Buddy Holly

For the Weezer song, see Buddy Holly (song).

Buddy Holly

Charles Hardin Holley (September 7 1936 – February 3 1959), better known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer, songwriter, and a pioneer of rock and roll. The change of spelling of "Holley" to "Holly" came about because of an error in a contract he was asked to sign, listing him as Buddy Holly. That spelling was then adopted for his professional career.

Buddy Holly is considered one of the most influential founding fathers of rock 'n roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #13 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Although his career was tragically cut short, his body of work is considered among the finest in rock. His works and innovations were copied by his contemporaries and those who were to follow, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and had a profound influence on popular music.

Biography

Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas to Lawrence Odell Holley and Ella Pauline Drake in 1936. The Holleys were a musical family, and, as a young boy, Holley learned to play the violin (his brothers oiled the strings so much that no one could hear him play), piano and guitar. In the fall of 1949, he met Bob Montgomery in Hutchinson Junior High School. They shared a common interest in music and soon teamed up as the duo "Buddy and Bob." Initially influenced by bluegrass music, they sang harmony duets at local clubs and high school talent shows. His musical interests grew throughout high school while singing in the Lubbock High School Choir.

Holly turned to rock music after seeing Elvis Presley sing live in Lubbock in early 1955. A few months later, he appeared on the same bill with Presley, also in Lubbock. Holly's transition to rock was finalized when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets at a local rock show organized by Eddie Crandall, who was also the manager for Marty Robbins. As a result of this performance, Holly was offered a contract with Decca Records to work alone, which he accepted. According to the Amburn book (p. 45), his public name changed from "Holley" to "Holly" on February 8, 1956, when he signed the Decca contract. Among the tracks recorded for Decca was an early version of "That'll Be The Day," which took its title from a phrase that John Wayne's character said repeatedly in the 1956 film, The Searchers.

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"The Crickets": Buddy Holly, Joe B. Mauldin, Jerry Allison, and Niki Sullivan

Back in Lubbock, Holly formed his own band, The Crickets and began making records at Norman Petty's studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Norman had music industry contacts and believing that "That'll Be the Day" would be a hit single, he contacted publishers and labels. Coral Records, a subsidiary of Decca, signed Buddy Holly and The Crickets. This put Holly in the unusual position of having two record contracts at the same time. Before "That'll Be The Day" had its nationwide release, Holly played lead guitar on the hit-single "Starlight", recorded in April, 1957, featuring Jack Huddle. The initial, unsuccessful version of "That'll Be The Day" played more slowly and about half an octave higher than the hit version

Holly managed to bridge some of the racial divide that marked rock n' roll music. While Elvis made black music more acceptable to whites, Holly won over an all-black audience when the Crickets were accidentally booked at New York's Apollo Theater (though, unlike the immediate response depicted in the 1978 movie The Buddy Holly Story, it actually took several performances for his talents to be appreciated).

After the release of several highly successful songs, Holly and the Crickets toured the United Kingdom in 1958.

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Buddy and Maria Holly

That same year, he met Maria Elena Santiago (born 1935 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) while she was working as a receptionist for a New York music publisher. He proposed to her on their very first date. She initially thought he was kidding, but they were married in Lubbock, Texas on August 15, 1958, less than two months after they met. Maria traveled on some of the tours, doing everything from the laundry to equipment set-up to ensuring the group got paid.

The ambitious Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music/recording/publishing scene, while his easygoing bandmates preferred to go back home to Lubbock. Holly acceded to their wishes and in 1959, the group split up. Holly began a solo tour with other notable performers, including Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, "The Big Bopper".

Two nights after a performance in Duluth, Minnesota, the three headliners gave their final show in Clear Lake, Iowa. Following the February 2, 1959 performance at the Surf Ballroom, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new back-up band (Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch, and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. Carl Bunch did not take the flight as he had been hospitalized for frostbite three days earlier. The Big Bopper asked Jennings for his spot on the four-seat plane, as he was recovering from the flu. Ritchie Valens was still signing autographs at the concert site when Allsup walked in and told him it was time to go. Allsup pulled a 50 cent coin out of his pocket and the two men flipped for the seat. Allsup lost the toss.

