Podcast appearances and mentions of jerry allison

Blind Faith was a supergroup formed from Cream members Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, Traffic founder Steve Winwood, and Family bassist/violinist Ric Grech.  Cream collapsed after increasing strife between members, particularly Baker and bassist Jack Bruce.  Traffic went on hiatus, and Winwood began jamming with Clapton in his basement.  Baker sat in on a session shortly after they moved to Traffic's rehearsal space in Berkshire, and was added to the lineup after some reluctance from Clapton was overcome.  Finally, Grech was invited to join, and  left the Family in the middle of a U.S. tour, creating understandable grievances.  The group created blues-oriented and psychedelic rock for their eponymously named Blind Faith debut album.  A summer tour was launched, but it was a challenging thing.  Clapton didn't want to do long jam sessions on the tour, but their single album was not a lot of material for a concert.  As a result, they wound up playing a significant amount of Cream and Traffic songs.  This delighted the audience, but irritated and distanced Clapton.  Despite great buzz from critics and fans alike, the group was destined to only last a few months.  Clapton began drifting away while on tour, spending more time with opening act Delaney & Bonnie.  He would eventually join that group prior to launching Derek & the Dominos.  Ginger Baker would move on to form Ginger Baker's Air Force, bringing in Winwood and Grech for a short stint before Winwood rejoined Traffic.  Rob brings us this short-lived supergroup in this week's podcast. Had to Cry TodayThe title track dispenses with the 3-minute single format in favor of a long form jam written by Steve Winwood.  The lyrics are ambiguous, and could reference a dying relationship, or perhaps a friend drifting away.Can't Find My Way HomeWinwood also wrote this well-known single from the album, covered by a number of artists including Joe Cocker, Alison Krauss, and Bonnie Raitt.  Winwood has been asked about the meaning of the lyrics, but has said that discussing song lyrics is a little like explaining a joke - it doesn't add anything to the experience.  Clapton leaves his electric guitar in favor of a rare acoustic one for this song.Well All RightThis track is the only one not written by members of Blind Faith.  Buddy Holly, Norman Petty, Jerry Allison, and Joe B. Mauldin wrote this song, and Holly sang it in 1958.  Clapton takes lead vocal duties on this song.Sea of JoyA piece of Winwood's writing also leads off side two of the album.  While some believe the song references hallucinogens, a simpler meaning would be simply the joy of being on the water.  “And I'm feeling close to when the race is run.  Waiting in our boats to set sail.  Sea of joy.” ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Pfft You Were Gone (from the variety show “Hee Haw”)This country comedy and music show premiered on CBS in this month.  Buck Owens and Roy Clark led an ensemble of regulars and guests in this variety show. STAFF PICKS:These Eyes by The Guess WhoWayne starts out the staff picks with a song co-written by lead singer Burton Cummings and lead guitarist Randy Bachman.  This was their breakout song, with lyrics that describe the devastating feeling in the days following a long relationship break-up.Badge by CreamLynch reminds us that while Cream may have disbanded by this time, their music was still on the charts.  Eric Clapton and George Harrison wrote this song.  It was supposed to be called "Bridge," but was named "Badge," due to a misreading of the handwritten title.  George Harrison plays rhythm guitar, credited as "D'Angelo Misterioso" to avoid contractual issues.Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins SingersBruce features the first gospel song to hit the charts, reaching number 4 on the US singles chart.  Edwin Hawkins took a hymn originally written by Phillip Doddridge in 1755, and updated it with a piano introduction inspired by Sergio Mendes and lyrical improvisations influenced by James Brown. See by The Rascals Rob finishes the staff picks with the fuzzy lead off and title track to the Rascals sixth studio album.  Between 1966 and 1968, the Rascals released a number of soul-inspired singles.  This album marked a change in the band's focus from blue-eyed soul to psychedelic rock. COMEDY TRACK:Gitarzan by Ray StevensOne of the earliest comedy singles from Stevens closes out our podcast this week. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

This week Sara is joined by actor, musician, and nap ninja Charles Esten. The two discuss Sara's short lived acting career as a guest star on the show Nashville with Charles and how Charles embraces his characters as an actor. Charles not only shares stories about his acting career, but he also dives into how music was always a dream of his. Charles proves that he is not just another actor who wants to sing.   About Charles: Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Charles "Chip" Esten was raised in Alexandria, VA and attended T.C. Williams High School (made famous in the film "Remember the Titans.") He then attended The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, where he graduated with a degree in economics and met his wife, Patty. While in Williamsburg, he was lead singer/songwriter in a popular local band. Esten made his theatrical debut in London when he portrayed Buddy Holly, singing, acting and playing guitar in the hit West End musical "Buddy." In that role he was honored to perform for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and eventually President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush at The White House. He was also very honored to perform with Jerry Allison and Joe B. Mauldin, Buddy's original hitmaking bandmates, the Crickets. It was during his run as Buddy that Esten first appeared on the original British version of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?," with Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops. When "Whose Line" came to ABC, he became a recurring cast member and frequent song improvisor. Since then he has appeared on Drew Carey's Improvaganza and toured frequently, performing live improv shows with Stiles, Proops and Jeff B. Davis. Esten's many early television credits include recurring roles on "Big Love," "Enlightened," "The Office" and "ER." Besides being the father on Disney Channel's "Jessie," he has been a Klingon on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a secretary on "Murphy Brown" and Kelly Bundy's fiance on the series finale of "Married with Children." His film credits include "Swing Vote," "Thirteen Days," "61*" and "The Postman." Surpassing 21 million streams for his music to date, Esten is a 2018 Guinness World Records title holder for the "Most consecutive weeks to release an original digital single by a music act" after delivering 54 original songs once a week for 54 straight weeks.   Pre-order Sara's new album, Unbroke out 6/7: https://ffm.to/seunbroke   LET'S BE SOCIAL: Follow Charles Esten: Insta: (@charlesesten) Twitter: @CharlesEsten) TikTok: @charlesesten) Youtube: (@CharlesEstenOfficial) Spotify: (@Charles Esten) Apple Music: (@Charles Esten) Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/officialcharlesesten?mibextid=LQQJ4d) Website: (https://www.charlesesten.com)   Follow Diving in Deep Podcast: Instagram -(@divingindeeppod) TikTok - (@divingindeeppod) Twitter - (@divingindeeppod) Facebook - (@divingindeeppod)   Follow Sara Evans: Instagram - (@saraevansmusic) TikTok - (@saraevansmusic) Twitter - (@saraevansmusic) Facebook - (@saraevansmusic)   Produced and Edited by: The Cast Collective (Nashville, TN) YouTube -  @TheCastCollective ) Instagram - (@TheCastCollective) Twitter - (@TheCastCollective)   Directed by: Erin Dugan Edited By: Sean Dugan, Corey Williams, Tara Down, & Michaela Dolph https://www.thecastcollective.com

This week Sara is joined by actor, musician, and nap ninja Charles Esten. The two discuss Sara's short lived acting career as a guest star on the show Nashville with Charles and how Charles embraces his characters as an actor. Charles not only shares stories about his acting career, but he also dives into how music was always a dream of his. Charles proves that he is not just another actor who wants to sing.   About Charles: Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Charles “Chip” Esten was raised in Alexandria, VA and attended T.C. Williams High School (made famous in the film “Remember the Titans.”) He then attended The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, where he graduated with a degree in economics and met his wife, Patty. While in Williamsburg, he was lead singer/songwriter in a popular local band. Esten made his theatrical debut in London when he portrayed Buddy Holly, singing, acting and playing guitar in the hit West End musical “Buddy.” In that role he was honored to perform for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and eventually President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush at The White House. He was also very honored to perform with Jerry Allison and Joe B. Mauldin, Buddy's original hitmaking bandmates, the Crickets. It was during his run as Buddy that Esten first appeared on the original British version of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” with Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops. When “Whose Line” came to ABC, he became a recurring cast member and frequent song improvisor. Since then he has appeared on Drew Carey's Improvaganza and toured frequently, performing live improv shows with Stiles, Proops and Jeff B. Davis. Esten's many early television credits include recurring roles on “Big Love,” “Enlightened,” “The Office” and “ER.” Besides being the father on Disney Channel's “Jessie,” he has been a Klingon on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a secretary on “Murphy Brown” and Kelly Bundy's fiance on the series finale of “Married with Children.” His film credits include “Swing Vote,” “Thirteen Days,” “61*” and “The Postman.” Surpassing 21 million streams for his music to date, Esten is a 2018 Guinness World Records title holder for the “Most consecutive weeks to release an original digital single by a music act” after delivering 54 original songs once a week for 54 straight weeks.   Pre-order Sara's new album, Unbroke out 6/7: https://ffm.to/seunbroke   LET'S BE SOCIAL: Follow Charles Esten: Insta: (@charlesesten) Twitter: @CharlesEsten) TikTok: @charlesesten) Youtube: (@CharlesEstenOfficial) Spotify: (@Charles Esten) Apple Music: (@Charles Esten) Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/officialcharlesesten?mibextid=LQQJ4d) Website: (https://www.charlesesten.com)   Follow Diving in Deep Podcast: Instagram –(@divingindeeppod) TikTok – (@divingindeeppod) Twitter – (@divingindeeppod) Facebook – (@divingindeeppod)   Follow Sara Evans: Instagram – (@saraevansmusic) TikTok – (@saraevansmusic) Twitter – (@saraevansmusic) Facebook – (@saraevansmusic)   Produced and Edited by: The Cast Collective (Nashville, TN) YouTube –  @TheCastCollective ) Instagram – (@TheCastCollective) Twitter – (@TheCastCollective)   Directed by: Erin Dugan Edited By: Sean Dugan, Corey Williams, Tara Down, & Michaela Dolph https://www.thecastcollective.com

