's
influence was just as far-reaching as these others, if far more subtle
and more distinctly musical in nature. In a career lasting from the
spring of 1957 until the winter of 1958-1959 -- less time than Elvis had at the top before the army took him (and less time, in fact, than Elvis spent in the army) -- Holly became the single most influential creative force in early rock & roll.
Born in Lubbock, TX, on September 7, 1936, Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holley
(he later dropped the "e") was the youngest of four children. A natural
musician from a musical family, he was proficient on guitar, banjo, and
mandolin by age 15 and was working as part of a duo with his boyhood
friend Bob Montgomery, with whom he had also started writing songs. By the mid-'50s, Buddy & Bob, as they billed themselves, were playing what they called "western and bop"; Holly,
in particular, was listening to a lot of blues and R&B and finding
it compatible with country music. He was among those young Southern men
who heard and saw Elvis perform in the days when the latter was signed to Sam Phillips' Sun Records -- indeed, Buddy & Bob played as an opening act for Elvis when he played the area around Lubbock in early 1955, and Holly saw the future direction of his life and career.
By mid-1955, Buddy & Bob, who already worked with an upright bass (played by Larry Welborn), had added drummer Jerry Allison
to their lineup. They'd also cut some sides that would have qualified
as rock & roll, though no label was interested at that particular
time. Eventually Montgomery,
who leaned toward more of a traditional country sound, left the
performing partnership, though they continued to compose songs together.
Holly kept pushing his music toward a straight-ahead rock & roll sound, working with Allison, Welborn, and assorted other local musicians, including guitarist Sonny Curtis and bassist Don Guess. It was with the latter two that Holly
cut his first official recording session in January of 1956 in
Nashville for Decca Records. They found out, however, that there was a
lot more to playing and cutting rock & roll than met the eye; the
results of this and a follow-up session in July were alternately either a
little too tame and a little too far to the country side of the mix or
were too raw. Some good music and a pair of near classics, "Midnight
Shift" and "Rock Around With Ollie Vee," did come out of those Decca
sessions, but nothing issued at the time went anywhere. At the time, it
looked as though Holly had missed his shot at stardom.
Fate intervened in the guise of Norman Petty,
a musician-turned-producer based in Clovis, NM, who had an ear for the
new music and what made it sound good, especially over the radio, to the
kids. Petty had a studio where he charged by the song instead of by the hour, and Holly and company had already begun working there in the late spring of 1956. After Decca's rejection, Holly and his band, which now included Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, threw themselves into what Petty
regarded as the most promising songs they had, until they worked out a
tight, tough version of one of the failed originals that Holly had cut in Nashville, entitled "That'll Be the Day." The title and lyrical phrase, lifted from a line that John Wayne was always quoting in the John Ford movie The Searchers, had staying power, and the group built on it. They got the song nailed and recorded, and with Petty's help, got it picked up by Murray Deutsch, a publishing associate of Petty's who, in turn, got it to Bob Thiele, an executive at Coral Records, who liked it. Ironically, Coral was a subsidiary of Decca, the same company to which Holly had previously been signed.
Thiele
saw the record as potential hit, but there were some major hurdles to
overcome before it could actually get released. For starters, according
to author Philip Norman in his book Rave On, Thiele would get only the most begrudging support from his record company. Decca had lucked out in 1954 when, at Milt Gabler's urging, they'd signed Bill Haley & His Comets
and subsequently saw his "Rock Around the Clock" top the charts, but
very few of those in charge at Decca had a real feel or appreciation for
rock & roll or any sense of where it might be heading, or whether
the label could (or should) follow it there. For another, although he
had been dropped by Decca Records the previous year, the contract that Holly
had signed prohibited him from re-recording anything that he had cut
for Decca, regardless of whether it had been released or not, for five
years; though Coral Records was a subsidiary of Decca, there was every
chance that Decca's Nashville office could hold up the release and might
even haul Holly into court. Amid all of these possibilities, good and bad, Welborn, who had played on "That'll Be the Day," was replaced on bass by Joe B. Mauldin.
"That'll Be the Day" was issued in May of 1957 mostly as an indulgence to Thiele,
to "humor" him, according to Norman. The record was put out on the
Brunswick label, which was oriented more toward jazz and R&B, and
credited to the Crickets,
a group name picked as a dodge to prevent any of the powers-that-were
at Decca -- and especially Decca's Nashville office -- from having too
easy a time figuring out that the singer was the same artist that they'd
dropped the year before. Petty also became the group's manager as well as their producer, signing the Crickets -- identified as Allison, Sullivan, and Mauldin -- to a contract. Holly
wasn't listed as a member in the original document, in order to hide
his involvement with "That'll Be the Day," but this omission would later
become the source of serious legal and financial problems for him.