The four-passenger plane took off in light snow and gusty winds at around 12:55 A.M., but crashed only a few minutes after takeoff. The wreckage was discovered several hours later by the plane's owner, Jerry Dwyer, some 8 miles from the airport on the property of Albert Juhl. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. While theories abound as to the exact cause of the crash, an official determination of pilot error was rendered by the Civil Aeronautics Board (one of the predecessors of the Federal Aviation Administration). Although the crash received a good deal of local coverage, it was displaced in the national news by an accident that occurred the same day in New York City, when American Airlines Flight 320 crashed during an instrument landing approach at LaGuardia Airport, killing 65.

Holly's pregnant wife became a widow after barely six months of marriage and miscarried soon after.

Buddy Holly's gravestone

Holly's funeral services were held at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, and his body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery in the eastern part of the city. Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.

Posthumous record releases

The music of Buddy Holly didn't die with him. He had recorded so prolifically that his record label was able to release brand-new Buddy Holly albums and singles for 10 years after his death. Holly's simple demonstration recordings were overdubbed by studio musicians, to bring them up to then-commercial standards. The best of these records is probably the first posthumous single, the 1959 coupling of "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," produced by Jack Hansen, with added backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers in simulation of an authentic Crickets record. "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" was actually supposed to be the "A" side of the 45, with the backup group effectively echoing Buddy's call-and-response vocal. The Hansen session, in which Holly's last six original compositions were overdubbed, was issued on the 1960 Coral LP The Buddy Holly Story, Volume Two.

Buddy Holly continued to be promoted and sold as an “active” artist, and his records had a loyal following, especially in Europe. The demand for unissued Holly material was so great that Norman Petty resorted to overdubbing whatever he could find: alternate takes of studio recordings, originally rejected masters, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” and the other five 1959 tracks (adding new surf-guitar arrangements), and even Holly's amateur demos from 1954 (where the low-fidelity vocals are often muffled behind the new orchestrations). The last new Buddy Holly album was Giant (featuring the single, “Love Is Strange”), issued in 1969. Between the 1959-60 Jack Hansen overdubs, the 1960s Norman Petty overdubs, various alternate takes, and Holly's undubbed originals, collectors can often choose from multiple versions of the same song.

Style

Holly's music was sophisticated for its day, including the use of instruments considered novel for rock and roll, such as the celesta (heard on "Everyday"). Holly was an influential lead and rhythm guitarist, notably on songs such as "Peggy Sue" and "Not Fade Away". While Holly could pump out boy-loves-girl songs with the best of his contemporaries, other songs featured more sophisticated lyrics and more complex harmonies and melodies than had previously appeared in the genre.

Many of his songs feature a unique vocal "hiccup" technique, a glottal stop, to emphasize certain words in any given song, especially the rockers. Other singers (such as Elvis) have used a similar technique, though less obviously and consistently. An example is the start of the raucous "Rave On": "Weh-eh-ell, the little things you say and do, make me want to be with you-ou...". Or this, from "That'll Be the Day": "Well, you give me all your lovin' and your -turtle dovin'..." and "Peggy sue": "I love you Peggy Sue - with a love so rare and tr-ue ..."

Influence

Contrary to popular belief, teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney did not attend a Holly concert; a school friend of McCartney and George Harrison, Tony Bramwell, did. Bramwell met Holly, and freely shared his records with all three. Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as a primary influence (their band's name, The Beatles, was chosen partly in homage to Holly's Crickets). The Beatles did a cover version of "Words of Love" that was an almost perfect reproduction of Holly's version. Fan McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly's song catalogue.

A young Bob Dylan attended the January 31, 1959 show, part of Holly's final tour. Dylan referred to this in his 1998 Grammy acceptance speech for his 1997 Time out of Mind winning Album of the Year:

“And I just want to say that when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him...and he LOOKED at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was---I don't know how or why---but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.”

Various rock and roll histories have asserted that the singing group The Hollies were named in homage to Buddy Holly. However, according to the band's website, although the group admired Holly (and years later produced an album covering some of his songs), their name was inspired primarily by the sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas of 1962. The site also admits to a degree of uncertainty about that story, so it is possible that any reference to Holly has been disavowed in order to avoid legal issues.

