The Tragically Short but Influential Career of Buddy Holly (Part 1, Aug 7, 2023)

The Texas Music Series continues

         I spent more years of my life living in Lubbock than anyplace else—although Nacogdoches is getting close to taking over the lead—so it would be only natural that in doing a series on Texas musicians I include a piece on the Hub City’s favorite son, Buddy Holly. An added benefit may be that many of you may learn something because if what you know about Buddy Holly came mostly from the 1978 film “The Buddy Holly Story,” starring a young Gary Busey, then you have been fed a number of inaccuracies. The “real” Buddy Holly story (which is also the title of an excellent documentary on Holly’s life produced and financed by former Beatle Paul McCartney) is much more nuanced and full, even though Holly was tragically taken from this world at the young age of 22 in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, the famous “Day the Music Died,” according to singer-songwriter Don McLean in his 1970s hit “American Pie.”

      Charles Hardin Holley (yes, “Holley,” the spelling of his last name as “Holly” was a misprint by his record company that remained) was born in Lubbock in September 1936, the youngest child of a tailor and homemaker. Holly’s devoutly Baptist family had a musical bent; his mother was a featured singer in the church choir and all his brothers also played and sang, even forming a group that performed on local talent shows. His brother Larry once told me (Larry owned and operated “Holley Tile” in Lubbock and I once met him when he performed a job at a place I was working) that they gave Buddy a violin to play when he was just 5 or 6—an instrument he couldn’t play and they didn’t really need in the group—but he would “grease” the bow so it wouldn’t make a sound as Buddy drew it across the strings. Larry was also the one who bought Buddy his first guitar when he was 11, shortly after Larry returned from service in WWII.

       Buddy did learn to play the guitar and influenced by the country and gospel music he and his family heard and played he formed his first group, a country duo, with his friend Bob Montgomery in elementary school. When he entered Lubbock High School he met Sonny Curtis—who would go on to become a celebrated songwriter and was the man who wrote “Love Is All Around,” the theme song played at the opening of the 1970s television hit series, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”—and along with Jerry Allison and Jack Neal they began to play in local talent contests and eventually on a local TV show. Neal left the band and Montgomery joined again and they began to play a weekly radio show on KDAV in 1953. Even at a young age, Buddy Holly was interested in blending sounds and trying to be innovative. He would spend hours in his car in front of his home tuning into radio stations that played country, of course, but also rhythm and blues stations as well as the occasional jazz recordings. He began to blend those sounds into his show and, perhaps without realizing it, was playing music that would eventually be called “rock-and-roll.”

    Holly graduated from high school in 1955 and told his parents that he wanted to pursue a full-time career in music. However, he was just not sure what direction he wanted to go with his talent until, shortly after he finished high school, he attended a concert at Lubbock’s Fair Park Coliseum by Elvis Presley. Holly was mesmerized by Presley’s stage presence, but he also realized that Elvis was singing and playing the same basic type of music he had begun to play as he developed his style. Elvis would come back to Lubbock two more times within the year (Presley frequently toured Texas when he was playing on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport), and Holly saw him each time. So, he recruited Jerry Allison on the drums and Larry Welborn on the stand-up bass. Buddy played guitar and the trio began to play gigs around Lubbock and surrounding venues. They began to refine their sound and became quite locally popular with the city’s youths playing rock-and-roll.

       In October of 1955, Bill Haley & His Comets came to Lubbock and promoter Dave Stone, also of KDAV radio, hired Holly and his band to open the show. Attending the concert was Eddie Crandall, a talent scout for Decca Records’ Nashville house and he was impressed by Holly and his bandmates. He called Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny to tell him of the new act he had heard and sent him a demo tape he had made with the young musicians. Denny then sent the tape to Paul Cohen, the head of Nashville Decca and in February 1956 Cohen flew to Lubbock and signed Buddy Holly to a contract. His typist is the one who misspelled “Holley” as “Holly” and that became his stage name.

      Buddy Holly and his bandmates drove to Nashville to play their first recording session, and Buddy Holly would learn that the recording business was truly a “business.” Famed producer Owen Bradley was the producer and he brought in session musicians, wrote musical arrangements that were not even close to the sound Holly and his friends were making, and turned a deaf ear to Holly’s protests. Bradley recorded a “single” for the band, which he named “Buddy Holly and the Two Tones.” Decca released the first single “Blue Days, Black Nights,” with “Love Me” on the B side (if you don’t know what a “B side” is ask someone older than 50). Neither record gained any traction, so Opry manager Denny arranged for “Buddy Holly and the Two Tones” to go on tour with country artist Faron Young. Decca released another single, “Modern Don Juan,” which also never charted and so, on January 22, 1957, Decca Records told Holly that they would not renew his contract, but they also had another stipulation—Buddy Holly could not record for another record company for five years. Buddy Holly’s musical career seemed to be over before it had even started.

Next Week, Buddy Holly becomes a national sensation

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu; www.easttexashistorical.org.