Buddy Holly

Forty years after his death, a young musician from Lubbock, Texas, is remembered for his genius

by David Ritchie

Picture a city the size of Worcester, but surrounded by farm and ranchland, the biggest city for almost 300 miles in any direction. Lubbock, Texas, is the flattest place on earth; the dry land supports little else but cotton fields and tumbleweeds. It's been suggested that the emptiness itself gives rise to the creativity that is so rampant there -- what else is there to do but play music?

This was the city that spawned Buddy Holly. He was born Charles Hardin Holley in 1936 into a family that surrounded him with music. He grew up shy, lanky, and nearsighted (hardly the rock-and-roll ideal) but possessed some inner strength that propelled him into the spotlight. He and his best friend, Bob Montgomery, were hosts of their own radio show by the time Holly was 17, playing country and bluegrass standards.

But Holly was also a big fan of rhythm 'n` blues. He'd already started incorporating it into his sound when, in 1955, Buddy and Bob opened for the young Elvis Presley, a white kid playing music from both sides of the color-line. Holly's music would never be the same (indeed, music in general would never be the same). Soon he was off to Nashville to make records, but his career (which would last barely three years) got off to a slow start. Decca Records producer and country legend Owen Bradley had no idea how to achieve what Buddy wanted (Holly needed someone who understood what Sam Phillips was doing over at Sun Records). His recording of "That'll Be the Day" for Decca was rejected, and Holly's contract was dropped.

Holly returned to Lubbock, organized his band, the Crickets, and contacted producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico. In February 1957, they re-recorded "That'll Be the Day," which landed the Crickets a contract with Brunswick (ironically, a Decca subsidiary). By September, the song was a hit. Over the next 18 months, Holly and the Crickets rode the wave of rock and roll, recording some of its most enduring and innovative songs, including "Maybe Baby," "Words of Love," "Oh Boy!," and "Not Fade Away."

Jerry Allison's drumming on the Clovis sessions was nothing short of brilliant, often trading in the whole set for a single drum or simply patting out the part on his thighs ("Not Fade Away" featured just a cardboard box played with sticks). Joe Mauldin's bass work was rock-solid, and Petty's studio savvy helped Holly achieve the sounds he wanted, from the pioneering multi-tracked vocals on "Words of Love" to the frequent use of an echo chamber that he'd built in a second building next to the studio (a microphone routed sound to an amplifier in the chamber, then a second mic picked up that sound and rerouted it back to the studio).

But the real innovation was all Buddy Holly. His unusual rhythm guitar style was played with all downstrokes, achieving a percussive attack that perfectly meshed with Allison's drumming (they'd played together for years, and it showed). And though he didn't invent rockabilly, his quavering vocal style was the perfect instrument.

Maybe his greatest achievement, one for which there was no precedent, was Holly's total involvement in the music. Presley had the sex appeal and the stage moves, but he was nothing without other people's songs. Holly wrote his own songs, was the bandleader, the singer, the guitarist, the arranger, and was involved in every step of the production. (Had he not been dropped from Decca, it's doubtful he would have been granted that much involvement.)

"Peggy Sue" (perhaps his most influential song) featured rapid-fire drumming from Jerry Allison playing only a snare drum (with the snares off). Petty adjusted the volume and switched the echo on and off to achieve the shifting drumbeat that anchors the session. On Holly's solo guitar break, he punctuated his usual downstrokes with quick up-and-down strokes. Holly's strumming was so fast that when it came time for his solo, he found he couldn't switch the Stratocaster pickups from the rhythm to the lead positions fast enough. Second guitarist Niki Sullivan sat out to flip the switch for him, kneeling at Holly's feet and waiting for the signal. The result has been called the greatest rhythm guitar solo in rock-and-roll history. And of course there was that characteristic hiccuping vocal style of Holly's: "my Peggy Sue-uh-hoo."

Unfortunately, what Holly is best remembered for is one singular event. On February 3, 1959, after several nights of bitter-cold bus rides, Holly chartered a plane in Iowa to carry him to his next date on the tour. Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup (his touring bandmates) gave up the two remaining seats on the red Beechcraft Bonanza four-seater to an ailing J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and Ritchie Valens (who had won a coin toss with Allsup for his seat). The plane made it about eight miles from the airport. No one survived the crash. Holly was 22 years old.

Sadly, Holly's music was (and still is) more revered in England than here in the States. There, his chart successes were significantly greater (even after his death). Lennon and McCartney always admitted their debt to Holly -- their first recording as the Quarrymen was "That'll Be the Day," and they chose to name their new band after another insect. The Rolling Stones' first US release was "Not Fade Away."

The record company which inherited his recordings continued releasing Holly's demos for years after his death with overdubs that probably reflected little of Holly's wishes. The music was all but forgotten here until Don McLean's 1971 hit "American Pie" (which also named the tragedy, "the day the music died"). Then came The Buddy Holly Story. Though it was honored with an Oscar for its score, a host of inaccuracies in the story prompted the making of a superb documentary called The Real Buddy Holly Story. Even with the renewed interest, MCA Records (which now owns his songs) has yet to issue the demos in their original format, despite very successful similar releases from other early rock and rollers.

The city of Lubbock was especially guilty of ignoring Holly's contribution to its legacy. Prior to the 1980 unveiling of a statue of Holly, there was no public acknowledgment of its most famous son. But opinions have definitely shifted there (40 years later), as city fathers are now Holly's contemporaries. The city recently purchased the largest collection of Buddy Holly memorabilia, and in September 1999, the Buddy Holly Center is scheduled to open. With the museum in Lubbock, a tribute album on Decca, and an annual concert at the Surf Ballroom in Iowa (the last venue Holly played), someone somewhere who wasn't even born in 1959, will be turned on to the brilliance of his music. Despite what McLean says, the music didn't die; it still makes people smile.