Since his death, many bands and artists have recorded Buddy Holly material, including The Beatles, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, The Rolling Stones, Albert Hammond Jr., Linda Ronstadt, Humble Pie, Peter & Gordon, Rush, Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Blind Faith, Don McLean, John Mellencamp, Foghat, MxPx, Meat Loaf , Pearl Jam, The Knack, The Lillingtons, The Raveonettes and many others.

Buddy Holly in popular culture

Mike Berry released a single called "Tribute to Buddy Holly" (1961). It was written by Geoff Goddard and produced by Joe Meek, who was a great Buddy Holly-fan. In the USA it was released on Coral, the label that also released Buddy Holly's recordings.

Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie", covered by Madonna in the year 2000, is inspired, at least in part, by the "The Day the Music Died" (the day of the plane crash).

A 1980 Gyllene Tider song is called "Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly".

Eddie Cochran, good friend and fellow rock 'n' roll pioneer was so distraught by the deaths of Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper that he recorded the song "Three Stars" as a tribute. Ironically, the song was not released until after Eddie's own all-too-young death.

Paul Simon's song "Old" references his early influences, including Buddy Holly, including the line, "Buddy Holly still goes on, but his catalog was sold."

The Smithereens' song "Maria Elena" is a Buddy Holly tribute as sung to his widow.

During a performance at Zilker Park Austin, Texas, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones performed "Learning the Game", introducing it as "paying homage to a great Texan." Following the performance, Richards stated "One for Buddy, pals." The performance was released in The Rolling Stones DVD box-set, The Biggest Bang.

Phil Ochs famously sang a long tribute to Buddy Holly on the infamous Gunfight at Carnegie Hall album.

Weezer's self-titled debut album features the band's popular single "Buddy Holly".

Of the trio of musicians who died in the crash, Buddy was the one mentioned in Billy Joel's history-themed song "We Didn't Start the Fire".

The Dixie Chicks recently recorded the song "Lubbock or Leave It", which references Buddy Holly's death and the statue that was erected in his hometown after his death.

The Who's 2006 album, "Endless Wire," features the song "Mirror Door" which contains a tribute to passed rock and roll stars, including "Elvis, Buddy, and Eddie C" (Eddie Cochran).

Downtown Lubbock has a "walk of fame" with plaques to various area artists such as Glenna Goodacre, Mac Davis, Maines Brothers Band, and Waylon Jennings, with a life-size statue of Buddy by sculptor Grant Speed (1980), playing his Fender guitar, as its centerpiece. Downtown Lubbock also features Buddy Holly Avenue and the Buddy Holly Center, which is a museum dedicated to Texas art and music.

The Surf Ballroom, a popular old-fashioned dance hall that dates to the height of Big Band Era, continues to put on shows, notably an annual Buddy Holly tribute on the anniversary of his last performances.

Fan-made monument at crash site

In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. It is located on private farmland, about one quarter mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, approximately five miles north of Clear Lake. He also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians near the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That memorial was unveiled on July 17 2003.

The dramatic arc of Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biography The Buddy Holly Story, for which actor Gary Busey received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly, While entertaining, the movie was widely criticized by the rock community for its wild inaccuracies. This led Paul McCartney to produce and host his own tribute to Holly, titled "The Real Buddy Holly Story." This authoritative video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney himself, among others. There were also successful Broadway and West End musicals documenting his career. The musical, Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story, ran in the West End for 13 years.

Holly is one of two musical acts mentioned in the dialogue of the 1973 film American Graffiti. In one scene, the song playing is "Surfin' Safari" by the Beach Boys, leading to an arguing couple to alternate turning the radio off and on:

Carol: "What'd you do that for?"

John: "I don't like that surfin' shit! Rock and roll's been goin' downhill ever since Buddy Holly died!"

Two of Holly's songs are also featured on the film's soundtrack: "That'll Be the Day" and " Maybe Baby".

The 1998 film Six-String Samurai, a surreal romp through an alternate-timeline post-apocalyptic America (Russia bombed and then invaded the United States in 1957), features a rock-and-rolling martial arts hero named "Buddy" who sports familiar black horn-rimmed glasses and a tuxedo. The film follows Buddy's journey to "Lost Vegas," the last outpost of freedom in the world, to claim the crown of the recently-deceased King Elvis.