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1160, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Where Does It Hurt? 1: Myalgia (these parts). muscles. 2: Dermatalgia. skin. 3: Hepatalgia. the liver. 4: Odontalgia. teeth. 5: Arthralgia (these parts, whether hinge or ball-and-socket). joint. Round 2. Category: Will You Still Feed Me? 1: Och aye! Haggamuggie is a simplified version of this, but with fish liver--sounds even better. haggis. 2: Rachael Ray has a 22-minute recipe for burgers of this "cordon bleu"; 10 minutes of prep and 12 to cook. chicken. 3: From the Dutch for "to curl", this doughnut-style dough is fried and brushed with a sweet glaze. a cruller. 4: "Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no" this cheese described as "devastatingly odorous". limburger. 5: "Polska" precedes the name of this sausage in a Hillshire Farm product. kielbasa. Round 3. Category: Japanese Food 1: Tonyu is the liquid left over when this bland substance is made from soybeans. Tofu. 2: Surimi, meaning "formed fish", turns up in packages labeled this type of "crabmeat" and "lobster". imitation. 3: It's traditional for the host to serve a meal called kaiseki before this ceremony. The Tea Ceremony. 4: Tendon is a one-dish meal of rice topped with this mix of battered and fried seafood and vegetables. tempura. 5: Umeboshi are plums that are pickled, not tickled, this color. pink. Round 4. Category: Shakespeare'S Lovers 1: "The barge she sat in, like a burnisht throne burned on the water...". Cleopatra. 2: Bassanio found this lady lawyer's picture inside a leaden casket. Portia. 3: In 3rd play in which he appears, he becomes king and gets a girl, but she can't speak English. Henry V. 4: After he murdered her husband, Lady Anne spit in his face and then agreed to wear his ring. Richard III. 5: In "12th Night" it's Maria, not Olivia, who writes him the love not about his yellow stockings. Malvolio. Round 5. Category: Name That Tunesmith 1: 1967:"Ruby Tuesday"(both men, please). Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. 2: 2012, with Yoo Gun Hyung:"Gangnam Style". Psy. 3: 1957:"Peggy Sue"(along with Jerry Allison and Norman Petty). Buddy Holly. 4: 1980:"(Just Like) Starting Over". John Lennon. 5: 2006:"Waiting On The World To Change". John Mayer. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

