Why Buddy Holly Matters

I was only six years old when I fell in love for the first time. It wasn’t the heart wrenching, pulse racing, butterflies-in-the-stomach cliché regurgitated in every mass market paperback romance. It was real. It was with a sound. A moment. A story so wonderful and so tragic that one would think Dickens or Steinbeck had conceived it. It was with Buddy Holly.

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I’m sure my mother never realized just how that Emerson stereo would affect my life. Around 1980, after years of suffering from my father’s misdeeds, she filed for divorce. With bills to pay, a lawyer to retain, and mouths to feed, my mother abandoned her stay-at-home mom position and re-entered the work force, accepting a second shift job cleaning offices. With her newfound freedom and additional responsibilities came a sense of accomplishment; of pride. In honor of such, Mom made a purchase that was, in our penny pinching household, considered to be both an event and an extravagance: she bought a stereo. Procured from Fingerhut--the mail order version of your local rent-to-own establishment--our new Emerson stereo was the apex of state-of-the-art. Complete with a turntable, eight track deck, and a fairly recent innovation called a cassette tape player, the stereo--save its towering speakers--was gleaming silver, trimmed with faux wood, and resided on a matching stand. One ground rule regarding the new stereo was quickly established: don’t touch it. At all. Ever. But the cassette deck’s protruding, inch-long control buttons always seemed to beckon to my six year-old fingers…so shiny and rectangular and long and WHAT DID I SAY? IS YOUR NAME MOM? DON’T TOUCH!

My mother began to amass a small record collection to accompany her new acquisition. Albums by Top 40 acts like Air Supply and Linda Ronstadt were displayed alongside those of good ol’ boy crooners Johnny Lee and John Conlee. A patchwork of music styles flooded our living room. The lighthearted sun-and-fun sounds of the Beach Boys shared the turntable with progressive arena rockers, Styx. Christopher Cross’s lush vocals blended with those of musical storyteller Jim Croce. The local oldies station that my mother always had the stereo’s radio dial tuned to introduced me to quintessential rockabilly flag bearers Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Not even “Summertime Blues” or “Be-Bop-a-Lula” could capture my ears--or my heart--in quite the manner a certain bespectacled musician from Lubbock, Texas would. It was two black vinyl discs, spinning at 33 revolutions per minute, that would trigger an obsession that continues to thrive some 30 years later.

The album cover

I don’t recall the exact moment that my mother placed Buddy Holly: A Rock & Roll Collection on the turntable. I can’t tell you what I was doing or to whom I was speaking with. The world didn’t come to a sudden stop, as it seemed to do on September 11^th, 2001, or when President Kennedy was assassinated all of those Novembers ago. All I remember is the sound, the roiling drumbeat of “Peggy Sue” flooding out of those seemingly gigantic speakers, forever tattooing itself upon my brain…how I had the distinct feeling that I was hearing something new and wonderful; something special. My six year-old universe--my kiddom--as trite as it may sound, was never quite the same.

Liner notes

A greatest hits compilation released in 1980, Buddy Holly: A Rock & Roll Collection was much more to me than just another album stashed below my mother’s stereo. It was a work of art, as arresting visually as it was to the ears. I would perch in front of the stereo, the opening guitar notes of “That’ll Be the Day” spilling into the room as I pored over the double album’s liner notes. The jacket folded open, revealing the details behind Buddy’s rapid rise to music superstar status; the seemingly star-crossed circumstances behind his death. Over and over, I read of the notorious Winter Dance Party tour: how Buddy trekked across the frozen Midwest in one broken down, refurbished school bus after another; the lack of sleep he and the other artists on the bill endured. I read of the Big Bopper’s bout with the flu and the coin toss that entrenched Ritchie Valens into rock and roll history. I read about the plane crash that claimed four young lives--including that of Roger Peterson, Flight N3794N’s 21 year-old pilot--and irreversibly altered the rock music genre. My horror at the passing of such young talents was paired with an overwhelming curiosity over the mystery of it all: the to-this-day elusive cause of the crash, the miscarriage Buddy’s wife, Maria Elena, reportedly suffered shortly afterward; the philosophical struggle between life and too young for death. It was all too much for the brain of a child to absorb. Perhaps that’s why those same questions continue to flit through my mind three decades later.

Maybe it’s a part of why Buddy Holly’s music continues to resonate with me. But it’s only a small part. As I grew older and my musical tastes expanded and matured, so did my appreciation for Buddy’s eclectic catalog. The old vinyl records still retained their home near my mother’s aging stereo, while I amassed a trove of Buddy Holly tunes that reflected this deeper love. Holly staples such as “Oh Boy!” and “Rave On” were replaced by the exuberant “Rock Around with Ollie Vee” and the simplistic toe tapper, “Down the Line”, an early duet with friend Bob Montgomery that displayed a glimpse of the greatness that was to come. Holly’s songs touched upon those “every man” emotions of love and loss; hope and heartbreak. From the sweeping, orchestral “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” to his mournful wail in the melancholy “Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues”, Buddy could take that central theme and spin each song into a unique masterpiece.