When the smoke cleared, the song shot to the top spot on the national charts that summer. Of course, Decca knew Holly's identity by then; with Thiele's persuasion and the reality of a serious hit in their midst, the company agreed to release Holly
from the five-year restriction on his old contract, leaving him free to
sign any recording contract he wanted. In the midst of sorting out the
particulars of Holly's legal situation, Thiele
discovered that he had someone on his hands who was potentially a good
deal more than a one-hit wonder -- there were potentially more and
different kinds of potential hits to come from him. When all was said
and done, Holly found himself with two recording contracts, one with Brunswick as a member of the Crickets and the other with Coral Records as Buddy Holly, which was part of Thiele's strategy to get the most out of Holly's
talent. By releasing two separate bodies of work, he could keep the
group intact while giving room for its obvious leader and "star" to
break out on his own.
There was actually little difference in the two sets of
recordings for most of his career, in terms of how they were done or who
played on them, except possibly that the harder, straight-ahead rock
& roll songs, and the ones with backing vocals, tended to be
credited to the Crickets. The confusion surrounding the Buddy Holly/Crickets dual identity was nothing, however, compared to the morass that constituted the songwriting credits on their work.
It's now clear that Petty, acting as their manager and producer, parceled out writing credits at random, gifting Niki Sullivan and Joe B. Mauldin (and himself) the co-authorship of "I'm Gonna Love You Too," while initially leaving Holly's name off of "Peggy Sue." Petty
usually added his name to the credit line as well, a common practice in
the 1950s for managers and producers who wanted a bigger piece of the
action. In fairness, it should be said that Petty did make suggestions, some of them key, in shaping certain of Holly's
songs, but he almost certainly didn't contribute to the extent that the
shared credits would lead one to believe. Some of the public's
confusion over songwriting was heightened by complications ensuing from
another of the contracts that Holly had signed in 1956. Petty had his own publishing company, Nor Va Jak Music, and had a contract with Holly to publish all of his new songs; but the prior year, Holly
had signed an exclusive contract with another company -- eventually a
settlement and release from the old contract might be sorted out, but in
order to reduce his profile as a songwriter until that happened, and to
convince the other publisher that they weren't losing too much in any
settlement, he copyrighted many of his new songs under the pseudonym "Charles Hardin."
The dual recording contracts made it possible for Holly to record an extraordinary number of sides in the course of his 18 months of fame. Meanwhile, the group -- billed as Buddy Holly & the Crickets
-- became one of the top attractions of rock & roll's classic
years, putting on shows that were as exciting and well played as any in
the business. Holly
was the frontman, singing lead and playing lead guitar -- itself an
unusual combination -- as well as writing or co-writing many of their
songs. But the Crickets
were also a totally enveloping performing unit, generating a big and
exciting sound (which, apart from some live recordings from their 1958
British tour, is lost to history). Allison was a very inventive drummer and contributed to the songwriting bit more often than his colleagues, and Joe B. Mauldin and Niki Sullivan provided a solid rhythm section.
The fact that the group relied on originals for their singles
made them unique and put them years ahead of their time. In 1957-1958,
songwriting wasn't considered a skill essential to a career in rock
& roll; the music business was still patterned along the lines that
it had followed since the '20s, with songwriting a specialized
profession organized on the publishing side of the industry, separate
from performing and recording. Once in a while, a performer might write a
song or, much more rarely, as in the case of a Duke Ellington,
count composition among his key talents, but generally this was an
activity left to the experts. Any rock & roller with the inclination
to write songs would also have to get past the image of Elvis, who stood to become a millionaire at age 22 and never wrote songs (the few "Presley" songwriting credits were the result of business arrangements rather than any creative activity on his part).
Buddy Holly & the Crickets
changed that in a serious way by hitting number one with a song that
they'd written and then reaching the Top Ten with originals like "Oh,
Boy" and "Peggy Sue," and regularly charging up the charts on behalf of
their own songwriting. This attribute wasn't appreciated by the public
at the time, and wouldn't be noticed widely until the 1970s, but
thousands of aspiring musicians, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, took note of the fact, and some of them decided to try and emulate Holly.
