Holly's legacy beats on

By KYLE MUNSON
January 23, 2009
DesMoines Register

Fifty years ago, Graham Nash stood on a street corner in his hometown of Salford, England, with his best friend, Alan Clarke, and wept.

The source of their sadness was news from 4,000 miles away and across the Atlantic Ocean - a frozen field north of Clear Lake, where the airplane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, killing the three rock stars from the Winter Dance Party tour as well as their local pilot, Roger Peterson.

"It was very traumatic for me," said Nash, who was only 17 years old that day. He went on to form the Hollies with Clarke in 1962. They found themselves among a rising tide of '60s rock musicians on both sides of the pond who owed a huge musical debt to the innovations of the Winter Dance Party artists.

Today it might be tempting to sum up the musical legacies of Holly, Valens and the Bopper in terms of Don McLean's landmark 1971 tune "American Pie" (that forever dubbed the tragedy the Day the Music Died), the biopics (1978's "The Buddy Holly Story" and 1987's "La Bamba") and the annual "oldies" rock tribute concerts at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, site of the trio's final performance on Feb. 2, 1959.

But today's musicians still continually claim Holly as a primary songwriting influence; celebrated indie singer-songwriter M. Ward, for instance, releases a new album Feb. 17 that includes a cover of Holly's "Not Fade Away." And younger music fans are discovering classic rock in greater numbers as the songs flow freely from iTunes and other online, digital sources.

Valens is revered for his guitar technique and as the prototypical Latino rocker who anticipated the careers of everybody from Santana to Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys.

The Bopper wrote country music hits for other artists and is credited with creating the first distinct music video.

"They are all different but of the same era - pioneers, artists that really did catch the ear of the world, not just America," said Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The Bopper has yet to join Holly and Valens as an official Rock Hall inductee, but the museum is co-producing a series of events Wednesday, Feb. 2 at the Surf to commemorate the enduring influence of all three artists.

Back in 1959 the Winter Dance Party served first and foremost as a teen dance that left the adult world unmoved - much in the same way that today's Disney heartthrob chart-toppers, the Jonas Brothers, while not poised for artistic impact on par with Holly, play to a predominantly teen fanbase.

Now that the teens of 1950s rock have long since grown up and are retiring, the likes of Buddy and the Beatles have in a way become canonized as classics. And it's no great stretch to imagine that Bruce Springsteen might even cover a Holly song during his halftime performance next weekend at the Super Bowl.




Musicians young and old now trace the musical thread of rock history back to the Day the Music Died.

"Buddy Holly totally was the model for the Beatles and everything that came after," said Dion DiMucci, the Bronx-born rock troubadour with blues roots and a doo-wop streak who remains the sole surviving headliner from the 1959 tour. "He was self-contained, he wrote, he had two guitars, bass and drums. He was the whole model of that."

"(Holly) was the essence of the first real rock 'n' roll band," agreed John Mueller, who today performs as Holly on his own Winter Dance Party tribute tour. "And when that went away with this tragic event, I think it left a huge hole. It didn't really start comin' back until ... the Beatles basically were doing Buddy Holly songs ... but in a little more aggressive, little more '60s kind of way."

The fledgling Beatles, as the Quarry Men, recorded Holly's "That'll Be the Day" as their first official tune before renaming themselves with a nod to Holly's band, the Crickets.

The Rolling Stones introduced themselves to America in 1964 with a cover of Holly's "Not Fade Away."

A decade after the death of his hero, Graham Nash found wider fame and became an emblem of the Woodstock generation with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. On Feb. 2 he will finally make his first pilgrimage to the Surf and Clear Lake when he headlines the capstone concert of the commemorative "50 Winters Later" events there. The star-studded musical lineup includes the Crickets, Los Lobos and a house band featuring key Rolling Stones sidemen (Chuck Leavell, Bobby Keys).

“To be invited to go and play on the 50th anniversary, I just couldn’t refuse,” said Nash, who also will mark his 67th birthday on Feb. 2.



The notion seems almost silly today, but 50 years ago not even the musical pioneers themselves were certain that rock ’n’ roll would survive much into the 1960s, whether before or after the Day the Music Died.

George Lucas’ 1973 cinematic love letter to teen car culture of the early 1960s, “American Graffiti,” includes the memorable line: “Rock ’n’ roll’s been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.”

Today it’s taken for granted that Holly, Valens, the Bopper and their peers — Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, etc. — helped create a global youth movement that drove a wedge between mature adults and their restless kids. The post-war baby boom, teens’ disposable income, the spread of television, mass-produced vinyl 45s and LPs — many trends converged to enable the rise of rock in the ’50s, but the insistent beat of the music itself has sustained it most of all.

Dion bristles at the thought that the innovations of the ’50s were overshadowed by wilder experimentation in the ’60s; to him they’re both foundations of guitar rock.

“There’s two eras when guitar giants walked the earth: the ’50s and the ’60s,” he said. “It was like the Chuck Berry era, and the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix era.”

How Holly, Valens and the Bopper might have figured into the evolution of rock in the ’60s and beyond can provide endless speculation. Holly’s widow, Maria Elena Holly, said that her late husband longed to collaborate with soul “genius” Ray Charles.

“To me, he was a sort of a visionary even though he was 22 years old,” she said. “I always call him the old soul, because he came with ideas at that time that are happening now.”



To Graham Nash’s ears, any songwriter today who crafts a catchy pop tune has something in common with the 1959 Winter Dance Party.

“To me, the art of song writing is simplicity, and Buddy’s songs were incredibly simple, incredibly melodic,” said Nash, who hears much of Buddy in the songs of, say, modern troubadour Beck.

More examples of Holly’s enduring sound:

• The 1994 song and music video “Buddy Holly” remains a signature hit for rock band Weezer.

• Billy McGuigan, a veteran performer in the title role of the musical “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” and his own “Rave On” touring revue of Holly songs, hears Holly in the punk-pop of Green Day and the bluesy indie rock of the White Stripes.

• Like the Hollies and the Beatles, bands continue to name themselves after the 1950s pioneers: Witness Danish rock duo the Raveonettes.

Terry Stewart of the Rock Hall traces the Winter Dance Party’s musical heritage back to African drumbeats and brings it back around to the present.

“As it goes on it mutates into everything that we celebrate today, everything up to hip-hop, which is hard for a lot of people to understand,” he said. “But hip-hop is nothing more than R&B 50 years later, being done with different instrumentation and a different feel.”

Whether classic rock is defined as Buddy Holly, James Brown, the Beatles, the Clash or Nirvana, young rock fans have increasingly adopted a “broad definition of this music that occurred over a long period of time that their parents grew up with, and … it shows you that they are listening more than ever to the music that came ahead of whatever’s on the radio.”

