The Forgotten Genius of Buddy Holly
Picture of my only original Buddy Holly record I bought in a used record store in San Francisco in 1997.
There are no words in the English language that will properly allow me to tell you what the music of Buddy Holly has meant to me. Along with Tom Petty and a few others, it’s been the soundtrack to my life. From late summer teenage nights, driving around the country roads of Bartholomew County, Indiana with the windows down in my 1966 Ford Mustang Coupe, smoking Winstons (like Buddy did), with some girl on my mind to road trips in my 40’s, introducing the music of Buddy and others to my daughter; Charles Hardin Holley has been one of my most consistent companions.
Buddy’s career really only lasted nineteen months. From the ages of twenty to twenty-two. From the hot, dry days of Lubbock, Texas to the frigid, snowy nights of Clear Lake, Iowa, he packed a lifetime into those nineteen months. In his music, and in his life, it was a busy nineteen months.
“That’ll Be the Day” was released May 27, 1957 and he died February 3, 1959.
No one had ever seen anyone like Elvis before, that’s true. But it’s also true that musically, Elvis borrowed. He couldn’t play much and he didn’t write. He had the look and he had the voice… and yes, he was white.
But Buddy, Buddy was the first original.
No one looked like Buddy. No one played like Buddy. No one wrote like Buddy. No one sang like Buddy. The hiccups in the vocals. The guitar solos made from chords. The two-guitar band. The arrangements, the harmonies. I would make the arguments that Buddy invented punk rock and modern surf music at the same time with “Peggy Sue”. Buddy’s eighth note downstrokes and Jerry Allison’s assault on the toms was unlike anything anyone had ever heard before.
Then he moves to New York and reinvents himself has a world class crooner.
All in nineteen months.
Without Buddy, what do the Beatles or Rolling Stones sound like? And if those groups sound different, what does all of rock and pop sound like without him? Thankfully, we don’t have to find out.
While all generations rebel against the generation before, the younger people today don’t have any appreciation for the past at all. They don’t even want to rebel against it, they want to pretend it never happened. The world came into existence with their birth. Yes, I know not everyone young person is like this, but it is definitely the majority. And, if you don’t build your home on a solid foundation, your house will not stand. The earth was here before suburban tract housing. You have to build on solid ground.
I worry that people are forgetting about Buddy, Ritchie and others. I know not everyone is a music nerd like me. I was a kid who grew up loving the music of the 50’s; the vocal groups like the Skyliners, Platters and others to the rockabilly of Sun Studios. Later, I went back to early American folk, and as I matured, I went back to classical music. I learn more from past musical masters every single day. No offense to Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift, but I can learn more from Buddy, Bach, Otis Redding and the Carter Family than I can from them.
Buddy died twenty-one years before I was born, but he feels like an old friend, even to this day. There’s just something about his music that permeates down to my marrow. Is it the melodies, the rhythm, the timbre of his voice? I don’t know, I just know it’s personal in a way very few artists have ever been able to make me feel.
I’m planning a trip to Lubbock and Clovis now. Probably for his birthday in September. A little solo road trip with an acoustic guitar and my camera. I’ll go to Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis, the Buddy Holly Museum in Lubbock, and I’ll go pay my respects and say thanks.
If you haven’t listened to Buddy, or haven’t listened in a while, go spend some time with him. You won’t regret it. He was a lot more than just the guy with the glasses that died in that plane crash…
He was a legend.