"Grateful Dead's Notable Tracks from 1977 plus a cure for Female Orgasmic Disorder"Larry Mishkin covers the Grateful Dead show from March 18th, 1977, at the Winterland arena in San Francisco, showcasing notable performances of songs like "Sugaree" and "Peggy-O." He delves into the history and significance of these songs within the Grateful Dead repertoire. Additionally, the discussion extends to the cannabis industry, highlighting the financial strategies of marijuana companies to minimize tax obligations under Section 280E of the IRS Code. He also touches on the opening of Nevada's first legal marijuana consumption lounge, signaling a shift in cannabis regulations in the state. Finally, Larry addresses the proposal to add Female Orgasmic Disorder (FOD) as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana use in Illinois, reflecting evolving perspectives on cannabis as a therapeutic option for various health conditions. Grateful DeadMarch 18, 1977 (47 years ago)Winterland, S.F.Grateful Dead Live at Winterland Arena on 1977-03-18 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive TITLE:  1977 Winterland:  The Dead Bust Out Fire On The Mountain and Take Their One and Only Attempt At Terrapin Flyer. Just a month after the Swing Auditorium show that we previewed a few weeks ago, Dead went home to Winterland for a string of shows.  This one stands out for a few reasons that we will get to as the show goes on. INTRO:                 Sugaree                                Track #4                                7:25 – 9:05               "Sugaree" is a song with lyrics by long-time Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and music by guitaristJerry Garcia.[1] It was written for Jerry Garcia's first solo album Garcia, which was released on January 20, 1972. As with the songs on the rest of the album, Garcia plays every instrument himself except drums, played by Bill Kreutzmann, including acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and an electric guitar played through a Leslie speaker. Released as a single from the Garcia album, "Sugaree" peaked at #94 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1972 and was Garcia's only single ever on that chart.Elizabeth Cotten, a North Carolinafolksinger, wrote and recorded a song called "Shake Sugaree" in 1966.[3] The chorus of Cotten's song is "Oh lordie me/Didn't I shake sugaree?" Hunter was aware of this song when he wrote "Sugaree."The song was first performed live by the Grateful Dead on July 31, 1971, at the Yale Bowl at Yale University, as was the song "Mr. Charlie".  The Dead played it 362 times in concert.  Last played on July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field in Chicago.                 A classic rocking Dead tune, usually a first set number, I've seen it as a show opener, first set closer, and encore.  In this clip they really rock it but it's only a small peak at this 15 minute version of the tune.  Well worth pulling it down on Archive and checking out the entire number.  You won't be sorry.  SHOW No. 1:    Peggy-O                                Track #6                                4:20 – 6:00                          Traditional, credit for the Grateful Dead version generally go to Jerry but some say Bill had a hand in writing it.              This song derives from the earlier Scottish traditional song Bonnie Lass of Fyvie-o. Fyvie is thought to have been a staging post between Aberdeen and Fort George in Scotland. This song does occur with a number of title variations. It is possible that Fennario is a corruption of Fyvie-o.Similar traditional songs also occurred in the UK; Handsome Polly O and Bonny Barbara O, though these are less similar to the modern Peggy-O song.The title Peggy-O is used on Grateful Dead recordings. The version of Peggy-O that is included in the Jerry Garcia box set All Good Things is a previously unreleased studio recordings from Spring 1979 and is given the title Fennario. The Fennario title is also used on concert recordings of The Dead and Phil Lesh & Friends.Although not released on a Dead studio album, the song was included on the remastered recordings of both Terrapin Station and Go To Heaven.The Grateful Dead first performed Peggy-O in December 10, 1973 at the Charlotte Coliseum in N.C.. It was then played in every year through to 1995 usually no more than a dozen times each year though it was played more regularly during the 1977 to 1981 period. Played a total of 265 times. The last performance was on July 5, 1995 at the Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, MO (just outside of St. Louis).In this clip, I really enjoy Jerry's strong voice, the solid jamming and some stealth piano contributions from Keith. SHOW No. 2:    Fire On The Mountain                                Track # 9                                1:46 – 3:30                 Hunter/Hart (not Jerry!)                 Released on Shakedown Street on November 8, 1978, last song on first side of album.                 First time ever played – one of the reasons I chose this show over a number of other great shows on this date – others include a smokin “early” Dead show in 1967 at Winterland and 1971 at the Fox Theater in St. Louis coming fast on the heels of the Dead's epic six night Capitol Theater run in Port Chester in late February. This is another of those songs with a long and complicated genesis story, perhaps not worth getting into too much detail about here, but the rough outlines at least are important to note. The lyrics, according to Robert Hunter in Box of Rain, were “Written at Mickey Hart's ranch in heated inspiration as the surrounding hills blazed and the fire approached the recording studio where we were working.”Hart, credited with the music for the song, recorded a proto-rap version of the song for an unreleased album entitled Area Code 415, recorded in 1972 and 1973. It was also included on a Mickey Hart album entitled Fire on the Mountain, recorded in 1973-74. It appeared as an instrumental entitled “Happiness is Drumming” on Hart's 1976 studio album, Diga. And it finally began showing up in the Grateful Dead repertoire, sung by Jerry Garcia, in 1977, undergoing a number of variants of the lyrics until it settled into the form that was eventually recorded and released on Shakedown Street, in November 1978. There's a lot of other detail I haven't mentioned—possibly worthy of some historian taking it apart piece by piece, but you get the rough idea.On March 18, 1977 at Winterland Arena, San Francisco. "Fire" appeared for the first time, closing the first set, following its eternal partner, "Scarlet Begonias." This combination of tunes, which frequently enclosed some wonderful jamming, came to be known as "Scarlet Fire." There were a handful of occasions on which “Fire” appeared without “Scarlet Begonias,” but not many. approx 15 out of the total 253 performances. It remained steadily in the repertoire from then on, and was played for the final time on July 2, 1995, at the Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana.This clip being the song's first live performance and almost a year and half before it's commercial release, there are noticeable differences between this version and the one we al know and love.  But they go there very quickly as only two months later on May 8, 1977 the Dead played the Barton Hall show that many declare to be the best Dead show ever.  While that may or may not be true, what is true is that the version of Scarlet Fire is awesome and certainly befitting a show many do consider to be the finest Dead show of them all.Many more were to follow and the lucky ones who were in Winterland this night got to witness how it all started.   SHOW No. 3:    Terrapin Flyer                                                              Alhambra                                Track # 17                                :53 – end                                 INTO                                 Drums                                Track # 18                                Start – 0:44                 This is another reason I chose this show for today's episode.  This represents the only known instance of the Dead playing the Terrapin Flyer part of the full Terrapin Suite from the Album (released on July 27, 1977) out of the traditional parts.  Although Jerry does not sing the lyrics from this part of the suite, he jams the very distinctive melody.  Interestingly, this is only a few weeks after the debut of Terrapin at the Swing Auditorium on Feb. 26, 1977.  Here, the Dead were trying out this sixth of seven parts of the suite and for whatever reason did not like what they heard or didn't enjoy playing it or, more likely, practicing it, so it was dropped from live performances even though the primary and opening parts of the suite, Lady with a Fan into Terrapin Station, were played a total of 303 times.                 These are the fun little discoveries that even after 40+ years of listening to, following and learning about the band keep it fun, interesting and amazing.                 As for the recording of the entire suite, Keith Olsen was chosen to produce and the band temporarily moved to Los Angeles, as Olsen preferred to work at Sound City, where he had recently achieved success producing Fleetwood Mac's 1975 comeback album.             Olsen had a method for reining in the Dead: "During the cutting of the basic tracks it was pretty hard to get every member of the band in the studio at the same time ... so [Steve] Parish went out to the hardware store and got these giant nails and a great big hammer and as soon as everybody was in, he hammered the door shut from the inside ... we didn't have drifters from the other studios coming in to listen. We didn't have people leaving to go screw around elsewhere. We started getting work done."[18] With Fleetwood Mac, Olsen had a hands-on approach, orchestrating the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and influencing song choice, arrangements and sequencing. He entered the Grateful Dead project with similar expectations, imagining a concept album or song cycle. Olsen said that Davis told him "I need a commercial record out of them."[18] This caused some friction during the sessions as well as with the end results. Kreutzmann said "He'd have us play the same thing over and over again, and we're not really the type of band that can put up with that. ... Our very identity is based on the opposite principle."[                 SHOW No. 4:   Not Fade Away                                Track # 19                                14:00 – 15:40                 Written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty.  Holly and the Crickets recorded the song in Clovis, New Mexico, on May 27, 1957, and it was released as a single (B side to “Oh Boy”) on October 27, 1957 on the Brunswick label.  The rhythmic pattern of "Not Fade Away" is a variant of the Bo Diddley beat, with the second stress occurring on the second rather than third beat of the first measure, which was an update of the "hambone" rhythm, or patted juba from West Africa. Jerry Allison, the drummer for the Crickets, pounded out the beat on a cardboard box.[3] Allison, Holly's best friend, wrote some of the lyrics, though his name never appeared in the songwriting credits. Joe Mauldin played the double bass on this recording. It is likely that the backing vocalists were Holly, Allison, and Niki Sullivan, but this is not known for certain.             First played by the Dead on February 19, 1969 at the Fillmore West in S.F., it was played by the band a total of 561 times and last played on July 5, 1995 at the Riverport Amphitheatre outside of St. Louis.             This is an absolutely ripping version of this tune so much so that I featured only the jam – everyone knows the lyrics, but the jam in this 20 minute version is better than any singing I could have featured. OUTRO:               Around and Around                                Track 21                                4:59 – 6:46                 Very appropriate to end on a Chuck Berry tune given that today is the seventh anniversary of Chuck's death in 2017 at the age of 90.                 "Around and Around" is a 1958 rock song written and first recorded by Chuck Berry. It originally appeared under the name "Around & Around" as the B-side to the single "Johnny B. Goode".  Release on March 31, 1958 on Chicago's own Chess Records checking in at a brisk 2:20. Many bands have covered the song including, most famously, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, and, of course the Dead who played it 418 times, first on November 8, 1970 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY and lastly on July 6, 1995 at the Riverport Amphitheatre outside of St. Louis – very appropriate since Chuck was born in St. Louis and died in Wentzville, just outside of the city. This is one of the better version of the tune that I have heard.  It checks in at over 8 minutes and the boys just jam it out, throw in a few false endings and finally wrap it up, followed only by Uncle John's Band before the boys say goodnight to the Winterland crazies and head home for a rare post show night in their own beds. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

