Rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, born in Lubbock, Texas, USA. Originally from a country-and-western background, he was also influenced by hill-billy, Mexican, and African-American music. He was the first to add drums and a rhythm-and-blues beat to the basic country style, and his band, The Crickets, was among the first to use the now standard rock-and-roll line-up of two guitars, bass, and drums. He left The Crickets in 1958, and was killed when a plane carrying him between concerts crashed. At the time he had released only three US albums. He became an important cult figure, much of his material being released posthumously. His most popular records include That'll Be The Day, Not Fade Away, Peggy Sue, and Oh Boy.
| Buddy Holly | ||
|---|---|---|
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Buddy Holly in concert |
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Charles Hardin Holley | |
| Born | September 7, 1936 | |
| Origin | Lubbock, Texas | |
| Died | February 3, 1959 | |
| Genre(s) | Rock and Roll | |
| Occupation(s) | musician, songwriter | |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, Guitar | |
| Years active | 1956–1959 | |
| Label(s) | Decca | |
|
Associated acts |
The Crickets | |
| Notable instrument(s) | ||
| Fender Stratocaster | ||
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), better known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer, songwriter, and a pioneer of Rock and Roll. The change of spelling of Holley to Holly came about because of an error in a contract he was asked to sign, listing him as Buddy Holly.
Buddy Holly is considered one of the founding fathers of rock 'n roll and one of its most influential.
Biography
Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas to Lawrence Odell Holley and Ella Pauline Drake.
Holly turned to rock music after seeing Elvis Presley sing live in Lubbock in early 1955.
Back in Lubbock, Holly formed his own band, The Crickets, and began making records at Norman Petty's studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Coral Records, a subsidiary of Decca, signed Buddy Holly and The Crickets. Before "That'll Be The Day" had its nationwide release and became a smash hit, Holly played lead guitar on the hit-single "Starlight", recorded in April 1957, featuring Jack Huddle.
Holly's music was sophisticated for its day, including the use of instruments considered novel for rock and roll, such as the celesta (heard on "Everyday").
Holly also managed to bridge some of the racial divide that marked rock, notably winning over an all-black audience when accidentally booked at New York's Apollo Theater (though, unlike the fictional movie biography, it took several performances for audiences to be convinced of his talents). Contrary to popular belief, teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney did not attend a concert of Buddy Holly's, though a school friend of McCartney and George Harrison, Tony Bramwell, did so. Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as a primary influence (their band's name, The Beatles, was chosen partly in homage to Holly's Crickets). Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's song catalogue. According to the band's website, although the group admired Buddy Holly (and years later produced an album covering some of his songs), their name was inspired primarily by the sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas of 1962, when they re-formed their previous band (the Deltas) and had to come up with a new name.
Holly's personal style, more controlled and cerebral than Elvis' and more youthful and innovative than the country and western stars of his day, would have an influence on youth culture on both sides of the Atlantic for decades to come, reflected particularly in the New Wave movement in artists such as Elvis Costello and Marshall Crenshaw (who portrayed Holly in the Richie Valens biopic La Bamba), and earlier in folk rock bands like The Byrds and The Turtles.
In 1959, Holly split with the Crickets and began a solo tour with other notable performers, including Ritchie Valens and J.P.
Death
Following the February 2, 1959 performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new Crickets band (Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson, leaving Holly's pregnant bride, Maria Elena Holly, a widow (she miscarried soon after).
Holly's funeral services were held at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas, and his body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery.
Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his name, Buddy Holley.
The Surf Ballroom, a popular and old-fashioned dance hall that dates to the height of Big Band Era, continues to put on shows, notably an annual Buddy Holly tribute on the anniversary of his last performances.
The dramatic arc of Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biography The Buddy Holly Story, for which actor Gary Busey received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly, as well as successful Broadway and West End musicals documenting his career. This led Paul McCartney to produce and host his own tribute to Holly, titled "The Real Buddy Holly Story."
The science fiction novel Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, by Bradley Denton (ISBN 0-688-10822-9 and ISBN 0-380-71876-6), begins when television sets throughout the world suddenly begin broadcasting a concert by an apparently living Buddy Holly, who says he is on Ganymede.
Terry Pratchett's novel Soul Music features a protagonist whose name, Imp Y Cellyn, translates to "Buddy Holly".
"Oil", an episode of The Young Ones features Mike (Christopher Ryan) discovering Buddy Holly, alive and well and tangled in parachutes, in the attic of a house in London. Mike asks Holly if he has come up with any new material, and Holly plays a brief song about eating crickets...then his parachute strap suddenly breaks, slamming him into the floor and killing him. Mike later hands off a duffel bag containing Holly's corpse to two minor characters, asking them to "take care of my Buddy."
A fictional version of a young pre-fame Buddy Holly appears in an episode of Quantum Leap, working as a veterinarian's assistant.
Buddy is also one of the evil citizens that exists in the town of "Rock N' Roll Heaven", a community inhabited by deceased music legends in Stephen King's short horror story You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.
The 1998 film "Six-String Samurai," a surreal romp through an alternate-timeline post-apocalyptic America (Russia bombed and then invaded the United States in 1957), features a rock-and-rolling martial arts hero named "Buddy" who sports familiar black horn-rimmed glasses and a tuxedo.
Buddy Holly was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its formation in 1986.
The Smithereens' song "Maria Elena" is a Buddy Holly tribute as sung to his widow.
On the infamous Gunfight at Carnegie Hall album, Phil Ochs famously sang a long tribute to Buddy Holly, while dressed in an uncharacteristic shiny gold suit.
Paul Simon's song "Old" references his early influences, including Buddy Holly, including the line "Buddy Holly still goes on, but his catalog was sold."
The Dixie Chicks recently recorded the song "Lubbock or Leave It" which references Buddy Holly's death by airplane crash, and the statue that was erected in his hometown after his death.
In an interview with Alan Freed, Holly and Freed mentions Cricket bass player Joe Mauldin's nickname "Joe Buy-Us", as in "Go buy us a coke".
In Pulp Fiction, Steve Buscemi plays a Buddy Holly lookalike waiter that serves John Travolta and Uma Thurman.
The comic maxiseries Batman: The Long Halloween features a character named Alberto Falcone, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Buddy Holly.
In a Simpsons episode, "Colonel Homer", the manager of the recording studio fondly recalled how "Buddy Holly stood on this spot in 1958 and said, 'There is no way in hell, I am gonna record in this dump.'" In a later episode, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper appear on an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon in which Scratchy is the pilot.
Covers
Since his death many bands and artists have covered Buddy Holly material such as The Beatles, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, The Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Linda Ronstadt, Humble Pie, Peter &
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