Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly first performed and broadcast in his hometown of
Lubbock, Texas, around 1954, singing and playing straight country and
country-bop numbers with a school friend. During 1956 he first
recorded professionally in Nashville, mostly his own songs performed
in roughly similar style to the first few of his subsequent hits. Some
of the tracks were later rated amongst his best work, but at the time
they went nowhere.
Early in 1957 Holly and The Crickets started recording in Norman
Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, and, with a new record deal, hit
the jackpot. Because of contractual problems the first new release was
simply credited to The Crickets, and thereafter they more or less
alternated the credits - one release was by Buddy Holly, the next by
The Crickets - even though the same team participated in most of them
until not long before Holly's death.
Interestingly though, whereas the releases credited to The Crickets
were all fairly raunchy (even It's So Easy had a rough edge to
it), several of the Buddy Holly issues were candybar-sweet. They had
great charm, of course, especially to love-sick young things, but Everyday,
Heartbeat, and other syrupy titles that emerged after Holly's
death had precious little to do with Rock & Roll.
Once Holly had
split from The Crickets this tendency was confirmed: listen to his
work with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, as heard on both sides of his
posthumously released hit It Doesn't Matter Anymore/Raining In My
Heart (1959). In two years he had taken his music from the raw southern sounds of
Rock Around With Ollie Vee and That'll Be The Day (1957)
to a blueprint of Adam Faith's British pop hits.
During a particularly harsh winter in 1959, Holly was touring the
American Midwest in an unreliable tour bus with a broken heater. On
February 3rd he decided (along with Ritchie Valens and the
Big Bopper)
to charter a small plane for the journey from Clear Lake, Iowa to
Moorhead, Minnesota. Minutes after taking off, the plane crashed in a
snowstorm. All three musicians and their pilot were killed.
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