Buddy Holly was a musician’s musician. He wrote much of his own material--producer Norman Petty was often given a co-writing credit, as was standard practice in the music business at the time. Although double tracking had been utilized by guitar great Les Paul and Mary Ford since the early 1950s, it was first used for vocal duplication on “Words of Love”. The effect was soothing: Buddy Holly and his clone, singing simultaneously. He was a fashion icon, his dark-framed eyewear synonymous with the Buddy Holly name, and with Weezer’s 1994 alt rock tune called--what else?--“Buddy Holly”. While living in New York City’s Greenwich Village, he frequented jazz and blues clubs, and also learned the intricacies of flamenco music. Preliminary preparations for the formation of his own record label were made. Yes, Buddy truly was a musical renaissance man.

It’s been over fifty years since the day the music died, as Don McLean dubbed it in “American Pie”, his epic ode to Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Yet Buddy’s influence on music, on movies, on culture, is indelible. His songs have been an inspiration to a plethora of artists. One of the Rolling Stones’ earliest singles was a rendition of “Not Fade Away”. The Hollies, of “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” fame, named their group thusly in homage to Buddy. Four young men from Liverpool, England would become one of--if not the--most prolific, successful group in the history of rock and roll. The quartet, in a nod to Buddy and his fellow Crickets, christened themselves The Beatles. Country honkytonker Waylon Jennings cut his teeth in the music business as Holly’s bassist on the ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour. From troubadour James Taylor to rockabilly revivalists the Stray Cats to Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister’s side project, HeadCat, artists from all points of the musical spectrum have tweaked a Buddy Holly song or two into their own. The musical mainstream has gotten into the tribute act, too, with pop acts Cee Lo Green, the Black Keys, and Florence + The Machine amongst those featured on Rave On Buddy Holly, an album of reworked Holly classics released earlier in the summer; a second album of Buddy covers, Listen to Me: Buddy Holly, hits store shelves this week. The Buddy Holly Guitar Foundation’s mission is to raise money for school music programs. How is this accomplished? By loaning Rick Turner-built guitars, each fashioned with an original fret from Holly’s 1943 Gibson J-45, to worthy musicians. You can thank Buddy Holly for some damn good music.

There are scores of Buddy Holly biographies, including a children’s picture book. There’s Buddy Holly phone cards and Buddy biopics--The Buddy Holly Story achieved a level of renown for its over the top dramatization and its fast and loose use of facts. Director Robert Rugan is slated to begin filming Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, a comedy/sci fi romp based on the Bradley Denton novel, this fall. Just in time for what would have been his 75^th birthday, on September 7^th, Buddy will have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Buddy’s tunes have appeared in various commercials, so if you’ve recently obtained a Visa check card or switched your phone service provider to A T & T, well, you can thank Buddy Holly for that, too.

My mother’s stereo has been silenced. After a string of relocations and several trips to repair shops, the shiny Emerson with the faux wood paneling, the object of my affection for most of my childhood, finally gave up the ghost a few years ago. That Buddy Holly album--that touchstone to not only my youth, but to innocence, to wonder, to unbridled joy--is now mine, a gift this past Christmas. I carefully placed it in my carry-on luggage for the return trip home, nearly 900 miles by train, to another frozen Midwestern state. Conversation with my husband was punctuated with a frantic “Where’s the Buddy Holly record?” or “Don’t step on my Buddy Holly album!” If not for the train’s darkened interior, I’m sure I would have seen my hubby roll his eyes at me more than once. The album retains a place of honor, resting in front of my own collection of vinyl, near my own record player. My eyes land on Buddy’s smiling face, and I’m reminded of how, despite my diverse musical palate, rockabilly--and Buddy Holly--have always been a constant.

The Brevoort, Greenwich Village, New York City

So, what makes Buddy Holly so important? What enables this man--this man gone for over half a century--to have such impact on so many? On me? Maybe it’s the loss of someone so young at the apex of his life and abilities, or the wondering of what might have been. It’s the reason I tramped through Greenwich Village to the Brevoort--the apartment high rise Buddy lived in at the end of his life--and braved the doorman’s evil eye, just to take a few snapshots. It’s why I encounter some Buddy Holly relic in the most unlikely places: a framed photo at a Gone With the Wind-themed bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania; a Crickets 45 in a window display at the local high school’s alumni building. Maybe it’s the sweet loveliness of “Dearest” that causes me to believe it would have made the perfect song for my wedding, or why I sing along to “Modern Don Juan”. It could be why my foot always taps to the gospel-flavored “Early in the Morning”, or the reason I pause whatever I’m doing to listen to Buddy’s cover of The Coasters’ “Smokey Joe’s Café”. Maybe it’s the reason I turn up the volume on my stereo when “Well…All Right” is playing, or why Buddy’s hiccupping “Go baby, go baby…” in “Baby Won’t You Come Out Tonight” raises goosebumps on my arms. The tangible, the visceral--it’s all the same. It isn’t any one thing that makes Buddy Holly important. It’s all of them. Buddy Holly means something just because.

And that’s why Buddy Holly matters.