In other words, the very technology that has been largely blamed for the decline of the music industry’s business model — digital recordings freely shared online — also is helping to preserve and promote the roots of rock ’n’ roll among its newest fans.

Compared to 1972, when Don McLean’s “American Pie” hit No. 1 on the pop charts, or 1978, when Gary Busey starred in “The Buddy Holly Story,” the music of the Winter Dance Party artists is more widely available than ever before.

Rock ’n’ roll’s history and future will meet later this month in Clear Lake.

“Going back to play in that very ballroom on the 50th anniversary — that’s kind of scary to me,” Nash said. “I love it.”



Tracing their roots: The Beatles and beyond
"One of the main things about the Beatles is that we started out writing our own material. People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician.' ... In our imaginations back then, John was Buddy and I was Little Richard or Elvis."
- Paul McCartney of the Beatles, "The Beatles Anthology," 2000

"To guys of my age at the time, if you were the least bit interested in music, Buddy was the one, because he sang and was very self-contained. Elvis was fantastic, but because Buddy had glasses and looked a bit like a bank clerk, you could say to yourself, 'Well, it's not just for guys who look like Elvis,' because otherwise it was sort of unattainable."
- Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, "According to the Rolling Stones," 2003

"When I was 16 or 17 years old I went to see Buddy Holly play in Duluth, National Guard Armory. And I was three feet away from him, and he looked at me. And I just have some kind of feeling that he was - I don't know how or why - I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."
- Bob Dylan, Album of the Year acceptance speech at the Grammys for "Time Out of Mind," February 1998

"When I think of Buddy Holly I think of the ... purest form of rock 'n' roll. ... And if we want to change things, if anybody wants to change anything in this business ... let's get back to that."
- Shawn Crahan of Slipknot, interview with Des Moines Register reporter Joe Lawler, 2009

"Bo (Diddley)'s rhythm was first borrowed by Buddy Holly, later by me for 'Magic Bus.'"
- Pete Townshend of the Who, Entertainment Weekly, June 2008

"As a musician and singer (Holly) had a style of singing that we all try to at some point emulate. If you don't do it exactly the way he did it, at least it's a thing always in the back of your head."
- Billy Bob Thornton, interview with Des Moines Register reporter Joe Lawler, 2008

"The great thing about Buddy Holly is his songs had a rhythm and bluesey kind of feel, super catchy with really strong vocal melodies. That's what I really liked. Later on I really appreciated that he played a Strat while other guys played hollow body. Part of his sound was the way he played that Fender, and I really appreciated it."
- Kirk Hammett of Metallica, interview with Des Moines Register reporter Joe Lawler,
----------------------------------------------------------

New Holly collections in stores
Jan. 27 — “Down the Line: The Rarities”: Two CDs, 59 songs, from a raw 1949 home recording in Lubbock, Texas, to the undubbed “apartment tapes” recorded in December 1958 and January 1959 in the New York flat Buddy Holly shared with wife Maria Elena. Also heard are Holly’s 1952 rockabilly recordings as Buddy & Bob (with Bob Montgomery) and the early garage rock tapes of the Crickets.

Feb. 10 — “Memorial Collection”: Three CDs, 60 songs, a sampling from Buddy & Bob to the “apartment tapes,” with all the essential hits between.

http://cmsimg.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bildeSite=D2&Date=20090123&Ca...

get the Purple Chick 10- cd set "THe Complete Buddy Holly"

it's exceptional. 

it can be found all over the web, to download, as a torrent.

Waylon Jennings, Buddy Holly, Tommy Allsup

Fiesta Ballroom,
Montevideo, MN

27th Jan 1959



Ade & Tommy Allsup,

The Half Moon, Putney, London

June 2008

Buddy Holly was one of the true greats, I remember my older Sister playing his music when I used to go over for supper, she loved B.H., I think my fav. of his is "Rave On" with the way that he stutters in the beginning, a-well-a well a-well the way you, etc.

thanks Sioux 

Chuck Leavell & Bobby Keys are confirmed, to play
as members of the 'House Band' at the Surf Ballroom on Feb 2nd

http://www.50winterslater.com/events.html#jan28


MONDAY, February 2nd, 2009*

SURF BALLROOM/GIFT SHOP:
Hours: 6:00pm - close

EXHIBIT/DISPLAY: “SPECIAL TRIBUTE COLLECTION”:
Time: 6:00pm - close
Location: Surf Ballroom Lounge Stage
Event Description: Tom Fontaine's Rock and Roll Investments will present a special tribute collection exhibit featuring personal items, contracts, lyrics, autographs, etc. belonging to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper Richardson.” Bonus items from The Beatles (celebrating the 45th Anniversary of first arrival in the US), Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison etc. will also be on display during this time. Event open to ticketed 50 Winters Later concert-goers only.

CONCERT: 50 Winters Later Commemorative Concert
Artists Scheduled to Appear:
Tommy Allsup
Big Bopper JR
The Crickets
Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens
Joe Ely
Wanda Jackson
Los Lobos
Los Lonely Boys
Delbert McClinton
Chris Montez
Cousin Brucie Morrow
Graham Nash
Peter & Gordon
Sir Tim Rice
Bobby Vee
and special guests TBA
House Band:
Kenny Aronoff
Chuck Leavell
Bobby Keys   
Hutch Hutchinson
Doors Open: 6:00pm
Concert: 7:00pm
Location: Surf Ballroom
Tickets: $85

Rock fans head to Iowa to recall day music died

By MARCO SANTANA –

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa (AP) — It's been 50 years since a single-engine plane crashed into a snow-covered Iowa field, instantly killing three men whose names would become enshrined in the history of rock 'n' roll.

The passing decades haven't diminished fascination with that night on Feb. 2, 1959, when 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 28-year-old J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and 17-year-old Ritchie Valens performed in Clear Lake and then boarded the plane for a planned 300-mile flight that lasted only minutes.

"It was really like the first rock 'n' roll landmark; the first death," said rock historian Jim Dawson, who has written several books about music of that era. "They say these things come in threes. Well, all three happened at the same time."

Starting Wednesday, thousands of people are expected to gather in the small northern Iowa town where the rock pioneers gave their last performance. They'll come to the Surf Ballroom for symposiums with the three musicians' relatives, sold-out concerts and a ceremony as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame designates the building as its ninth national landmark.

And they'll discuss why after so many years, so many people still care about what songwriter Don McLean so famously called "the day the music died."

"It was the locus point for that last performance by these great artists," said Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. "It warrants being fixed in time."

Clear Lake is an unlikely spot for a rock 'n' roll pilgrimage — especially in winter. The resort town of about 8,000 borders its namesake lake, and on winter days the cold and wind make the community 100 miles north of Des Moines anything but a tourist destination.