Less obvious at the time, Holly
and company also broke up the established record industry method of
recording, which was to bring the artist into the label's own studio,
working on a timetable dictated by corporate policy and union rules. If
an artist were extremely successful -- à la Sinatra or Elvis, or later on, the Beatles
-- they got a blank check in the studio and any union rules were
smoothed over, but that was a rare privilege, available only to the most
elite of musicians. Buddy Holly & the Crickets, by contrast, did their work, beginning with "That'll Be the Day," in Clovis, NM, at Petty's
studio. They took their time, they experimented until they got the
sound they wanted, and no union told them when to stop or start their
work, and they delivered great records; what's more, they were records
that didn't sound like anyone else's, anywhere.
The results were particularly telling on the history of rock
music. The group worked out a sound that gave shape to the next wave of
rock & roll and, especially, to early British rock & roll and
the subsequent British Invasion beat, with the lead and rhythm guitars
closely interlocked to create a fuller, harder sound. On songs such as
"Not Fade Away,""Everyday," "Listen to Me," "Oh Boy!," "Peggy Sue,"
"Maybe Baby,""Rave On," "Heartbeat," and "It's So Easy," Holly advanced rock & roll's range and sophistication without abandoning its fundamental joy and excitement. Holly
and the band weren't afraid to experiment even on their singles, so
that "Peggy Sue" made use of the kind of changes in volume and timbre on
the guitar that were usually reserved for instrumental records;
similarly, "Words of Love" was one of the earliest successful examples
of double-tracked vocals in rock & roll, which the Beatles, in particular, would embrace in the ensuing decade.
Buddy Holly & the Crickets were very popular in America, but in England they were even bigger, their impact serious rivaling that of Elvis
and, in some ways, even exceeding it. This was due, in part, to the
fact that they actually toured England -- they spent a month there in
1958, playing a series of shows that were still being written about 30
years later -- which was something that Elvis never did. But it also had to do with their sound and Holly's
stage persona. The group's heavy use of rhythm guitar slotted right in
with the sound of skiffle music, a mix of blues, folk, country, and jazz
elements that constituted most of British youth's introduction to
playing music and their way into rock & roll. Additionally, although
he cut an exciting figure on-stage, Holly looked a lot less likely a rock & roll star than Elvis
-- tall, lanky, and bespectacled, he looked like an ordinary guy who
simply played and sang well, and part of his appeal as a rock & roll
star was rooted in how unlikely he looked in that role. He provided
inspiration -- and a way into the music -- for tens of thousands of
British teenagers who also couldn't imagine themselves rivals to Elvis or Gene Vincent in the dark and dangerous department.
At least one star British guitarist of the late '50s, Hank Marvin of the Shadows, owed his look (and the fact that he wore his glasses proudly on stage) to Holly, and his look can be seen being propagated into the 1970s by Elvis Costello. Additionally, although he played several different kinds of guitar, Holly
was specifically responsible for popularizing -- some would say
elevating to mystical, even magical status -- the Fender Stratocaster,
especially in England. For a lot of would-be rock & rollers on the
Sceptered Isle, Holly's
1958 tour was the first chance they'd had to see or hear the instrument
in action, and it quickly became the guitar of choice for anyone
aspiring to stardom as an axeman in England. (Indeed, Marvin, inspired by Holly, later had what is reputed to be the first Stratocaster ever brought into England.)
The Crickets were reduced to a trio with the departure of Sullivan
in late 1957, following the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show,
but that was almost the least of the changes that would ensue over the
following year. The group consolidated its success with the release of
two LPs, The Chirping Crickets and Buddy Holly, and did two very successful international tours as well as more performing in the United States. Holly had already developed aspirations and interests that diverged somewhat from those of Allison and Mauldin.
The thought apparently had never occurred to either of them of giving
up Texas as their home, and they continued to base their lives there,
while Holly was
increasingly drawn to New York, not just as a place to do business, but
also to live. His romance with and marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, a
receptionist in Murray Deutsch's office, only made the decision to move
to New York easier.
By this time, Holly's
music had grown in sophistication and complexity to the point where he
had relinquished the lead guitar duties in the studio to session player Tommy Alsup, and he had done a number of recordings in New York utilizing session musicians such as King Curtis.
It was during this period that his and the group's sales had slackened
somewhat. The singles such as "Heartbeat" didn't sell nearly as well as
the 45s of 1957 had rolled out of stores. He might even have advanced
farther than a big chunk of the group's audience was prepared to accept
in late 1958. "Well...All Right," for example, was years ahead of its
time as a song and a recording.
