Buddy Holly

Name	Buddy Holly| Img = Buddy Holly.jpg
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Charles Hardin Holley
Born	September 07, 1936 Lubbock, Texas, U.S.
Died	February 03, 1959 Grant Township, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, fiddle, violin
Genre	Rock and roll, rockabilly
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Years active	1957–59
Label	Decca, Brunswick, Coral
Associated acts	The Crickets Ritchie Valens
Notable instruments	Fender Stratocaster Fender Telecaster

'''Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959) known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll. Although his success lasted only a year and a half before his death in an airplane crash, Holly is described by critic Bruce Elder as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll." His works and innovations inspired and influenced contemporary and later musicians, notably The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, and exerted a profound influence on popular music. Holly was among the first group of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Holly #13 among "The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time".

Biography

Early life

Charles Hardin Holley was born on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, U.S.A. to Lawrence Odell and Ella Pauline (Drake) Holley. Holly was always called "Buddy" by his family. Older brothers Travis and Larry taught their sibling to play a variety of instruments including the guitar, 4-string banjo and lap steel guitar. At the age of five, his young voice and exuberance won him a talent contest singing a then-popular song, "Have You Ever Gone Sailing (Down the River of Memories)." In 1949, still retaining his soprano, he recorded a bluesy solo rendering of Hank Snow's "My Two Timin' Woman" on a wire recorder borrowed by a friend who worked in a music shop.

In 1952, he met Bob Montgomery at Hutchinson Junior High School. They shared an interest in music and teamed up as "Buddy and Bob". Initially influenced by bluegrass music, they sang harmony duets at local clubs and high school talent shows. The duo performed on a local radio station KDAV Sunday broadcast that made them a top local act. Hutchinson Junior High School now has a mural honoring Holly, and Lubbock High School, where he sang in the school choir, also honors the late musician.

The Crickets

Holly saw Elvis Presley sing in Lubbock in 1955 and began to incorporate a rockabilly style, similar to that of Chuck Berry, which had a strong rhythm acoustic and slap bass. Holly's transition to rock continued when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets at a local show organized by Eddie Crandall, the manager for Marty Robbins. However, he chafed under a restrictive atmosphere that allowed him little input. (This initial version of the song played more slowly and about half an octave higher than the later hit version.) Decca released two singles, "Blue Days, Black Nights" and "Modern Don Juan", that failed to make an impression. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly that his contract would not be renewed,

, New Mexico]] Holly then hired Norman Petty as manager, and the band began recording at Petty's studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Petty contacted music publishers and labels, and Brunswick Records, a subsidiary of Decca, signed the Crickets on March 19, 1957. Holly signed as a solo artist with another Decca subsidiary, Coral Records. This put him in the unusual position of having two recording contracts at the same time.

On May 27, 1957, "That'll Be The Day" was released as a single, credited to the Crickets to try to bypass Decca's claimed legal rights. When the song became a hit Decca decided not to press its claim. "That'll Be the Day" topped the US "Best Sellers in Stores" chart on September 23 and was the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in November. The Crickets performed "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 1. The kinescopes of these programs are the only record of their 1957 television appearances.

Holly helped win over an all-black audience to rock and roll/rockabilly when the Crickets were booked at New York's Apollo Theater for August 16–22, 1957. His singles "Peggy Sue" and "Oh Boy!" reached the top ten of United States and United Kingdom charts. Buddy Holly and the Crickets toured Australia in January 1958 and the UK in March. Their third and final album, That'll Be the Day, was put together from early recordings and was released in April.

Marriage

In June 1958, he met Maria Elena Santiago, who worked as a receptionist for Murray Deutch, an executive for New York publisher Peer-Southern Music. Holly managed to have Santiago invited to a luncheon at Howard Johnson's, thanks to Deutch's secretary, Jo Harper. He asked her to have dinner with him that night at P. J. Clarke's. Holly proposed marriage to her on their very first date. "While we were having dinner, he got up and came back with his hands behind his back. He brought out a red rose and said, 'This is for you. Would you marry me?'" He went to her guardian's house the next morning to get her approval. Santiago at first thought he was kidding, but they married in Lubbock on August 15, 1958, less than two months later. The newlyweds honeymooned in Acapulco.

The Hollys frequented many of New York's music venues, including The Village Gate, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Johnny Johnson's. Maria Elena reported that Buddy was keen to learn finger-style flamenco guitar and would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there. He wanted to develop collaborations between soul singers and rock 'n' roll, hoping to make an album with Ray Charles and gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. He also had ambitions to work in film, like Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochran, and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasburg's Actors' Studio, where the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean had trained. Bandmate Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the plane, causing Holly to jokingly tell Jennings, "I hope your ol' bus freezes up!" Jennings shot back facetiously, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes!" It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for decades. Don McLean referred to it as "The Day the Music Died" in his song "American Pie".

Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Hollys' wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, Sonny Curtis and Phil Everly. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend due to his commitment to the still touring Winter Dance Party. The 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.

Holly's pregnant wife, a widow after barely six months of marriage, miscarried soon after, ending that part of the Holly family tree. María Elena Holly did not attend the funeral and has never visited the grave site. She later told the Avalanche-Journal:

In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane. 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.)

A 17-year-old Bob Dylan attended the January 31, 1959, show, two nights before Holly's death. Dylan referred to this in his 1998 Grammy acceptance speech for his Time out of Mind being named Album of the Year:

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Keith Richards attended one of Holly's performances, where he heard "Not Fade Away" for the first time. The Rolling Stones had an early hit covering the song.

Holly influenced many other singers during and after a career that lasted barely two years. Keith Richards once said that Holly had "an influence on everybody." In an August 24, 1978 Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest."

The Grateful Dead performed "Not Fade Away" 530 times over the course of their career, making it their seventh most-performed song. The song also appears on eight of their official live recording releases.

Various rock and roll histories have asserted that the singing group The Hollies were named in homage to Buddy Holly. 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.

Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie" is inspired by Holly and the day of the plane crash. The American Pie album is dedicated to Holly.

Discography

Buddy Holly released only three albums in his lifetime. Nonetheless, he recorded so prolifically that Coral Records was able to release brand-new albums and singles for 10 years after his death, although the technical quality was very mixed, some being studio quality and others home recordings.

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. There are also many different versions of Holly's "Greatest Hits".

The Picks' overdubs

In February 1984, MCA sent what are known as safety copies of several Buddy Holly master recordings to John Pickering of The Picks who took them to Sound Masters studios in Houston, Texas. There, the reunited group overdubbed their new vocal parts onto at least 60 recordings, and sent them back. The general consensus seems to be that MCA would have issued these "new" recordings as an album,

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 larger than life-size statue of Buddy Holly by sculptor Grant Speed (1980) playing his Fender guitar as its centerpiece. As of September 2010 the statue has been taken down for cleaning. The statue, along with the West Texas Walk of Fame, will be relocated to the Buddy & Maria Elena Holly Park directly west of the Buddy Holly Center at a later date. Downtown Lubbock also features Buddy Holly Avenue and the Buddy Holly Center, which is a museum dedicated to Texas art and music.

References

Further reading

Amburn, Ellis (1996). Buddy Holly: A Biography. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312145576.

Bustard, Anne (2005). Buddy: The Story of Buddy Holly. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1422393024.

Dawson, Jim; Leigh, Spencer (1996). Memories of Buddy Holly. Big Nickel Publications. ISBN 978-0936433202.

Gerron, Peggy Sue (2008). Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?. Togi Entertainment. ISBN 978-0980008500.

Goldrosen, John; Beecher, John (1996). Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80715-7.

Goldrosen, John (1975). Buddy Holly: His Life and Music. Popular Press. ISBN 0859470180

Gribbin, John (2009). Not Fade Away: The Life and Music of Buddy Holly. London: Icon Books. ISBN 978-1848310346

Dave Laing, Professor. Buddy Holly (Icons of Pop Music). Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-22168-4.

Lehmer, Larry (1997). The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. Schirmer Trade Books. ISBN 0028647416 or 978-0028647418.

Mann, Alan (1996). The A-Z of Buddy Holly. Aurum Press (2nd edition). ISBN 1854104330 or 978-1854104335.

McFadden, Hugh (2005). Elegy for Charles Hardin Holley, in Elegies & Epiphanies. Belfast: Lagan Press.

Norman, Philip (1996). Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684800829 or 978-0684800820.

Peer, Elizabeth and Ralph II (1972). Buddy Holly: A Biography in Words, Photographs and Music Australia: Peer International. ASIN B000W24DZO.

Peters, Richard (1990). The Legend That Is Buddy Holly. Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 0285630059 or 978-0285630055.

Rabin, Stanton (2009). OH BOY! The Life and Music of Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Buddy Holly. Van Winkle Publishing (Kindle). ASIN B0010QBLLG.

Tobler, John (1979). The Buddy Holly Story. Beaufort Books.

^ VH1's Behind the Music "The Day the Music Died" interview with Waylon Jennings

External links

Buddy Holly And The Crickets.com

Buddy Holly Lives.info

Buddy Holly at Find A Grave

peermusic presents Maria Elena: My Life with Buddy

Buddy Holly - sessions, tribute and cover songs

Telegraph article on the last songs written by Buddy Holly

Category:1936 births Category:1959 deaths Category:Accidental deaths in Iowa Category:American rock guitarists Category:American rock singers Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in 1959 Category:Baptists from the United States Category:American people of English descent Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Lubbock High School alumni Category:Musicians from Texas Category:People from Lubbock, Texas Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Crickets members Category:Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States Category:Coral Records artists