The crash site is on private property, a five-mile drive from Clear Lake and half-mile walk off the road. Corn grows high in adjacent fields during the summer, but in winter the fields are covered with snow and a path to the small memorial is often thick with ice. The memorial features a small cross and thin metal guitar and records, all of which are draped in flowers during the summer.

"It's a much nicer trip in the summer," said Jeff Nicholas, a longtime Clear Lake resident who heads the Surf Ballroom's board of directors. "But in the winter, you get more of a feel of what it was like."

No one tracks the number of visitors, but fans stop by throughout the year and on some summer days visitors to the crash site can create the oddity of a corn field traffic jam.

Stewart said the deaths still resonate because they occurred at a time when rock 'n' roll was going through a transition, of sorts. The sound of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Holly was making way for the British Invasion of the mid-1960s.

"The music was shifting and changing at that point," he said. "The crash put a punctuation point on the change."

All three musicians influenced rock and roll in their own way.

Holly's career was short, but his hiccup-vocal style, guitar play and songwriting talents had tremendous influence on later performers. The Beatles, who formed about the time of the crash, were among his early fans and fashioned their name after Holly's band, The Crickets. Holly's hit songs include "That'll Be The Day," "Peggy Sue" and "Maybe Baby."

Richardson, "The Big Bopper," is often credited with creating the first music video with his recorded performance of "Chantilly Lace" in 1958, decades before MTV.

And Valens was one of the first musicians to apply a Mexican influence to rock 'n' roll. He recorded his huge hit "La Bamba" only months before the accident.

The plane left the airport in nearby Mason City about 1 a.m., headed for Moorhead, Minn., with the musicians looking for a break from a tiring, cold bus trip through the Upper Midwest.

It wasn't until hours later that the demolished plane was found, crumpled against a wire fence. Investigators believe the pilot, who also died, became confused amid the dark, snowy conditions and rammed the plane into the ground.

The crash set off a wave of mourning among their passionate, mostly young fans across the country. Then 12 years later the crash was immortalized as "the day the music died" in McLean's 1971 song, "American Pie."

Vonnie Amosson, who manages the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Clear Lake, said that ever since the plane crash, the community has embraced the tragedy. It's a continues stream of tourism dollars, and the town's chamber of commerce estimates that this year's events, dubbed "50s in February," will generate more than $4 million for Clear Lake's economy.

"It's kind of sad that that is what we are known for," Amosson said. "But on the other part of it, I think the whole '50's in February' weekend is a huge memorial and it's an honor to them."

In part because of its role in rock history, the Surf Ballroom has retained its vintage look, with a 6,000-square-foot dance floor, ceiling painted to resemble a sky, and original cloud machines on either side of the room. Ten Buddy Holly banners line the wall opposite the stage. The 2,100-capacity ballroom still hosts many national and regional performers, most of whom add their names to a backstage wall that is now crowded with drawings and signatures.

"It's quite a special place," said Nicholas, the Surf board member. "This place looks just like it did in 1959."

Ade, thanks so much for all this info!  My mom was a huge Holly fan so I grew up listening to him -- it's great to see him being remembered this way, his influence was tremendous.

Holly fans come from near and far

http://www.globegazette.com/articles/2009/01/28/news/latest/doc498109e90dcd65560...

CLEAR LAKE —

British Buddy Holly fans make the pilgrimage to Clear Lake every year for the annual tribute concerts at the Surf Ballroom.

But this is the first time Roger Johnson of Leeds, England, and his family have made the trip.

Johnson said one reason they came is that it’s the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party at the Surf. Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens were killed in a plane crash after the concert.

“There will never be another 50th,” Johnson said. “It’s awesome to be a part of it.”

Johnson, who came to a 50 Winters Later reception at the Clear Lake Arts Center Wednesday with his wife, Rita, and their grown children, Richard and Ruth, said they are big Holly fans, but even bigger fans of Bobby Vee, one of the performers this year.

They have met him in person a number of times.

“Bobby tells us we are his Yorkshire VIPs. That’s spelled V-E-E-I-P-S,” Roger said.

The Johnsons have seen Vee perform in England. Just before coming to Clear Lake for 50 Winters Later, they were on a Caribbean cruise where Vee was one of the performers.

Roger said he is looking forward to seeing The Crickets perform at the Surf, in addition to Vee.

“Everyone who has been here has told us we are going to love it,” he said.

Another visitor from across the Atlantic is Torbjorn Lorentsen, who is from northern Norway.

Lorentsen came to the Surf five years ago to see Merle Haggard perform.

“It’s an interesting place,” he said.

Lorentsen was 15 when Holly died, but he didn’t know anything about him at the time because his town had only one radio station and it didn’t play his music.

He said he learned about Holly from reading a biography of Waylon Jennings, who performed with him that night.

Among the North Iowa fans attending Wednesday’s reception was Dennis Tierney of Charles City.

Tierney came with his son, Brad Tierney, a 1991 Charles City High School graduate now living in North Liberty.

The younger Tierney, who has a pair of Buddy Holly-style glasses he wears just for the annual celebration at the Surf, said he inherited his love for Holly and other early rock ’n’ roll performers from his Baby Boomer parents.

He has several ’50s-related drawings he did on display in the current exhibit at the Clear Lake Arts Center, including a portrait of Elvis.

He said he is looking forward to this year’s celebration because he thinks the 50th anniversary will attract people who don’t normally attend.

“The atmosphere should be great,” he said.

everything you need to know, regarding the Purple Chick 10-cd set, can
be viewed here (incl. downloadable artwork)

http://www.bigozine2.com/features06/BHcomplete.html

Why Buddy Holly is still pop’s hero

Chas Hodges

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5...



I enjoyed John Gribben’s piece on Buddy Holly, who died 50 years ago on Tuesday, (The Times, January 16), but I don’t think his reasoning as to why Buddy is still so popular today is good enough. So how? He was the first man to mix original melody with rock’n’roll.

I’ve become a friend of Jerry Allison, who was the drummer and wrote a lot of songs with Buddy: That’ll Be the Day, Think It Over. I stayed with him in Nashville and said to him one night: “Do you realise it was you and Buddy Holly who actually put melody into rock’n’roll?” The Beatles wouldn’t have been the Beatles without Buddy Holly: he showed them the way forward.

I first heard Buddy Holly in 1957, singing That’ll Be the Day on a programme called Six Five Special on the BBC. They used to play records — they didn’t have videos in those days — and they’d get the kids to dance. I became an immediate fan. I had enough money for one record at the music stall in Edmonton Market and I had to choose between Buddy’s Listen to Me and Breathless by Jerry Lee Lewis. I chose Listen to Me. He’d overdubbed his own voice — it gave off an eerie, haunting sound that I’d never heard on record before.