Holly's split with the group -- and Petty
-- in the fall of 1958 left him free to pursue some of those newer
sounds, but it also left him short of cash resources. In the course of
ending the association, it became clear to Holly and everyone else that Petty
had manipulated the numbers and likely taken an enormous slice of the
group's income for himself, though there was to prove almost no way of
establishing this because he never seemed to finish his "accounting" of
the moneys due to anyone, and his books were ultimately found to be in
such disarray that when he came up with various low five-figure
settlements to those involved, they were glad to get what they got.
With a new wife -- who was pregnant -- and no settlement coming in from Petty, Holly
decided to earn some quick money by signing to play the Winter Dance
Party package tour of the Midwest. It was on that tour that Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash, on February 3, 1959.
The crash was considered a piece of grim but not terribly
significant news at the time. Most news organizations, run by men who'd
come of age in the 1930s or 1940s, didn't take rock & roll very
seriously, except to the degree that it could be exploited to sell
newspapers or build viewing audiences. Holly's
clean-cut image and scandal-free life, coupled with the news of his
recent marriage, did give the story more poignancy than it otherwise
might have had and probably got him treated more respectfully than would
have been the case with other music stars of the period.
For teenagers of the period, it was the first public tragedy of
its kind. No white rock & roller of any significance had ever died
before, forget three of them, and the news was devastating. Radio
station disc jockeys were also shaken -- for a lot of people involved in
rock & roll music on any level, Holly's
death may well have been the first time that they woke up the next day
wishing and hoping that the previous day's news had all been a dream.
The suddenness and the whole accidental nature of the event, coupled with the ages of Holly and Valens -- 22 and 17, respectively -- made it even harder to take. Hank Williams
had died at 29, but with his drinking and drug use he had always seemed
on the fast track to the grave to almost anyone who knew him and even
to a lot of fans; Johnny Ace
had died in 1954 backstage at a show, but that was also by his own
hand, in a game of Russian roulette. The emotional resonances of this
event was totally different in every way possible from those tragedies.
A few careers were actually launched in the wake of the tragedy. Bobby Vee leaped to stardom when he and his band took over Holly's spot on the tour. In America, however, something of a pall fell over rock & roll music -- its sound was muted by Holly's death and Elvis'
military service, and this darkness didn't fully lift for years. In
England, the reaction was much more concentrated and pronounced -- Holly's
final single, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," rose to number one on the
British charts in the wake of his death, and it seemed as though the new
generation of English rock & rollers and their audiences wouldn't
let Holly's music or spirit die. Two years after the event, producer Joe Meek and singer Mike Berry
combined to make "Tribute to Buddy Holly," a memorial single that
sounded like the man himself reborn and still brings smiles and chills
to listeners who know it; it is said that Meek never entirely got over Holly's death, and he did kill himself on the anniversary. On the less extreme front, players from Lennon, McCartney, and Keith Richards on down all found themselves influenced by Holly's music, songs, and playing. Groups like the Searchers -- taking their name from the same Wayne movie whence the phrase "that'll be the day" had been lifted -- sounded a lot like the Crickets
and had a handful of his songs in their repertory when they cut their
earliest sides, and it wasn't just the hits that they knew, but album
cuts as well. Other bands, like a Manchester-spawned outfit fronted by Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, and Tony Hicks began a four-decade career by taking the name the Hollies.
Holly's record label continued to release posthumous albums of his work for years after his death, beginning with The Buddy Holly Story in early 1959, and they even repackaged the 1956 Decca sides several times over under various titles (the mid-'70s British LP The Nashville Sessions is the best of the vinyl editions). The company also engaged Petty to take various Holly demos and early country-flavored sides done by Buddy & Bob and dub new instruments and backing voices, principally using a band called the Fireballs. Those releases, including the albums Reminiscing and Showcase, did moderately well in America, but in England they actually charted. New recordings of his music, including the Rolling Stones' bone-shaking rendition of "Not Fade Away" -- taking it back to its Bo Diddley-inspired roots -- and the Beatles gorgeous rendition of "Words of Love" helped keep Holly's
name alive before a new generation of listeners. In America, it was
more of an uphill struggle to spread the word -- rock & roll, like
most American popular culture, was always regarded as more easily
disposable, and as a new generation of teenagers and new musical
phenomena came along, the public did gradually forget. By the end of the
1960s, except among older fans (now in their twenties) and hardcore
oldies listeners, Holly was a largely forgotten figure in his own country.
