HOLLY
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. 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 40 years after Holly's death. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