When Buddy’s new records came out, unlike Lewis or Little Richard, they always sounded different. Not too different, but enough to make you think a bit. The only band since then who have give me the same feeling have been the Beatles.

We lost a driving force with Buddy Holly

I was in a skiffle group at the time and I learnt a lot of Buddy’s guitar chords: the quick changes in Peggy Sue were quite nifty at the time and I was really pleased with myself when I pulled them off. My playing improved enormously after listening to his records, and we used to play his songs on stage.

I was 15 when he died. I remember the kid next door but one knocking at the door and saying: “Guess what, Buddy Holly’s been killed in a plane crash!” My stupid response was: “Just as long as it isn’t Jerry Lee Lewis.” Why did I say that?

I remember the papers saying what crap music rock’n’roll was, but when he died they were saying: “What a talent, a contender for the throne of Elvis.”

I joined a band called Mike Berry and the Outlaws and we did a tribute to Buddy Holly, which was in the charts in 1961. We recorded it with the producer Joe Meek, who was obsessed by Buddy Holly. He used to have seances and say, “I spoke to Buddy Holly last night,” and he committed suicide on the anniversary of his death.

If Buddy were alive today, he would have loved the Beatles saying it was him that influenced them but I don’t think he would really have been fully aware of it. He wouldn’t realise quite how important he was.

Chas & Dave: All About Us, by Chas Hodges, is published by John Blake

Tyrades! Rave On, Buddy Holly Fans

Friday, January 30, 2009
By Danny Tyree
February 3, 2009: that'll be the day.
That's the 50th anniversary of the tragic plane crash that claimed the lives of rock and roll stars J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly.

There are a number of ways to mark the anniversary of "the day the music died."

Holly hometown Lubbock, Texas, plans tours, panel discussions, and other events on Feb. 2 and 3.

The Smithereens will perform a tribute to Holly at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa (the last place Holly performed) on Feb. 2.

You could reminisce over ways Holly's music has touched your life. I was born the year after Holly died, but during my one-weekend career as a DJ at WJJM (1982), I proudly opened my first show with "Oh Boy!"

You can play Linda Ronstadt's 1977 cover version of "It's So Easy" over and over, watch Gary Busey in 1978's "The Buddy Holly Story" (mindful of the standard biopic inaccuracies, shortcuts and distortions), or lock yourself in your room and listen to the 3-CD "Memorial Collection" or 2-CD "Down The Line: Rarities" (both to be released Jan. 28).

Imitate one of the aforementioned Lubbock panels and speculate on where Holly would be now if not for the plane crash. Would he be an elder statesman of music, like Tony Bennett? (Even though Holly's national fame lasted only 18 months, and he was only 22 when he died, "Rolling Stone Magazine" in 2004 ranked him #13 on its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.) Would he be a reclusive retiree? Would he have reinvented himself a dozen times over the decades?

Marvel at just how much the music industry has changed since Holly's time. We now have stereo FM radio, satellite radio, MTV, and VH1 -- but no "American Bandstand." Digital downloads, CDs, iPods and ring tones have changed our relationship with music. Radio station consolidation has tightened playlists and reduced DJ flexibility.

Debate the cryptic references in 1971's "American Pie" (some observers see Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Janis Joplin hidden in the lyrics, but give it your own spin) and briefly share Don McLean's longing for a simpler era, before overt sexuality, drug abuse, and social protest took over rock.

Encourage an "oldies" radio station to give more airtime to Holly and his contemporaries. Many of today's oldies programmers think rock and roll history started with the British Invasion or even Woodstock. Next, it'll be starting with Milli Vanilli.

On the other hand, refrain from hypocrisy. It's easy to snicker at the rigid establishment figures who banned Holly's innovations as "jungle music," but some fans of Holly's music have become locked into one sliver of musical history. Come out of your comfort zone for at least one day. It's hard to celebrate the rebelliousness of Holly by turning a deaf ear to a new artist or new genre. Give a chance to someone else who hears the music in his head and wants to share it.

Holly deserves to be more than a fleeting glimpse of a young guy with geeky eyeglasses surrounded by coonskin caps, Hula Hoops, and "I Like Ike" buttons. Do your part this February and guarantee that the legacy of Buddy Holly and the other pioneers of rock and roll will "Not Fade Away."

Note: Danny Tyree welcomes e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.marshalltribune.com/story/1497546.html

Thanks again, Ade 

Ade, when you met Tommy Allsup were you able to talk with him about Buddy at all?

zooeyglass wrote on Jan 30^th, 2009 at 5:25pm:



Tommy has toured the UK the last 2 years, with Kevin Montgomery and his band (son of Bob).

They play small clubs and would you believe it, backrooms of pubs?  

Kevin (who has a cult following and is a brilliant singer songwriter, in his own regard), starts the show, intoroducing Tommy onto stage. Between songs by Buddy, Bill Wills (Tommy has been a member of the Texas Playboys, as well as being a session musician, for just about every 20th century act, you can think of...i'm serious...the list of records, he features on his unbelievable).  

Inbetween songs, Kevin chats with Tommy, about Buddy, the songs, his career, the events of The Winter Dance Party, and of course, the coin-flip with Ritchie Valens.
You can hear a pin drop, when he speaks of these pivotal events, and he still chokes up, when he recalls, that he gave Buddy his wallet, to Buddy for i.d , to get his laundry cleaned.
When the plane crashed, and the bodies were recovered, Tomy's wallet was found in the debris, and the authorities, rang Tommy's mother, to tell her, Tommy was dead...it's so emotional to here him tell these stories, and to play the riffs on the records, that mean so much to so many people.

The 2nd half of the show, is opened up to the audience, with a relaxed Q&A session, and afterwards, Tommy is happy to pose for photos and sign memorabilia.
The man is a true gent, and i look forward to him (hopefully) touring the UK, again, this coming summer.
He's apparently working on his autobiography.... what a lifestory to tell.

 Buddy Holly is my music hero, so to meet Tommy, who played such a pivotal role, in 20th century music history, is, for me, an amazing thing.  
...apologies for rambling on !

Ade wrote on Jan 28^th, 2009 at 8:31am:



this brilliant radio documentary, aired earlier this evening in the UK,
is now available for download, at Hungercity

http://www.hungercity.org/details.php?id=4597&viewcomm=26073#comm26073

The Grip Weeds! The Grip Weeds!  Love 'em.....met them after an intimate gig with a friend of mine....

zooeyglass wrote on Feb 1^st, 2009 at 10:56am:


he still is revered more in the UK, than his native US. 

Buddy Holly: the 50th anniversary of an unlikely legend


On the 50th anniversary of his death, we trace Buddy Holly's posthumous ascent from boy next door to rock and roll's first real artist.

By Neil McCormick

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/neilmccormick/4433091/Buddy-Ho...