"Grateful Dead's Night Amidst Ann Arbor's Championship Riot: A 1989 Michigan Celebration"Larry Mishkin reflects on his experience in 2024, discussing the success of the Michigan Wolverines in football and their celebration. He reminisces about the Michigan men's basketball team's 1989 championship and the Grateful Dead's subsequent concerts in Ann Arbor. The podcast features excerpts from the Grateful Dead's performances and shares anecdotes, including a story about Jerry Garcia and Bobby Weir getting stuck in an Ann Arbor celebration after a national championship win, highlighting the connection between the Grateful Dead and Michigan celebrations. The episode also pays tribute to a late friend and celebrates the recent success of the University of Michigan..Produced by PodConx    Larry's Notes:Ann Arbor timeline for the first week of April, 1989:April 1, 1989 – Hash BashApril 3, 1989 – Michigan beats Seton Hall in Seattle to win NCAA Men's Division I Basketball TournamentApril 5, 1989 – Grateful Dead play in Crisler Arena, home of the champion basketball team (first show in Ann Arbor since 1979)April 6, 1989 – Grateful Dead play in Crisler Arena  When Michigan won the football national championship last week by beating Washington in Houston, made me think there is a history here – M wins a Natty and we play/go see live the Grateful Dead.  Can't break the chain now. Links:April 5, 1989:  Grateful Dead Live at Crisler Arena on 1989-04-05 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive                           For Intro, Show No. 1 and Show No. 2 April 6, 1989:  Grateful Dead Live at Crisler Arena on 1989-04-06 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive                           For Show No. 3, Show No. 4 and Outro  INTRO:               Feel Like A Stranger                           4/5/89                           Track #1                           2:02 – 3:32               Album:  Go To Heaven                           Total: 208                           First:  March 31, 1980 at Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, USA                           Last:   July 5, 1995, Riverport Amphitheatre, Maryland Heights (St. Louis), MO               Love this version, late ‘80's, when Bobby sings, “Yes and it feels, most like runnin' a red light”, love that “most like”              Also sings, “bout like running a red light”;  “just like running a red light”;   SHOW No. 1:     Franklin's Tower                           4/5/89                           Track #2                           3:24 – 4:38               Album:  Blues For Allah                           Total:    222                           First:     June 17, 1975 at Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, USA, (next on Aug. 13th, Great American Music Hall, S.F. – One From The Vault)                           Last:      June 22, 1995, Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY During the Help/Slip/Frank hiatus (until Oct at Hampton), Stranger>Franklin's a very common opener) SHOW No. 2:     Not Fade Away                           4/5/89                            Track # 19                           5:29 – 6:59               "Not Fade Away" is a song credited to Buddy Holly (originally under his first and middle names, Charles Hardin) and Norman Petty (although Petty's co-writing credit is likely to have been a formality[3]) and first recorded by Holly and his band, the Crickets.             Holly and the Crickets recorded the song in Clovis, New Mexico, on May 27, 1957, the same day the song "Everyday" was recorded.[1] The rhythmic pattern of "Not Fade Away" is a variant of the Bo Diddley beat, with the second stress occurring on the second rather than third beat of the first measure, which was an update of the "hambone" rhythm, or patted juba from West Africa. Jerry Allison, the drummer for the Crickets, pounded out the beat on a cardboard box.[3] Allison, Holly's best friend, wrote some of the lyrics, though his name never appeared in the songwriting credits. Joe Mauldin played the double bass on this recording. It is likely that the backing vocalists were Holly, Allison, and Niki Sullivan, but this is not known for certain.[1]"Not Fade Away" was originally released as the B-side of the hit single "Oh, Boy!" and was included on the album The "Chirping" Crickets (1957). The Crickets' recording never charted as a single. In 2004, this song was ranked number 107 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time"Covered by:     Rolling Stones (1964, their first big hit)                        The Rolling Stones' version of "Not Fade Away" was one of their first hits. Recorded in January 1964 and released by Decca Records on February 21, 1964, with "Little by Little" as the B-side, it was their first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom, reaching number three.[5]London Records released the song in the US on March 6, 1964, as the band's first single there, with "I Wanna Be Your Man" as the B-side.[6] The single reached number 48 on the U.S. BillboardHot 100 singles chart.                        Rush                        Tanya Tucker                        John Scofield                        Florence and the Machine                        Dead              No album (on 1971 Grateful Dead (band's second live album)              Total: 560              First:  February 19, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA,              Last:  July 5, 1995  Riverport Amphitheatre, Maryland Heights (St. Louis), MO SHOW No. 3:     Althea                           4/6/89                           Track No. 6                           3:47 – 5:20               Album:  Go To Heaven                           Total:    272                           First:  August 4, 1979 at Oakland Civic Auditorium, Oakland, CA, USA                           Last:   July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago SHOW No. 4:     Scarlet Begonias                           4/6/89                           Track No. 10                           4:00 – 5:30               Album:  From The Mars Hotel (June 27, 1974)                           Total:  317                            First:  March 23, 1974 at Cow Palace, Daly City, CA, USA                           Last:  July 2, 1995, Deer Creek Music Theater, Noblesville (Indianapolis) IN                            Most often paired with Fire On The Mountain OUTRO:              Brokedown Palace                           4/6/89                           Track No. 21                           3:00 – 4:43               Album:  American Beauty                           Total: 218                           First:  August 18, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA                           Last:   June 25, 1995 at RFK Stadium, Washington, D.C.                           .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Title: ⏰ Synergy Traders #47: Trading in 2023: Tax Strategies for You with Jerry Allison of TradersAccounting.com   Recorded on Wednesday, September 5th, 2023 as part of the Synergy Traders #47: "Fibonacci & Elliott Wave 2023 Conference" event, hosted by FXTradersEdge, TradeOutLoud, and TimingResearch.   The full event video/podcast series and presentation notes are available here: https://timingresearch.com/blog/2023/synergy-traders-47-day-2/   Bonus... ⚡ eBook: "9 Experts' Favorite Indicators" https://timingresearch.com/LR4YT   Terms and Policies: https://timingresearch.com/policies/    

Title: ⏰ Synergy Traders #46.13: Trading in 2023: Tax Strategies for You with Jerry Allison of TradersAccounting.com   Recorded on Tuesday, July 25th, 2023 as part of the Synergy Traders #46: "Derivatives 2023 Conference, Futures and Options Trading" event, hosted by TradeOutLoud and TimingResearch.   The full event video/podcast series and presentation notes are available here: https://timingresearch.com/blog/2023/synergy-traders-46-day-2/   Bonus... ⚡ eBook: "7 Risk Management Strategies: Top Traders Share Their Best Tips" https://timingresearch.com/LR3POD   Terms and Policies: https://timingresearch.com/policies/    

Tommy Roe was in junior high, chasing a girl named Freda. He wrote a poem called Sweet Little Freda. After he learned to play guitar, he changed the name of the song to Sweet Little Sheila. He started a high school band named The Satins. They played after the high school basketball games, at sock hops. (all to protect the gym floor)Hear about Tommy's idols Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Elvis. He loved rockabilly. The Satins covered all of Buddy's songs. Jerry Allison, Buddy's drummer, later became Tommy's good friend.Listen to Tommy's favorite collaborations. He talks about Freddy Weller who eventually got in the group with Paul Revere and the Raiders. While on tour together, they co-wrote Dizzy. They were like brothers, both from the South, and wrote many successful songs. The most enjoyable part of this show is hearing sbout Tommy Roe's enduring musical career. "Use your God given talents and gifts."

Title: ⏰ Synergy Traders #45.13: Trading in 2023: Tax Strategies for You with Jerry Allison of TradersAccounting.com   Recorded on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 as part of the Synergy Traders #45: "Psychology, Discipline, and Time Management 2023 Conference" event, hosted by TradeOutLoud and TimingResearch.   The full event video/podcast series and presentation notes are available here: https://timingresearch.com/blog/2023/synergy-traders-45-day-2-psychology-discipline-and-time-management/   Bonus... ⚡ eBook: "7 Risk Management Strategies: Top Traders Share Their Best Tips" https://timingresearch.com/LR3POD   Terms and Policies: https://timingresearch.com/policies/  

Mantenemos la tradición de dedicar el penúltimo episodio del año para recordar a los caídos. No están aquí todos los que se fueron en 2022 pero sirva este episodio de homenaje a todos aquellos músicos cuyo legado ha formado parte de la banda sonora de la vida de alguien.Playlist;THE RONETTES “Be my baby” (RONNIE SPECTOR, 12 de enero, 78 años)THE DETROIT COBRAS “Cha Cha Twist” (RACHEL NAGY, 15 de enero)THE VENTURES “Walk don’t run” (DON WILSON, 22 de enero, 88 años)SANDY NELSON “Drumming up a storm” (14 de febrero, 83 años)THE SADIES “Good flying day” (DALLAS GOOD, 18 de febrero, 48 años)DOWNLINERS SECT “Beautiful Delilah” (DON CRAINE, 24 de febrero, 76 años)RICHIE ALLEN and THE PACIFIC SURFERS “The quiet surf” (RICHARD PODOLOR, 9 de marzo, 86 años)THE SAINTS “I’m stranded” (CHRIS BAILEY, 9 de abril, 65 años)MALCOLM SCARPA “Lonely here tonight” (17 de julio, 62 años)BUDDY HOLLY “Peggy Sue” (JERRY ALLISON, 22 de agosto, 82 años)ROBERT GORDON “Someday Someway” (18 de octubre, 75 años)JERRY LEE LEWIS “Great balls of fire” (28 octubre, 87 años)DR FEELGOOD “Roxette” (WILKO JOHNSON, 21 de noviembre, 75 años)FLEETWOOD MAC “Say you love me” (Christine McVie, 30 de noviembre, 79 años)THE STRANGLERS “Peaches” (JET BLACK, 6 diciembre, 84 años)LOS ESTUDIANTES “It I’ll be me” (Jose Barranco, 13 diciembre, 83 años)THE SPECIALS “Enjoy yourself (it’s later than you think)” (TERRY HALL, 18 de diciembre, 63 años) Escuchar audio

This is a deep look at the creative forces that have left the world in the past year. We've included figures from all sorts of creative pursuits! Whether aged and iconic, after long illness or suddenly shocking, we feel the loss of those with whom we've shared something. In this case...it's music, something so integral to our lives.  2022 not only continued  a dreary trend that we noticed a few years back, this year took it an unreal level. This is also an exercise in remembering what we had in those who've died. Their spirit and their music...So grab some Kleenex, and join us for as inclusive a memoriam as we can compose...We love our sponsors!!! Please visit their web sites, and support them because they make this crazy show go:Boldfoot Socks   https://boldfoot.comCrooked Eye Brewery   https://crookedeyebrewery.com/Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/  

Has fascism returned to Italy?   We look at the reaction to the election of Giorgia Meloni;  plus women rioting in Iran; the UK budget blues; Primark safe spaces; the Sussex police; can we fly to Fiji?  Jacinda Ardhern and Free Speech; Averting Armageddon; Chess Scandal; Jerry Allison; Hilary Mantel; Brother Andrew; Coolio and How Great is our God.....

