 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.
The
20-year old Buddy released his first single, Blue Days Black
Nights b/w Love Me in April 1956 and was rewarded
with a slightly snooty review in Billboard which
concluded: "if the public will take more than one Presley or
Perkins, this one stands a chance".
Three months later. the Brunswick label released the single in
the UK. Collectors now pay around £600 for it in mint condition!
 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 with That'll Be The Day, Words
Of Love, Peggy Sue and Oh Boy! in rapid
succession.
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 (composed by Paul Anka) b/w 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 3 February 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. Holly was
22.
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