The tide began to turn at the very tail-end of the 1960s, with the beginning of the oldies boom. Holly's
music figured in it, of course, and as people listened they also heard
about the man behind it -- even Rolling Stone magazine, then the arbiter
of taste for the counterculture, went out of its way to remind people
of who Holly
was. His image constituted a haunting figure, frozen forever in poses
from 1957 and 1958, bespectacled, wearing a jacket and smiling; he
looked like (and was) a figure from another age. The nature of his
death, in an air crash, also set him apart from some of the then-recent
deaths of contemporary rock stars such as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison -- they'd all pushed life right to the edge, till it broke, where Holly stood there seemingly eternally innocent, both personally and in terms of the times in which he'd lived.
Then, in 1971, a little-known singer/songwriter named Don McLean, who counted himself a Holly
fan, rose to international stardom behind a song called "American Pie,"
whose narrative structure was hooked around "the day the music died."
After disposing of the erroneous notion that he was referring to
President Kennedy, McLean made it clear that he meant February 3, 1959, and Holly. Coverage of "American Pie"'s popularity and lyrics as it soared to the top of the charts inevitably led to mentions of Holly, who was suddenly getting more exposure in the national press than he'd ever enjoyed in his lifetime.
His music had never disappeared -- even the Grateful Dead
performed "Not Fade Away" in concert -- and now there was a song that
seemed to give millions of people a series of personal and musical
reference points into which to place the man. Until "American Pie," most
Americans equated November 22, 1963, the day of President Kennedy's
murder, with the loss of national innocence and an opening of an era of
shared grief. McLean
pushed the reference point back to February 3, 1959, on a purely
personal basis, and an astonishingly large number of listeners accepted
it.
In 1975, McCartney's MPL Communications bought Holly's publishing catalog from a near-bankrupt Petty. To some, the sale was Petty's final act of theft -- having robbed Holly
and his widow blind in settling the account of what was owed him as a
performer, he was profiting one last time from his perfidy. The truth is
that it was a godsend to Maria Elena Holly and the Holly
family in Lubbock; amid the events of the years and decades that
followed, MPL was able to sell and exploit those songs in ways that Petty in Clovis, NM, never could have, and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for them that Petty never would have. And with McCartney -- a Holly fan from the age of 15, and probably the most successful fan Holly ever had -- as publisher, they were paid every cent they had coming.
Amid the growing interest in Holly's music, the record industry was very slow to respond, at least in America. At the end of the 1960s, there were exactly two Holly LPs available domestically, The Great Buddy Holly, consisting of the 1956 Decca sides, which hardly represented his best or most important work, and the even more dispensable Giant
album, consisting of overdubbed demos and outtakes. British audiences
got access to more and better parts of his catalog first, and a
collection, 20 Golden Greats, actually topped the charts over there in 1978, in conjunction with the release of the movie The Buddy Holly Story, starring Gary Busey
in the title role. It was a romanticized and very simplified account of
the man's life and career, and slighted the contributions of the other
members of the Crickets -- and never even mentioned Petty -- but it got some of the essentials right and made Busey into a star and Holly into a household name.
In 1979, Holly became the first rock & roll star to be the subject of a career-spanning box set, ambitiously (and inaccurately) called The Complete Buddy Holly.
Initially released in England and Germany, it later appeared in
America, but it only seemed to whet hardcore fans' appetites for more --
two or three Holly
bootlegs were circulating in the early '80s, including one that offered
a handful of songs from the group's 1958 British tour. In a rare bold
move, mostly courtesy of producer Steve Hoffman, MCA Records in 1983 issued For the First Time Anywhere, a selection of raw, undubbed masters of original Holly recordings that had previously only been available with extra instruments added on -- it was followed by From the Original Master Tapes, the first attempt to put together a Holly compilation with upgraded sound quality. Those titles and The Great Buddy Holly were the earliest of Holly's official CD releases, though they were soon followed by Buddy Holly and The Chirping Crickets. In 1986, the BBC aired The Real Buddy Holly Story, a documentary produced by McCartney as a counteractive to the Busey
movie, which covered all of the areas ignored by the inaccuracies of
the movie and responded to them. There have followed stage musicals and
plays, upgraded and audiophile reissues of his work, and tribute albums,
all continuing to flow out at a steady pace more than 50 years after Holly's death.
Source: All Music.com.