In honour of Jerry Allison, the recently deceased drummer for The Crickets, we're talking about a song you probably thought was by The Clash! It's "I Fought The Law" this week on Cover Me! Covers by: The Bobby Fuller Four, The Clash, Dead Kennedys, The Pogues with Joe Strummer, Nanci Griffith, The Bad Shepherds, The Jolly Boys Spotify playlist here

El pasado 22 de agosto falleció Jerry Allison a los 82 años de edad. Allison fue el batería de los Crickets, conocidos especialmente por ser el grupo de respaldo del legendario Buddy Holly, aunque tras la muerte de Holly los Crickets mantuvieron una interesante trayectoria bajo su propio nombre. La forma de tocar que tenía Jerry Allison fue una parte fundamental para definir el sonido de Buddy Holly. Jerry también cantó de forma esporádica y compuso o co-escribió varias canciones. Hoy sobrevolamos los primeros años de la trayectoria de aquella mágica banda que marcó indeleblemente el sonido de los Beatles. Playlist; BUDDY HOLLY “That will be the day” (1957) BUDDY HOLLY “Not fade away” (1957) BUDDY HOLLY “Peggy Sue” (1957) THE CRICKETS featuring DAVID BOX “Peggy Sue got married” (1961) THE CRICKETS “More than I can say” (1959) IVAN (aka JERRY ALLISON) “Real wild child” (1958) THE EVERLY BROTHERS “(Till) I kissed you” (1959) THE CRICKETS “Love’s made a fool of you” (1959) THE CRICKETS “When you ask about love” (1959) THE CRICKETS “I fought the law” (1961) THE CRICKETS “He’s old enough to know better” (1961) THE CRICKETS “I’m not a bad guy” (1961) THE CRICKETS “My little girl” (1963) THE CRICKETS “California Sun” (1964) THE CRICKETS “Please please me” (1964) THE CRICKETS featuring PAUL McCARTNEY “T Shirt” JERRY ALLISON and THE CRICKETS “We gotta get together” (1964) JERRY ALLISON and THE CRICKETS “Now hear this” (1965) IVAN (aka JERRY ALLISON) “That’ll be alright” (1959) THE CRICKETS “Don’t ever change” (1962) Escuchar audio

This episode continues a monthly, ten-part series celebrating the tenth anniversary of TEMPEST, featuring the fourth track on the album, "Long and Wasted Years." In "20 Pounds of Headlines," we round up news from the world of Bob Dylan, which includes new shows added to Dylan's 2022 autumn tour of Europe; the appearance of the table of contents of Dylan's new book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG, online, including the 66 songs about which he will be writing; and the passing of Jerry Allison, the drummer of The Crickets. In "Who Did It Better?" we ask you to vote this week to tell us who did "Twist and Shout" better: The Top Notes, the Isley Brothers or The Beatles? Listen to the episode, then go to our Twitter page @RainTrains to vote!

Matthew Bannister on The last President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured), who was feted in the West but often derided in his own country. We follow his journey from a collective farm in Stavropol to momentous times in the Kremlin, including the introduction of Perestroika and Glasnost, the end of the Cold War and the coup that toppled him from power. Stella 'Jaye' Edwards, who was the last surviving British woman pilot who delivered planes from factories to front line bases during the second world war. Jerry Allison, the drummer and songwriter with Buddy Holly and the Crickets, whose girlfriend inspired their hit song 'Peggy Sue'. Producer: Neil George Interviewed guest: Bridget Kendall Interviewed guest: John Eames Petersen Interviewed guest: Geoff Barker Archive clips used: BBC Radio 4, Today programme 31/08/2022; BBC Two, Newsnight 30/08/2022; CNN - Larry King, Mikhail Gorbachev interview November 1993; UVA Miller Center, President Ronald Reagan speech on the Geneva Summit 21/11/1985; Pizza Hut, Gorbachev TV spot commercial January 1998; Juno Beach Centre / YouTube Channel, Jaye Edwards interview 19/02/2019; British Pathé, Sir Stafford Cripps and the A.T.A. (1943); Geoff Barker Archives, Jerry Allison interview.

Hiding from the heat at A Little Night Music from Sondheim (Barrington Stage, Pittsfield, MA) and at the movies (Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen Documentary).  Crossing the Hudson on foot. Water Polo in his 80's (Mark Braley).  Lori King swims from Block Island to Montauk (the long way). George Martin and what he learned from Mary Tyler Moore.  Jerry Allison and Buddy Holly. Credits: Talent:  Tamsen Granger and Dan Abuhoff Engineer:  Ellie Suttmeier Art:  Zeke Abuhoff

In this bonus episode of Hot off the Wire, we look back at some of the top headlines from the week in the world of sports and entertainment.  Vanessa Bryant, the widow of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, was awarded $16 million over grisly photos released from the scene of the helicopter crash. Actor Gary Busey was charged with sex crimes in New Jersey. Rapper Fetty Wap is facing facing prison time following a guilty plea over drug charges. Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson, Buddy Holly's drummer Jerry Allison and golf champion Tom Weiskoph have died. Tom Brady's break from training camp ended and Alabama gave Nick Saban a new contract. And finally, a new type of sports bar is gaining in popularity in the Pacific Northwest. —Content provided by The Associated Press. Material compiled and narrated by Terry Lipshetz, senior producer for Lee Enterprises  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Topics include Bjork's new album, FN Meka the AI rapper, Gary Busey is out here Busey-ing, Afroman has no idea why the police are bothering him and more ! MBU - Songwriter Lamont Dozier, actress Anne Heche, drummer Jerry Allison of Buddy Holly and The Crickets Slaps include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anitta ft. Missy Elliott, Demi Lovato, Sylvan Esso Does It Slap Playlist - https://bit.ly/DoesItSlapPatreon - http://patreon.com/thehustleseasonBandcamp - http://thehustleseason.bandcamp.comTHS YouTube -https://bit.ly/THSYouTubeChannelInstagram - http://instagram.com/thehustleseasonTwitter - http://twitter.com/thehustleseasonSpring (fmrly Teespring) - https://bit.ly/HustleSeasonMerchFacebook - http://bit.ly/HustleSeasonFBThe Hustle Season on Apple Podcasts - https://bit.ly/TheHSPodcastAppleThe Hustle Season on Spotify Podcasts - https://bit.ly/TheHSPodcastSpotify

Time to "get" Bent News on your device, digging in:-Markus & Ray announce their plans for the upcoming Nick Mason tour!-Gene Simmons talks post tour Kiss plans!-Paul Simon unretires from studio work, and gets back to it!-ST4 creators expressing their surprise over Bush bump!-The passing of the last Cricket, Ozzy talking new tracks & more!

This is the Mistress Carrie Situation Report! The 'Sit Rep' your daily Entertainment headlines, Industry Info, and everything ROCK, all in under 5 minutes! 08-25-2022. The Mistress Carrie Podcast, a proud member of the Pantheon Podcast Network!  See Alter Bridge with Mammoth WVH and RED at Roadrunner in Boston 2/8/2023MastadonSammy HagarHellraiserRolling StonesJoni MitchellGhostKiller KlownsJerry AllisonFieldyMichelle BranchRushNew films in theaters this weekNew Releases This Week Hard Rock and Metal ReleasesFind Mistress Carrie online:Official WebsiteThe Mistress Carrie Backstage Pass on PatreonTwitterFacebookInstagramYouTubeCameoPantheon Podcast Network

We're celebrating the life of Jerry Allison, drummer for Buddy Holly and The Crickets, who died this week (8/22). This extended interview was recorded at Vancouver's Legends of Rock'n'Roll show at EXPO 86. One of my favourite lines in the interview is when Jerry says, “I think we were the first ugly band... and then The Rolling Stones just took it and went all the way with it!” Jerry and Buddy met in high school in 1956 and the two began playing as a duo — Allison on drums, Holly on guitar and vocals. One year later, they linked up with bassist Joe B. Mauldin and guitarists Niki Sullivan and Sonny Curtis to become The Crickets. Jerry also co-wrote a couple of their biggest hits: “That'll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue”. After Buddy left The Crickets in 1958, the group continued to tour and record into the Sixties and beyond, with Jerry Naylor replacing Holly after his death in 1959. Jerry Allison's career flourished as a studio musician at The Crickets' label, Liberty Records in Los Angeles, working with artists like Eddie Cochran, Bobby Vee and Johnny Rivers. Along with fellow original Crickets Mauldin, Sullivan and Curtis, Jerry Allison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Smokey Robinson at a special ceremony in 2012. Smokey said, “Buddy Holly wasn't just Buddy Holly. He was a Cricket. One day they gave us ‘That'll Be the Day,' on another ‘Maybe Baby'. They were indeed the original rock'n'roll band.” Jerry Allison's drums are the best part of some of my favourites: “Peggy Sue,” “Everyday” and especially “Not Fade Away”. “That'll Be The Day” was Jerry's favourite. It was the first song he and Buddy recorded together.

AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on Obit-Jerry Allison.

NBA News, NFL News, MLB News, WNBA News, NHL News, Coronavirus impact on the sports & entertainment, ABC's Good Doctor The Rookie, Fox's Cleaning Lady, CW's Superman & Lois, a Farewell to Jerry Allison, Doug Dalton, Joanne Koch, Tom Weiskopf, Leon Vitali, Virginia Patton, Michael Tuck, Ioane King & Luke Knox. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/on-the-radar/support

Jerry Allison is a CPA who has been practicing accounting for over 30 years.  He also holds a doctorate in business administration and a master's degree in mathematics. In addition to accounting in all types of businesses, he has taught at several universities and colleges, helping students set up and operate businesses efficiently. Dr Allison has also performed research in business strategy, publishing several journal and conference papers, and he specializes in tax preparation and consulting for those trading public securities.  In this episode of How To Trade It, Jerry talks about the importance of understanding how to properly file taxes as a trader. You don't want to miss it!Subscribe to How To Trade ItYou'll want to hear this episode, if you are interested in…[00:24] Taxation for traders[00:50] Trading Forex…[06:40] Reasons for a Schedule C[07:14] Two types of LLCs[08:55] Tax impact of losing money while trading[09:46] Trading Stocks & Options…[19:58] Cap Gains & Losses[23:17] Trading Futures…[26:32] Trading Cryptocurrencies…[29:02] Creating a trading business[32:45] Services provided by Traders AccountForex taxationIncome from trading Forex is reported as regular, ordinary income.  It's super simple to report.  It looks like income from a W-2 or 1099.  If you want to be able to deduct expenses, you can claim “Trader Status”, if you meet the following special circumstances from the IRS:  Take 700+ trades in a year; trade on 75% or more of the available trading days in a year; and spend 4-6 hours per day in research and/or education.  The IRS is trying to make certain that you are treating “trading” as an actual business.  The downside?  Claiming expenses on a Schedule C, as an individual, increases your audit risk.     Limited Liability CompaniesThe first type is a single member LLC, where there is only one owner.  Income is reported on the Schedule C of the individual's tax return.  This is useless to set up, if you are a trader.  The second type, and the one recommended for traders, is a partnership, or a multi-member LLC.  In this case, the entire trading piece is moved from the individual tax return, and income is reported on a partnership tax return.  The IRS views this as a legitimate business, or a pass-thru entity, where income is reported on a Schedule E.  Capital Gains TaxesThere are two kinds of cap gains to consider.  First, you can Short-Term, which refers to anything that you hold for a year or less.  These gains are taxed the same as ordinary income rates…22%, 35%, 37%, etc. tax brackets.  The second type is Long-Term Cap Gains.  They are the income generated by anything that is held for more than a year, but the maximum tax is capped at 20%.  Traders Accounting ServicesConsultingHelp setting up entitiesTax return preparationBookkeeping servicesConnect with Dr. Jerry AllisonWebsite::       http://www.tradersaccounting.com LinkedIn:        http://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jerry-allison:Support the show

Title: ⏰ Synergy Traders #38.13: Trader Tax Status vs. Investor Status: What It Means To You with Jerry Allison of TradersAccounting.com   Recorded on May 25th, 2022 as part of the "Synergy Traders #38, Day 2: Psychology, Discipline, and Time Management" event, hosted by TradeOutLoud and TimingResearch.   The full event video/podcast series and presentation notes are available here: https://timingresearch.com/blog/2022/synergy-traders-38-day-2-psychology-discipline-and-time-management/   Terms and Policies: https://timingresearch.com/policies/  