An ordinary boy: Buddy Holly backstage in 1958 Photo: DICK COLE


He was the first of the dead rock stars. Buddy Holly's swift rise and tragic end set a template for a certain kind of posthumous rock idolatry. I wasn't even born when Holly was killed in a plane crash 50 years ago tomorrow, yet here we are still talking about him 50 years later, speculating on why he was so important to pop culture, wondering what would have become of him had he lived.

Yet, in so many ways, Holly seems an unlikely candidate for posthumous deification. Rock's death cults usually form around self-destructive rebels: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain (and, in rap, Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.), characters who correspond to that melodramatic part of the teenage psyche that is ready to destroy the world and damn the consequences. Fresh faced, geeky, bespectacled, smiling and sweet voiced, Holly certainly doesn't conform to the cliché of living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse.

Had it been Elvis Presley in that plane, the pop world would have been shaken to its core, but would it have been so surprised? Elvis had an other-worldly quality, his greaseball surliness so threatening to America's vision of itself that they drafted him into the army and cut off his quiff. Holly had the demeanour of the boy next door, which is, perhaps, what made his death so truly shocking.

"That'll be the day-hay-hay when I die," he sang, but it was throwaway teen bravura, effective precisely because he couldn't imagine such a circumstance. There was no brooding foreboding in his music, which breathed with lightness and life, rhythmic zing, melodic air. He was innocence crushed, potential stamped out. Holly is such a compelling figure of tragedy because he embodies the terrible truth that death comes to everyone.

Two other rock and rollers died in that plane crash, but it is Holly we remember because his music was pitched at the highest level, with a quality and originality that has resonated throughout pop culture. At a time when most pop stars were still musical vehicles for songwriters and producers, Holly was the first complete artist in the modern way.

He was a singer-songwriter and self-producer who did about as much with four chords (at least one more than most rock and rollers of the era used) as it was possible to do. His Fender Stratocaster guitar licks are prototypes for rock's obsession with riffing, which Holly weaves through seamlessly structured, melodically expansive songs. The rhythm tracks are sprightly and inventive: listen to Cricket drummer Jerry Allison's rolling tom tom's on Peggy Sue, or the cardboard-box beat of Not Fade Away.

The lyrics are witty and conversational (full of flip teen phrases such as "maybe, baby" and "Oh, boy!", with the spoken vitality of real life and undercurrents of emotional depth: What To Do tackles heartbreak with gentle reflection rather than melodramatic angst. And Holly was a bold vocal stylist, who could split a syllable eight different ways at once. There is almost nothing to the lyric of Peggy Sue, yet his variations are like a comedic dare, constantly returning to the core phrase to invest it with another level of desire.

Holly came out of the country music tradition, which is reflected in the economy and wit of his writing. He played with the Crickets at high school but had his head turned after opening for Elvis Presley in 1955. It is reported that Holly changed the band's musical direction almost overnight. Yet he was almost the anti-Elvis. He cut records with guitar-twisting grooves that teenagers wanted to dance to, but there was simply nothing about Holly that evoked the revolutionary, sexually liberated spirit that made this youth movement so threatening to an older generation.

Indeed, Paul Anka (who toured on the same bill as Holly and wrote It Doesn't Matter Anymore for his friend) has claimed that Holly envied Anka's career as a mainstream pop idol and wanted to move his music in a more old-fashioned, romantic direction (as evinced on his posthumously released orchestral sessions, that gave us such Holly classics True Love Ways and the definitive cover of Raining In My Heart). Had he lived, I wonder would we even think of him now as a rock idol?

Yet Holly had a huge impact in his time, precisely because his apparent ordinariness made young musicians everywhere feel they could do what he was doing. "With Elvis, you thought, 'God, he's good looking.' With Buddy, it was like, 'God, he's the boy next door'," Paul McCartney recently acknowledged. "It was a particular bonus for John, who had horn-rimmed glasses but whipped them off whenever girls came near. Now he wore them proudly."

There was a real liberation in the unapologetic plainness of Holly's image. Frank Allen of the Searchers called it "the revenge of the nerd". But it was the undeniable quality of the music that made the revenge complete.

McCartney and Lennon were suitably enamoured to name their band after an insect in homage to the Crickets. The Beatles' mix of rock drive and pop melody, lashed together with harmonies, owes much to Holly's inspiration. The Rolling Stones chose a Buddy Holly track for their second single, Not Fade Away, investing it with a dark, sexy swagger that gave them their first hit. Bob Dylan was hugely inspired by Holly, catching a glimpse of his own possible future in this small-town geek who wrote and sang his own songs. That is a trio of artists who could be said to have shaped modern popular music. Holly may have played a greater part in all of that had he lived.

When he died, he was just 22 and had released only three albums. But he left a lot of music behind, songs that would subsequently be finished off by his collaborators, with new Holly recordings being released throughout the Sixties. In that sense, he really was a prototype for the necrophilia of rock culture.

It Doesn't Matter Anymore went to number one in Britain the week after the plane crash. The compilation The Buddy Holly Story remained in the charts for three years. In American Pie, Don McLean characterised the plane crash as the day the music died, but really, it is what has kept the music alive. Eternally fixed in his first surge of creative brilliance, Buddy Holly raves on for ever.

Ade wrote on Feb 1^st, 2009 at 1:36pm:


I guess I agree and disagree -- yes from a musician's standpoint, but no from a fan's...

The last line of this article is probably one of the best ever written about Buddy Holly -- and courtesy of an American no less



What is Buddy Holly's legacy?
Texas singer died 50 years ago after creating music that has influenced generations of bands; exactly what his music means is still being questioned
By Joe Gross

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Monday, February 02, 2009

Almost all brief careers in the public eye come with question marks next to them.


Would President Kennedy have kept us out of Vietnam in a second term? Would James Dean have turned into an indelible screen icon like Paul Newman or a fading character actor like Joseph Cotten?


And what would Buddy Holly, a 22-year-old kid from Lubbock, have done with the rest of his life had he not gone down in a small plane 50 years ago on Tuesday, in a freezing Iowa cornfield with a Texas radio DJ who had a fluke hit and a Latino rocker too young to vote ?


Holly's question mark is the largest in American popular music because it reflects two separate issues: What might he have done had he lived past 22, and what does the music he actually made mean?


Between early 1957 and early 1959, Holly did everything before anyone else, or better and more creatively than anyone else, so many things that his importance is both weirdly diluted and perhaps expanded beyond reason.


Holly was the guy who inspired the guys who got superhumanly famous. His career, all of 18 months, really, is reflective of a saying that's always stuck with me: It's not the first person who does something, it's the second.


Defining rock bands

Holly has never had the charisma-bomb resonance of Elvis Presley, about whom you can discuss issues of race and class and appropriation pretty much forever. After all, Holly's single most important innovation was the possibility of rock as team sport.


