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It’s hard to believe, but at the time of Buddy Holly’s death at the age of twenty-two he had only been recording for two years. Yet during the course of his short career he had written and performed the most progressive music of his time. Laying the musical foundation for groups like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and musicians generations to come.
Buddy was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock Texas on September 7th, 1936. The youngest of four children Buddy grew up in a modest environment. His father Lawrence Holley worked various odd jobs and throughout 1930’s and 1940’s was employed as a tailor and salesman in a local clothing store. His mother Ella Drake Holley was a full time mother and housewife. The “e” in Holly’s name was dropped due to a spelling error on his first recording contract. Excited, and not wanting to jeopardize his contract, he simply signed his name as Buddy, a childhood nickname, Holly.
Buddy began his musical journey at the age of eleven with piano lessons. His older brothers Larry and Travis already played a couple of instruments and his mother felt it was time Buddy learned to play something too. Oddly enough, after only nine months of lessons and being applauded by his teacher as one of her top students Buddy, without explanation quit. Still, it goes without saying when Buddy quit his piano lessons he was going to take up something else. He told his parents he wanted to play the guitar, and even though they were struggling financially they still found a way to grant his request. It wasn’t long before Buddy was entertaining his friends on the school bus and contemplating a musical career.
Buddy performed during his teen years with close friend Bob Montgomery. Billing themselves as Buddy and Bob, they performed local events throughout Lubbock, Texas. It was after opening a show for Elvis Presley at a local gig in 1955 that Buddy knew exactly what he wanted to do. Success, however, didn’t come until Holly formed his new group, the Crickets that consisted of Jerry Allison on drums, Niki Sullivan on guitar, and Joe Maudlin on bass. The Crickets recorded “That’ll Be The Day” in the Clovis, New Mexico studios of producer Norman Petty. The record hit the top of the charts in September of 1957.
The group continued their success with songs such as “Oh Boy” and “Peggy Sue.” Buddy, however, was growing restless, and in the fall of 1958, due to legal problems concerning royalty money, he split from the Crickets and Norman Petty. He married Maria Santiago and relocated to Greenwich Village in New York City. In October of that same year, Holly recorded “True Love Ways and “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” The songs were powerful and filled with promise. Sadly, Buddy would never realize their potential.
In January of 1959, Buddy along with Ritchie Valens, the big bopper and other acts embarked on what was billed as the winter dance party. Though billed as a dance party the tour for the performers was anything but a party. From the very beginning, the tour was plagued with difficulty. The tour buses inability to stay running, a faulty heater, and the series of one-night shows caused many of the performers to display cold and flu symptoms. It was after a show in Clear Lake, Iowa that Buddy, tired of the miserable conditions, decided to charter a plane. He hoped that he and his sidemen Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup could wash their clothes and get a decent nights' sleep before the next performance. The word quickly spread through the troop and soon both Jennings and Alsup were getting requests to give up their seats. J.P Richardson, the “Big Bopper” convinced Jennings to give up his seat stating that a man his size wasn’t able to put up with the cramped conditions on the bus. Ritchie Valens appealed to Allsups gambling side by proposing they flip a coin for the seat. Unfortunately for Valens, he won the toss.
Holly, Valens, and Richardson along with their pilot Roger Peterson took off from the Mason City airport on February 3rd at 12:40 A.M. All four men perished soon after when their four seat aircraft crashed after takeoff. The surviving members of the tour did not want to perform without their stars but soon succumbed to the pressures of the promoters and continued the final show. However, when Buddy’s band stepped on stage without their leader there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. It was a terrible tragedy that took the musical community many years to realize. As Don Mclean hauntingly put it in his 1971 hit, “The day the music died.”
Buddy may have died in that plane crash, but his music most certainly did not. His influence can be felt in all forms of popular music today. John Lennon and Paul McCartney sight Buddy Holly as one of the main influences on their early musical endeavors. Still, one can’t help but wonder what changes might have occurred in music if Buddy hadn’t chartered a plane on that fateful day. Sadly, we will never know.
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