The science fiction novel Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, by Bradley Denton (ISBN 0-688-10822-9 and ISBN 0-380-71876-6), begins when television sets throughout the world suddenly begin broadcasting a concert by an apparently living Buddy Holly, who says he is on Ganymede.

"Oil", an episode of The Young Ones features Mike (Christopher Ryan) discovering Buddy Holly, alive and well and tangled in parachutes, in the attic of a house in London. Holly comments that he loves "your British beetles", as he has been eating them since the plane crash. Mike asks Holly if he has come up with any new material, and Holly plays a brief song about eating crickets...then his parachute strap suddenly breaks, slamming him into the floor and killing him. Mike later hands off a duffel bag containing Holly's corpse to two minor characters, asking them to "take care of my Buddy."

A fictional version of a young pre-fame Buddy Holly appears in an episode of Quantum Leap, working as a veterinarian's assistant. Throughout the episode Sam doesn't know his name and addresses him using a variety of nicknames. The surprise ending of the show depicts a baffled Sam, having completed his perceived mission, wondering why he's still in Texas. Listening to Buddy (whose last name is never revealed during the episode) singing a ditty about "Sooey! Piggy!" to one of the farm's pigs, he suggests that Buddy reverse the word order. He does, singing "Piggy! Sooey!" which becomes "Peggy Sue" which leads into the first verse of Buddy's hit. Buddy's identity is only confirmed after Al suggests he should try it, Sam therefore addresses Holly as "Buddy" who responds positively for the first time. Then Sam leaps, having successfully established one of the bedrocks of Rock 'n' Roll.

Buddy is also one of the evil citizens who live in the town of "Rock N' Roll Heaven", a community inhabited by deceased music legends in Stephen King's short horror story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band". He was portrayed by Australian actor Kristian Schmid in the television version on the Nightmares & Dreamscapes television mini-series.

In a Simpsons episode, "Colonel Homer", the manager of the recording studio fondly recalled how "Buddy Holly stood on this spot in 1958 and said, 'There is no way in hell, I am gonna record in this dump.'" In a later episode, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper appear on an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. Itchy sabotages the plane's engine, resulting in the crash that kills the musicians and pilot Scratchy. In yet another episode, Lisa discovers Sideshow Bob had won election as mayor through votes by her two dead cats, Snowball I and Snowball II, as well as Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (whose tombstone reads "So Long Baaaby!").

When Val Kilmer hosted Saturday Night Live, he played Jim Morrison in a parody of VH-1's Behind the Music show. Morrison forms a band in heaven called The Great Frog Society that includes Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and Louis Armstrong. With Jesus (played by Will Farrell) as their producer ("The first time I heard them, I said, 'Oh, my Dad!), they became the toast of Heaven. But as always happens, superstar egos and Holly's reincarnation as a tree stump broke up the band.

In an episode of the MTV series, Clone High, Holly "guest stars", along with Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and several other musicians who died in plane crashes.

The Holly recording of "Take Your Time" was used in TV commercials for the Visa credit card in the fall of 2007.

Discography

Main article: Buddy Holly discography

References

Literature

• Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly, by John Goldrosen and John Beecher, Da Capo Press, 2001 ISBN 0306807157
• The Day The Music Died: The Last Tour Of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, And Richie Valens , by Larry Lehmer, Schirmer Trade Books , 2003 ISBN 0825672872

External links

• http://www.buddyholly.com/ Official Site
• http://www.buddyhollyonline.com/ Buddy Holly Online
• http://www.buddythemusical.com/ "Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story" (musical)
• International Buddy Site
• Find A Grave Entry
• Day the Music Died; Info on crash, Coroner's Report etc.
• Geocaching - nearly 100 photos of crash site and logs of visits
• Template:Last.fm
• Buddy Holly discography at MusicBrainz
• The Buddy Holly Recordings by Terry R. Shaw
• Buddy Holly Picture Gallery 100 photos, including childhood and wedding images
• Entry at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website
• Buddy Holly at Rollingstone
• [1] Bob Montgomery 'Buddy and Bob' Biography
• Walk in Lubbock Texas from Statue to Center
• Daily Telegraph article by Julian Lloyd Webber
• http://www.rockabillyhall.com/BuddyHolly.html
• http://www.geocities.com/shakin_stacks/buddyholly.txt
• Buddy Holly Infrequent Collectors Disks of 78 Turns!