Born in Lubbock, Texas, on September 7, 1936, Charles Hardin  Holley (he later dropped the "e"), after both grandfathers    the fourth child of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley and Ella Pauline Drake.    older siblings were Larry, Travis, and Patricia Lou.    nicknamed Buddy from a young age, and it stuck with him throughout his life.    Oddly enough, the newspaper announcement claimed that Buddy was actually a little girl. “A daughter weighing 8.5 lbs”, the Lubbock evening journal wrote. He was also only 6.5 pounds. And a boy. Buddy's family was mainly of English and Welsh descent and had some native American ancestry. During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residences within Lubbock; 17 in all.    His father changed jobs several times.    The Holley family were a musical household.  Except for Buddy's father, all family members could play an instrument or sing. His older brothers frequently entered local talent shows, and one time, his brothers signed up and Buddy wanted to play violin with them. However, Buddy couldn't play the violin.  Not wanting to break little Buddy's heart, his older brothers greased up the strings so it wouldn't make a sound. Buddy started singing his heart out and the three ended up winning the contest!  When WWII started, the U.S. government called his brothers into service. His brother Larry brought back a guitar he bought from a shipmate, and that guitar set Buddy's off. At 11 years old, Buddy started taking piano lessons.  Nine months later, he quit piano lessons and switched to guitar after seeing a classmate playing and singing on the school bus.    His parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but Buddy insisted he wanted a guitar like his brothers. They bought him a guitar, a gold top Gibson acoustic, from a pawn shop, and his brother Travis taught him to play it.  By 15, Buddy was proficient on guitar, banjo, and mandolin. During his early childhood, Holley was influenced by Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family.  He started writing songs and working with his childhood friend Bob Montgomery. The two jammed together, practicing songs by the Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They frequently listened to Grand Ole Opry's radio programs on WSM, Louisiana Hayride on KWKH (which they once drove 600 miles to okay just to be turned away), and Big D Jamboree.  If you're not familiar with the Grand Ol Opry, it's a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on Clearchannel's WSM, which first hit the airwaves on October 5, 1925. Its the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history.    At the same time he was practicing with Bob, Holley played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison.    In 1952 Holley and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show.    After Neal left, he was replaced by his buddy Bob, and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob." By the mid-'50s, Buddy & Bob played their style of music called "western and bop ."    Holley was influenced by late-night radio stations that played the blues and rhythm and blues. Holley would sit in his car with Sonny Curtis and tune to distant “black” radio stations that could only be received at night when bigger stations turned off local transmissions.    Holley then changed his music by blending his earlier country and western influence with Rhythm and Blues. After seeing the legendary Elvis perform, Holly decided to pursue his career in music full-time once he graduated high school. By mid-1955, Buddy & Bob, who already worked with an upright bass player (played by Larry Welborn), added drummer Jerry Allison to their lineup. After seeing Elvis Presley performing live in Lubbock, who Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV booked, Buddy really wanted to get after it. In February, he opened for Elvis at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, then again in June at the Coliseum. Elvis significantly influenced the group to turn more towards Rock n Roll. Buddy and the king became friends, with Buddy even driving Elvis around when he was in town. Eventually, Bob Montgomery, who leaned toward a traditional country sound, left the group, though they continued writing and composing songs together. Holly kept pushing his music toward a straight-ahead rock & roll sound, working with Allison, Welborn, and other local musicians, including his pal and guitarist Sonny Curtis and bassist Don Guess. In October, Holly was booked as the opener for Bill Haley & His Comets (Rock Around the Clock), to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Obviously impressed, Eddie Crandall talked Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny into finding a recording contract for Holley. Pappy Stone sent Denny a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen. Cohen signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956.    In the contract, Decca accidentally misspelled Holley's surname as "Holly," From that point forward, he was known as "Buddy Holly." On January 26, 1956, Holly went to his first professional recording session with producer Owen Bradley. He was a part of two more sessions in Nashville.    the producer selected the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single and "Love Me" on the B-side.    "B-sides" were secondary songs that were sent out with single records. They were usually just added to have something on the flip side. Later they became songs that bands would either not release or wait to release.  Jim Denny added Holly on tour as the opening act for Faron Young. While on this tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones." Decca then called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes." The label released Holly's second single, "Modern Don Juan," along with "You Are My One Desire."    Unfortunately, neither one of these singles tickled anyone's fancy. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly that they wouldn't re-sign him and insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years. The same shit happened to Universal and me. A couple of classics, like "Midnight Shift" and "Rock Around with Ollie Vee," did come out of those Decca sessions, but nothing issued at the time went anywhere. It looked as though Holly had missed his shot at stardom.  Holly was disappointed with his time with Decca. inspired by Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You" he decided to visit Norman Petty, who produced and promoted both of those successful records.    Buddy, Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan pulled together and headed to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of the now-classic, "That'll Be the Day," which they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now rockin' that lead guitar, Holly finally achieved the sound he wanted. They got the song nailed down and recorded. Along with Petty's help, the group got it picked up by Murray Deutsch, a publishing associate of Petty's, and Murray got it to Bob Thiele, an executive at Coral Records. Thiele loved it. Ironically, Coral Records was a subsidiary of Decca, the company Holly had signed with before. On a side note, a subsidiary is a smaller label under the major label's umbrella. For instance, Universal signed my band to Republic, a subsidiary of Universal Music that dealt primarily with rock genres, like Godsmack. Norman Petty saw the potential in Buddy and became his manager. He sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Thiele saw the record as a potential hit, but there were some significant hurdles to overcome before it could be released.  According to author Philip Norman, in his book Rave On, Thiele would only get the most reluctant support from his record company. Decca had lucked out in 1954 when they'd signed Bill Haley & His Comets and saw their "Rock Around the Clock" top the charts. Still, very few of those in charge at Decca had a natural feel or appreciation for Rock & Roll, let alone any idea of where it might be heading or whether the label could (or should) follow it down that road. Also, remember that although Buddy had been dropped by Decca the year before, the contract that Holly signed explicitly forbade him from re-recording anything he had recorded for them, released or not, for five years. However, Coral was a subsidiary of Decca, and Decca's Nashville office could hold up the release and possibly even haul Holly into court.  "That'll Be the Day" was issued in May of 1957 mainly as an indulgence to Thiele, to "humor" him. The record was put out on the Brunswick label, more of jazz and R&B label, and credited to the Crickets. The group chose this name to prevent the suits at Decca -- and more importantly, Decca's Nashville office -- from finding out that this new release was from the guy they had just dropped. The name “The Crickets” was inspired by a band that Buddy and his group followed, called “the Spiders” and they initially thought about calling themselves “The Beetles”, with two E's, but Buddy said he was afraid people would want to “squash them.” So, they picked “The Crickets.” Petty also became the group's manager and producer, signing the Crickets, identified as Allison, Sullivan, and Mauldin, to a contract. Unfortunately, Holly wasn't listed as a member in the original document to keep his involvement with "That'll Be the Day" a secret. This ruse would later become the source of severe legal and financial problems for Buddy.    The song shot to #1 on the national charts that summer. But, of course, Decca knew Holly was in the band by then. So, with Thiele's persuasion and realizing they had a hit on their hands, the company agreed to release Holly from the five-year restriction on his old contract. This release left him free to sign any recording contract he wanted. While sorting out the ins and outs of Holly's legal situation, Thiele knew that Buddy was far more than a one-hit-wonder and that he could potentially write more and different types of hits. So, Holly found himself with two recording contracts, one with Brunswick as a member of the Crickets and the other with Coral Records as Buddy Holly, all thanks to Thiele's ingenious strategy to get the most out of Buddy and his abilities. By releasing two separate bodies of work, the Crickets could keep rockin' while allowing its apparent leader and "star" to break out on his own.    Petty, whose name seems fitting as we go through this, acted as their manager and producer. He handed out writing credits at random, gifting Niki Sullivan and Joe B. Mauldin (and himself) the co-authorship of the song, "I'm Gonna Love You Too," while leaving Holly's name off of "Peggy Sue." at first. The song title, “Peggy Sue” was named after Buddy's biggest fan. Petty usually added his own name to the credit line, something the managers and producers who wanted a more significant piece of the pie did back in the '50s. To be somewhat fair, Petty made some suggestions, which were vital in shaping certain Holly songs. However, he didn't contribute as much as all of his credits allow us to believe. Some confusion over songwriting was exacerbated by problems stemming from Holly's contracts in 1956. Petty had his own publishing company, Nor Va Jak Music, and Buddy signed a contract to publish his new songs. However, Holly had signed an exclusive agreement with another company the year before. To reduce his profile as a songwriter until a settlement could be made with Petty and convince the other publisher that they weren't losing too much in any compensation, buddy copyrighted many of his new songs under the pseudonym "Charles Hardin." So many names!   The dual recording contracts allowed Holly to record a crazy amount of songs during his short-lived 18 months of fame. Meanwhile, his band -- billed as Buddy Holly & the Crickets -- became one of the top attractions of the time. Holly was the frontman, singing lead and playing lead guitar, which was unusual for the era, and writing or co-writing many of their songs. But the Crickets were also a great band, creating a big and exciting sound (which is lost to history, aside from some live recordings from their 1958 British tour). Allison was a drummer ahead of his time and contributed to the songwriting more often than his colleagues, and Joe B. Mauldin and Niki Sullivan provided a solid rhythm section.   The group relied on originals for their singles, making them unique and years ahead of their time. In 1957-1958, songwriting wasn't considered a skill essential to a career in rock & Roll; the music business was still limping along the lines it had followed since the '20s. Songwriting was a specialized profession set on the publishing side of the industry and not connected to performing and recording. A performer might write a song or, even more rarely, like Duke Ellington (It Don't Mean A Thing), count composition among his key talents; however, this was generally left to the experts. Any rock & roller wanting to write songs would also have to get past the image of Elvis. He was set to become a millionaire at the young age of 22. He never wrote his songs, and the few songwriting credits he had resulted from business arrangements rather than writing anything.   