The Crickets (Buddy Holly on vocals and lead guitar; Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar; Joe B. Mauldin on bass, Jerry Allison on drums) was a band. Holly's first album was credited to the Chirping Crickets.


They invented the rock band as most everyone on the planet thinks of it. The rock band is not guitar, drums, bass, piano. It is not three guitars, sax, bass, drums. The rock band is two guitars, bass, drums.


See also: the Beatles. Then see the Rolling Stones. The Kinks, etc. It's not the first person who does something, it's the second — especially if that second person is a Beatle. A far more vigorous chart presence in the U.K. than the U.S., Holly was adored by John Lennon, who was in turn adored by the whole planet.


And after Sullivan left, citing the rigors of touring, the Crickets headed to Britain as a trio, the first rock power trio. (They were also, by this point, billed as Buddy Holly and the Crickets.) They might not have had the volume but see also Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, etc.


In contrast to the country music he grew up with, Holly wrote much of his own material and was lucky enough to team up with a brilliant producer (Norman Petty) to get it from his head to tape to audiences. Les Paul might have invented multitrack recording, but Holly used it as well or better than anyone. His music grew up in public, fast, in a matter of months.


In fact, every one of Holly's hits has something sonically interesting on it, from the cardboard box Bo Diddley beat on "Not Fade Away" to the cymbals-only drum part on "Well . . . All Right" to the thigh slaps on "Everyday." "Words of Love" and the weirdly underrated "Listen to Me" overdubs jangly guitars and a slightly woozy vocals in a way that essentially invents the Byrds' folk-rock.


His everydude persona and black glasses revised the idea of the rock star even as it was being invented — every one of his hits has something lyrically interesting on it, from the deceptively simple "everyday it's a gettin' faster/ everyone said go ahead and ask her" to that scream of joy on "Oh Boy!"

It's almost punk rock — if that guy who looks like me can do it, I can do it.


No rock hero

The flip side is that the people who formed bands after seeing Holly changed the world and have obscured him.


For example, for a guy who inspired so many to rock so much, his discography is baffling and neglected.


Crickets tracks were issued under Holly's name alone. Demos (some of them up there with his best work) were posthumously released covered with overdubs, sometimes multiple times with completely different music. Endless compilations and re-packagings have appeared in the past 50 years, not one of them deemed definitive.


Is this how you treat a guy who many think had as much to do with defining the parameters of American music as Elvis, Sinatra and Francis Scott Key?


Joe Carducci, whose brilliant and controversial 1990 book "Rock and the Pop Narcotic" might be the most important monograph in the last 20 years on a definition of "rock music," devotes a sentence to Holly: "The Crickets did some minor rocking, but Buddy Holly split for New York, leaving his band behind."

Ouch. According to Carducci's ultra-orthodox definitions of rock, leaving your band behind is something real rockers don't do. Plenty of people agree with him.


Holly's move to New York in 1958, along with his use of strings in songs such as "Raining In My Heart" and "It Doesn't Matter Any More" has long been seen as sign he was scrapping rock 'n' roll for Tin Pan Alley.


Let's say this one more time: We have absolutely no idea what Holly would have done. His recording career lasted about 18 months. He was 22 when he died.


We have no idea.


We can barely agree on what he did do.


Writer to the core

Holly might have looked like everyman. He might have rocked like everyman. But most people couldn't have done what he did. Most people don't have the songs to pull it off.


Holly's music was some of the first rock 'n' roll I ever heard, which I always thought was kind of cool because Holly's music was some of the first rock 'n' roll that anyone on the planet ever heard.


My dad was a big fan, and checked out of the library a two-LP set packed with hits. I've been humming the astounding, hiccuping "Rave On," been thinking about the distant, echoed paradiddles on "Peggy Sue," since I was about 6.


Which is perhaps part of the reason that the best moment for me of the 2006 Rolling Stones show at Zilker Park came when Keith Richards sang a Buddy Holly song. He didn't sing "Not Fade Away," an early Stones single, but, of all things, "Learning the Game." It's a fairly obscure Holly song, a mere demo when Holly died that producer Norman Petty gave a country-pop backing track (another version, overdubbed in New York, sounds like an ad jingle).


"Hearts that are broken and love that's untrue/ These go with learning the game," Richards croaked, completely at odds with his tough guy persona. Yet it worked.


This is why Holly resonates, for the simplest and most complicated reason: the songs.


There might have been something interesting on every one of Holly's hits, but it was always, always, ALWAYS in service to the song.


"When you love her and she doesn't love you/ You're only learning the game."


He found his own sound, his own look, his own everyman persona that inspired thousands who inspired millions. But as a songwriter, he had IT, whatever IT is. Simple and complicated, clear and true.


"When she says that you're the only one she'll ever love/ Then you find that you are not the one she's thinking of."


Songwriter Don McLean famously declared Feb. 3 "The Day The Music Died" in "American Pie." I understand the sentiment, I get the loss of innocence thing. But it's just not true. (And America was never, ever innocent — just ask an Apache.)


In no way did the music die 50 years ago Feb. 3. It couldn't have. Buddy Holly had already lived.


http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/2009/02//0201holly.html

10 Underrated Buddy Holly Songs:-

Everyone with ears knows 'That'll Be The Day,' 'Oh Boy!,' 'Everyday' and my personal all-time favorite 'Rave On.' Here are 10 worth another spin or 10.

1. 'Learning the Game' -- One of the apartment tape demos. A delicate melody, a sophisticated lyric, a perfect ditty in 1:35 (expanded after Holly's death to about two minutes; still amazing)


2. 'Love Me' -- This early B-side might be the most orthodox rockabilly-qua-rockabilly song Holly ever produced.


3. 'Holly Hop' -- An instrumental from 1956 originally recorded in the Holly family garage, it shows off how Holly's economical lead guitar style was already well-developed.


4. 'Tell Me How' -- One of those songs you think the Beatles must have listened to about a million times.


5. 'I'm Looking For Someone To Love' -- Manages to pack two perfectly realized guitar solos into 1:59. To this day, I have no idea what 'drunk man/ street car/ foot slip/ there you are' means in the context of the song. Not a clue.


6. 'Listen to Me' -- Not obscure, but better and better the more you listen to its craftmanship. Very slightly lower-fi sounding than some of the less complicated hits, I keep coming back to the weird, almost surging harmonies.


7. 'I'm Gonna Love You Too' -- Another one the Beatles must have listened to 2 million times, especially the guitars.


8. 'Reminiscing' -- Buddy Holly, soul man. King Curtis' sax subs in for guitars and the rhythm section swings hard.


9. 'Little Baby' -- You can't figure out why the piano is throwing you off a little until you realize it sounds like Bob Dylan, like a retro B-side from 'Blonde on Blonde.'


10. 'Peggy Sue Got Married' -- Another apartment demo fleshed out after Holly died. A happy ending. Or is it?

http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/2009/02//0201holly.html

Big night at Surf's Buddy Holly concert, minus superstars

By KYLE MUNSON • [email protected] • February 3, 2009

Clear Lake, Ia. — The big surprise here Monday night at the Surf Ballroom turned out to be no surprise at all.

Speculation swirled for months in advance: Would Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton or another superstar put in an appearance to pay his respects to rock 'n' roll icon Buddy Holly in a "50 Winters Later" commemorative concert?

In the end, none did.

Yet the final tune of the night, Holly's "Not Fade Away," featured a sing-along by a stage full of A-list musicians and an embrace between Maria Elena Holly, Buddy's widow, and Graham Nash, the enthusiastic Holly disciple who co-founded the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Kathy Snyder of Clear Lake, who owns the Surf with her husband, Dale, said that efforts were made as late as Sunday to entice Springsteen to perform in the Surf concert; an emissary left a note in the Boss' guitar case during the Super Bowl halftime show saying that a private jet was available to whisk him away to Iowa on Monday.

The 1959 Winter Dance Party at the Surf marked the final performances by landmark early rockers Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson, who died Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash north of town.

Fifty years ago, the $1.25 concert tickets were snapped up by local teenagers who wanted to dance. This time, fans from Britain, Switzerland, Canada and other far-flung locales purchased $85 tickets online.

Monday’s star-studded concert was a full-blown Rock and Roll Hall of Fame production with a rotating cast that included Holly's former band, the Crickets, as well as Nash, Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys, Peter and Gordon, Joe Ely and Bobby Vee.

The same emcee who stood on the Surf stage in 1959 and introduced the Winter Dance Party musicians grabbed the microphone in front of an audience of 1,800 fans at the start of Monday's “50 Winters Later” concert.

“This has been a poignant week for all of us,” Bob Hale said.

The ballroom’s 2,000-person capacity was reduced by about 200 to accommodate six high-definition cameras, two cranes and all the cables, barricades and operators that come with it .

Yet it turned out to be a festive, relaxed atmosphere dominated by those who could remember the ’50s. The audience even sang an impromptu “Happy Birthday” to Nash, who turned 67 during this, his first pilgrimage to the Surf.

“This is what we’ve all been waiting for,” Tommy Allsup, Holly’s guitarist from the original 1959 tour, said of the evening.

The song “Wishing” began the night, sung by Kevin Montgomery, whose father, Bob, formed the Buddy & Bob rockabilly duo with Holly and co-wrote the tune.

Wanda Jackson belted out “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” the Chuck Berry song that Holly performed on tour in 1959. Texas troubadour Joe Ely tore through “Oh Boy,” complete with a screaming sax solo.

Delbert McClinton cranked out a bluesy cover of “Chantilly Lace,” the Bopper’s signature hit. Later, the Bopper's son, Jay P. "Big Bopper Jr." Richardson, performed his own rendition of the same tune.

Two of the night’s highlights came courtesy of songwriters performing their own tunes with guests: Dave Mason of Traffic cranked out “Feelin’ Alright” with help from McClinton and Montgomery, while Ely tore through “Are You Listening Lucky?” with Los Lobos as his backing band.

Los Lobos also was joined on stage by the extended Valens family – decked out in matching “La Bamba Boys” and “La Bamba Ladies” T-shirts – as well as Maria Elena Holly, for the anticipated “La Bamba” sing-along.

Des Moines City Councilwoman Christine Hensley and her husband, Steve, have attended Winter Dance Party reunions at the Surf for 20 years. On Monday, Hensley was decked out in a ’50s waitress costume, complete with order notepad.

“I’m totally out of character!” she laughed.

Christopher and Ing-Mari Vock, who live in the mountains of Switzerland, attended Monday’s show.

“In 1957, I was in school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and New York,” said Christopher, 66. “That was the first time I heard American music.”

The house band included Chuck Leavell, veteran keyboardist for the Rolling Stones. The man on drums was Kenny Aronoff, who rose to fame in John Mellencamp’s band .

Despite a bone-chilling temperature of -4 degrees and a wind chill that dipped to 27 degrees below zero, a diehard gaggle of about 30 fans and reporters later made a post-show pilgrimage to the crash site north of town for a 1 a.m. observance - about the time of the 1959 crash. The Surf's president, Jeff Nicholas, built a bonfire near the site to help keep fans warm. They gathered around the stainless steel memorial while Nicholas said a prayer and a plane flew overhead. One fan passed around his bottle of rum. There was a sing-along of Don McLean's Holly tribute, "American Pie."

At the end of Monday's concert at the Surf, Nicholson choked back tears as he arranged for a moment of silence with the house lights down as three stars were projected on the ballroom's ceiling.

"We've had a blast putting this together, and we hope you feel we have done it with respect," he said.

Fans seemed to agree. Even without McCartney, Springsteen or another big name to cap the concert, many fans stayed past midnight while the camera crew packed up and Holly's "True Love Ways" and the Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" reverberated through the ballroom.

They ended the night doing the same thing that teens loved to do at the Surf in the '50s: They danced.

www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090203/BUDDYHOLLY/302030006/-1/SPORTS09

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7866000/7866685.stm

http://www.voanews.com/english/Entertainment/2009-02-03-voa12.cfm

On February 3, 1959, a small plane crashed in a corn field in Iowa, killing three rock and roll stars - Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, known as "The Big Bopper".

The 50th anniversary of that tragic event is being observed by rock fans around the world, but especially in Clear Lake, Iowa - the scene of their last performance, where a large concert is planned, and in Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock, Texas.

Charles Hardin Holly, known to his family and friends as Buddy, was only 22 years old when he died, but he had by that time created a guitar-driven rock and roll style that would live on among rock bands around the world.

In only a few years, the Lubbock native created hit songs that are still played today - classics like "That'll be the Day," inspired by a line John Wayne spoke in the western movie "The Searchers".

Holly rocked his fans with songs like "Peggy Sue" and "Maybe Baby" and then soothed them with ballads like "Everyday".

The song marked the first use in pop music of a celesta - an instrument mainly associated with classical music performances.

Fans say Holly's music still relevant

Holly's style and musical experimentation appealed to many up-and-coming musicians, especially in Britain, where he has many fans even among people born long after his death.


Phil and Caroline Jenkins
Among the British visitors to Lubbock for the 50th anniversary of Holly's death are Phil and Caroline Jenkins.

"The Beatles and the Rolling Stones - they all credit Buddy as being a major influence," Jenkins said. "It seems that you get more in England than you do here. He is bigger there than he is here. You know, he is bigger there than he is here. Lots of people here we talk to go, 'Who?' They don't know the name."

Jessica Camacho helps run the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, which is holding panel discussions and special events to commemorate Holly's death.


Jessica Camacho
Camacho is only 26 years old, but she says she recognizes the importance of Holly - not only to her hometown, but also to the world of music.

"I don't know how many younger people realize what kind of influence Buddy Holly had even on the music that they hear today that they love. I think his influence was far reaching," Camacho said.

Friend says Holly strove for recognition

There are still many people living here in Lubbock who knew Buddy Holly well. Among them is former musician and disc jockey Jack Neal, who was Buddy Holly's first musical partner on a local radio show. He sat in on jam sessions with Holly and a young rock singer from Memphis, Tennessee named Elvis Presley, just months before Elvis went on to become a legend himself.


Jack Neal
"I truly believe that if Buddy had still been living, he would have been as big as Elvis, if not bigger, because of the two different styles of people that they were," Neal said.

Neal knew Buddy Holly as a close friend as well as an artist, and he misses him still. He recalls one of his last conversations with him, not long before he died.

"He was in town and we were at one of the drive-ins and it was just before he left to go on that last tour and he said he wanted people to know Buddy Holly," Neal recalled. "He wanted them to know the name. He said the money was nice, but he wanted people to know the name. And so that was his goal and that is exactly what he did."

The fatal plane crash in Iowa was commemorated in 1973 by singer/songwriter Don McLean in his hit song, "American Pie," which spoke of "the day the music died." But most Buddy Holly fans say his music never died and that it lives on in the rock and roll he helped crea

Still, 50 years has gone by...

THANK YOU THIS WAS THE BEST  SO FAR!

Quote:




But, in a way, it seems like yesterday.....

Wow, another good reason to break those "no cameras allowed" rules!

Quote:




Yeah, in the scheme of the history of the world, 50 years is but a moment...

Quote:


I disagree!

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Friday, February 6, 2009
Before the Beatles, there was Buddy
Scott Galupo (Contact)

Buddy Holly figures prominently in any potted history of rock music. He's characteristically included among that handful of late-'50s avatars who lit a spark that was all but extinguished until a bunch of shaggy-haired British boys crossed the Atlantic to remind Americans, and thence the world, of what they'd been missing.
As we remember the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Mr. Holly - and Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson Jr. - this week, it's perhaps a good time to make an even greater claim for Mr. Holly's legacy.
Think of it this way: There are two epochs of rock - Before Buddy and After Buddy.
In his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity," University of Chicago art historian David W. Galenson sets this bar for an artist's influence: Can anyone subsequently ignore his work?
In Mr. Holly's case, the answer is an emphatic no.
If Elvis Presley changed the face (and hair and hips) of pop music, Buddy Holly - himself influenced by Mr. Presley, to be sure - went on to alter its molecular structure.
As Marshall Crenshaw - the eclectic singer-songwriter who played Mr. Holly in the 1987 Valens biopic "La Bamba" - notes, Mr. Holly, along with quintessential rocker Chuck Berry, "invented '60s rock. It was really those two guys."
"His music was unique, original and distinctive," Mr. Crenshaw adds. "He influenced all the important stuff that came afterward."
More so than Mr. Berry, however, Mr. Holly became what Mick Jagger called the "archetypal singer-songwriter": a vessel for original musical ideas that did not necessarily obey a particular form or genre.
Mr. Holly and his backing band, the Crickets, were rock music's first self-sufficient writers and performers of their own material.
In this, he prefigured both the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Of the nearly 100 songs he recorded in just three years, Mr. Holly wrote or co-wrote about 40. According to the Silver Spring-based musician and Holly fanatic J.P. McDermott, his creativity had been accelerating rapidly until the fatal plane crash.
Mr. Holly was the first rock artist who glimpsed a future that was open to exploration and experimentation. He toyed with the sonic possibilities of ancillary instruments such as the celesta. He recorded with a string section - rare for a rocker in those days. He seemed to grasp intuitively an insight that critic Terry Teachout credits to the Beatles and their producer, George Martin: that the recording studio itself could, in effect, become a kind of instrument.
What more would he have accomplished? One can only speculate - he died in 1959, at the age of 22. Rabid Holly fan John Lennon was certain his craft would have grown even more inventive and sophisticated.
Mr. McDermott, who earlier this week delivered a lecture on the singer at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, says that in the months before he died, Mr. Holly was keen on collaborating with R&B star Ray Charles.
Mr. Holly and wife Maria Santiago had moved to New York City's Greenwich Village. So perhaps, Mr. McDermott theorizes, he would have immersed himself in the folk scene there.
It's possible, too, that the Lubbock, Texas-born Mr. Holly might have beaten country-rock pioneers Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman to their discovery.
All of these are tantalizing what-ifs - but their plausibility does not extend to any of Mr. Holly's peers.
Mr. Holly's influence was important for other, subtler reasons. His association with the Fender Stratocaster guitar, for instance, was iconic and helped popularize the brand.
Furthermore, a 1958 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" had made Mr. Holly a huge star in England. (The Beatles chose their name in part as an insectival homage to the Crickets.)
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said that the bespectacled Mr. Holly's resemblance to a "bank clerk" was an inspiration of sorts: Rock stardom "was not just for guys who looked like Elvis," he concluded.
Those less-than-conventional-good-looks proved a confidence booster to countless talented geeks, from Joey Ramone to Elvis Costello to Weezer's Rivers Cuomo.
Still, 50 years after the "day the music died," it's instructive to remember that Mr. Holly's greatness was far from universally acknowledged at the time. Rock then had yet to transcend its origins. With Mr. Presley shorn of hair in the Army, the music seemed like the fading novelty many older Americans had suspected it of being all along.
Manufactured teen idols such as Frankie Avalon and Fabian had begun to eclipse rock's first wave of stars.
Mr. McDermott says Mr. Holly's October 1958 recordings in New York City with an orchestra (known as the "String Sessions") was as much an effort to rebrand Mr. Holly as a traditional pop singer as it was a forward-thinking experiment.
By 1959, Mr. Holly's power as a hit maker was in decline, says Mr. Crenshaw, who points out that the Winter Dance Party tour on which he, Mr. Valens and Mr. Richardson had been performing was, for Mr. Holly, a "dismal" undertaking necessitated by the need for a paycheck. (His manager, Norman Petty, though indispensable to Mr. Holly's rise, was one of rock music's proverbial financial sharks.)
Mr. Holly's legacy was obvious only in hindsight.
With his No. 1 single "American Pie" (1971), singer-songwriter Don McLean paid nameless tribute to all three of the musicians who died in the Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.
However, he sought to monumentalize the life and music of Mr. Holly in particular.
The man's importance probably came as news to most Americans.