Buddy Holly & the Crickets changed that seriously by hitting number one with a song they'd written and then reaching the Top Ten with originals like "Oh, Boy" and "Peggy Sue," They were regularly charging up the charts based on their songwriting. This ability wasn't appreciated by the public at the time and wouldn't be noticed widely until the '70s. Still, thousands of aspiring musicians, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, from some unknown band called "The Beatles," took note of their success, and some of them decided to try and tried to be like Buddy. Also unknown at the time, Holly and his crew changed the primary industry method of recording, which was to bring the artist into the label's studio, working on their timetable. If an artist were highly successful, they got a blank check in the studio, and any union rules were thrown out, but that was rare and only happened to the highest bar of musicians. Buddy Holly & the Crickets, however, did their thing, starting with "That'll Be the Day," in Clovis, New Mexico, at Petty's studio. They took their time and experimented until they got the sound they were looking for. No union told them when to stop or start their work, and they delivered terrific records; not to mention, they were albums that sounded different than anything out there. The results changed the history of rock music. The group worked out a new sound that gave shape to the next wave of rock & Roll. Most definitely influenced was British rock & Roll and the British Invasion beat, with the lead and rhythm guitars working together to create a fuller, more complex sound. On songs such as "Not Fade Away," "Everyday," "Listen to Me," "Oh Boy!," "Peggy Sue," "Maybe Baby," "Rave On," "Heartbeat," and "It's So Easy," Holly took rock & roll's range and sophistication and pushed it without abandoning its excitement and, most importantly, it's fun. Holly and the band weren't afraid to push the envelope and try new things, even on their singles. "Peggy Sue" used changes in volume and timbre on the guitar that was usually only used in instrumental albums. "Words of Love" was one of the earliest examples of double-tracked vocals in rock & Roll, and the Beatles would jump on that train the following decade. Buddy Holly & the Crickets were extremely popular in America. Still, in England, they were even more significant; their impact was compared to Elvis and, in some ways, was even bigger. This success was because they toured England; Elvis didn't. They spent a month there in 1958, playing a list of shows that were still talked about 30 years later. It also had to do with their sound and Holly's persona on stage. The group's heavy use of rhythm guitar fit right in with the sound of skiffle music, a mix of blues, folk, country, and jazz elements that most of the younger British were introduced to playing music and their first taste of rock & Roll. Also, Holly looked a lot less likely a rock & roll star than Elvis. He was tall, skinny, and wore glasses; he looked like an ordinary dude who was good at music. Part of Buddy's appeal as a rock star was how he didn't look like one. He inspired tens of thousands of British teenagers who couldn't compare themselves to Elvis or Gene Vincent. (Be Bop A Lula) In the '50s, British guitarist Hank Marvin of the Shadows owed his look and that he wore his glasses proudly on-stage to Holly, and it was brought into the '70s by Elvis Costello.  Buddy may have played several different kinds of guitars but, he was specifically responsible for popularizing the Fender Stratocaster, especially in England. For many wannabe rock & rollers in the UK, Holly's 1958 tour was the first chance they'd had to see or hear this iconic guitar in action, and it quickly became the guitar of choice for anyone wanting to be a guitarist in England. In fact, Marvin is said to have had the first Stratocaster ever brought into England.   The Crickets became a trio with Sullivan dipping out in late 1957, right after the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but a lot more would transpire over the next year or so. The group consolidated its success with the release of two L.P.s, The Chirping Crickets, and Buddy Holly. They had two successful international tours and performed more in the United States. Holly had also started to have different ideas and aspirations than Allison and Mauldin. They never thought of leaving Texas as their home, and they continued to base their lives there, while Buddy wanted to be in New York, not just to do business but to live. His marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist in Murray Deutsch's office, made the decision to move to New York that much easier. By this time, Holly's music had become more sophisticated and complex, and he passed off the lead guitar duties in the studio to session player Tommy Alsup. He had done several recordings in New York using session musicians such as King Curtis. It was around this time that the band started to see a slight decline in sales. Singles such as "Heartbeat" didn't sell nearly as well as the 45s of 1957 that had rolled out of stores. It's said that Buddy might even have advanced further than most of the band's audience was willing to accept in late 1958. Critics believe that the song "Well...All Right" was years ahead of its time.   Buddy split with the group -- and Petty -- in 1958. This departure left him free to chase some of those newer sounds, which also left him low on funds. In the course of the split, it became clear to Holly and everyone else that Petty had been fudging the numbers and probably taken a lot of the group's income for himself. Unfortunately, there was almost no way of proving his theft because he never seemed to finish his "accounting" of the money owed to anyone. His books were ultimately found to be so screwed up that when he came up with various low five-figure settlements to the folks he robbed, they took it.   Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock, TX, and hung out in Waylin Jennings's radio station in December 1958. With no money coming in from Petty, Holly decided to earn some quick cash by signing to play the Midwest's Winter Dance Party package tour. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (on bass), Tommy Allsup (on guitar), and Carl Bunch (on drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days before a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, the folks who organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to meet up with the rest of the band. The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created problems because whoever booked the tour dates didn't consider the distance between venues. On top of the scheduling conflicts, the unheated tour buses broke down twice in the freezing weather. In addition, Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes while aboard the bus, so Buddy looked for different transportation.  Buddy actually sat in on drums for the local bands while Richie Valenz played drums for Buddy.    On February 2, before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane for Jennings, Allsup, and himself, from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa, for $108.  Holly wanted to leave after the performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, through Fargo, North Dakota. This plan would allow them time to rest, wash their clothes and avoid being on that crappy bus. The Clear Lake Show ended just before midnight, and Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Richie Valens. Valens called heads, and when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life" On a side note, Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas called Heads Up, in memory of this statement. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper), who had the flu and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his stature. When Buddy heard Waylon wouldn't be flying with him, he jokingly said, “I hope your old bus freezes up!” Then Waylon responded, “well, I hope your old plane crashes!” The last thing he would ever say to his friend. Roger Peterson, the pilot and only 21, took off in pretty nasty weather, although he wasn't certified to fly by instruments alone, failing an instrument test the year before. He was a big fan of Buddy's and didn't want to disappoint, so he called a more seasoned pilot to fly the trio to their destination. “I'm more of a Lawrence Welk fan.”  Sadly, shortly after 12:55 am on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when the plane crashed into a frozen cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City, Iowa, airport shortly after takeoff. Buddy was in the front, next to the pilot. He loved flying and had been taking flying lessons. The three musicians were ejected from the plane upon impact, suffering severe head and chest injuries. Holly was 22 years old.   Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, TX. It was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who married the Hollys' just months earlier. Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis were pallbearers. Some sources say that Phil Everly, the one half of The Everly Brothers, was also the pallbearer, but he said at one time that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. In addition, Waylon Jennings was unable to participate because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was buried in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the city's eastern part. His headstone has the correct spelling of his last name (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. His wife, María Elena, had to see the first reports of her husband's death on T.V. She claimed she suffered a miscarriage the following day. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, the authorities implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until the families were informed. As a result, Mary did not attend the funeral and has never visited the gravesite. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."    The accident wasn't considered a significant piece of news at the time, although sad. Most news outlets were run by out-of-touch older men and didn't think rock & Roll was anything more than to be exploited to sell newspapers or grab viewing audiences. However, Holly was clean-cut and scandal-free, and with the news of his recent marriage, the story contained more misery than other music stars of the period. For the teens of the time, it was their first glimpse of a public tragedy like this, and the news was heartbreaking. Radio station D.J.s were also traumatized. The accident and sudden way it happened, along with Holly and Valens being just 22 and 17, made it even worse. Hank Williams Sr had died at 29, but he was a drug user and heavy drinker, causing some to believe his young death was inevitable. The blues guitarist Johnny Ace had passed in 1954 while backstage at a show. However, that tragedy came at his hand in a game of Russian roulette. Holly's death was different, almost more personal to the public.     Buddy left behind dozens of unfinished recordings — solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, and tapes with songs intended for other musicians. Buddy recorded his last six original songs in his apartment in late 1958 and were his most recent recordings. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of the songs with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and hired guns to emulate the Crickets sound. Since his death, the finished tracks became the first singles, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping." The new release was a success, and the fans and industry wanted more. As a result, all six songs were included in The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 in 1960 using the other Holly demos and the same studio personnel. The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so many tracks that his record label could release new Holly albums and singles for the next ten years. Norman Petty, the alleged swindler, produced most of these new songs, using unreleased studio masters, alternative takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (a few from 1954 with recorded with low-quality vocals). The final Buddy Holly album, "Giant," was released in 1969 with the single, "Love Is Strange," taking the lead.   These posthumous records did well in the U.S. but actually charted in England. New recordings of his music, like the Rolling Stones' rendition of "Not Fade Away" and the Beatles' rendition of "Words of Love," kept Buddy's name and music in the hearts and ears of a new generation of listeners. In the States, the struggle was a little more challenging. The rock & roll wave was constantly morphing, with new sounds, bands, and listeners continuously emerging, and the general public gradually forgot about Buddy and his short-lived legacy. Holly was a largely forgotten figure in his own country by the end of the '60s, except among older fans (then in their twenties) and hardcore oldies listeners. Things began to shift toward the end of the '60s with the start of the oldies boom. Holly's music was, of course, a part of this movement. But, as people listened, they also learned about the man behind the music. Even the highly respected rock zine Rolling Stone went out of its way to remind people who Buddy was. His posing images from 1957 and 1958, wearing his glasses, a jacket, and smiling, looked like a figure from another age. The way he died also set him apart from some of the deaths of rockers like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, musicians who, at the time, overindulged in the rock in roll lifestyle. Holly was different. He was eternally innocent in all aspects of his life. Don McLean, a relatively unknown singer/songwriter, who proudly considered himself a Buddy Holly fan, wrote and released a song called "American Pie," in 1971, catapulting him into the musical ethos. Although listeners assumed McLean wrote the song about President Kennedy, he let it be known publicly that he meant February 3, 1959, the day Holly died. Maclean was a holly fan and his death devastated him when he was only 11. The song's popularity led to Holly suddenly getting more press exposure than he'd ever had the chance to enjoy in his lifetime.     The tragic plane accident launched a few careers in the years after. Bobby Vee became a star when his band took over Holly's spot on the Winter Dance Party tour.  Holly's final single, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," hit the British charts in the wake of his death and rose to number one. Two years after the event, producer Joe Meek and singer Mike Berry got together to make "Tribute to Buddy Holly," a memorial single. But, unfortunately, rumor has it that Meek never entirely got over Holly's death, and he killed himself on the anniversary of the plane accident.   The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. Upon his induction, the Hall of Fame basked about the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career. Saying, "He made a major and lasting impact on popular music ." Calling him an "innovator" for writing his own material, experimenting with double-tracking, and using orchestration. He was also revered for having "pioneered and popularized" the use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986, saying his contributions "changed the face of Rock' n' Roll." Along with Petty, Holly developed techniques like overdubbing and reverb and other innovative instrumentation. As a result, according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.   Paul McCartney bought the rights to Buddy Holly's entire song catalog on July 1, 1976.   Lubbock TX's Walk of Fame has a statue honoring Buddy of him rocking his Fender, which Grant Speed sculpted in 1980. There are other memorials to Buddy Holly, including a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The Center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue.  There was a musical about Buddy. Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a “pioneering jukebox musical which worked his familiar hits into a narrative,” debuted in the West End in 1989. It ran until 2008, where it also appeared on Broadway, as well as in Australia and Germany, not to mention touring companies in the U.K. and U.S.   In 1994 "Buddy Holly" became a massive hit from the band Weezer, paying homage to the fallen rocker and is still played on the radio and whenever MTV decides to play videos on one of their side stations. Again, in ‘94, Holly's style also showed up in Quentin Tarantino's abstract and groundbreaking film Pulp Fiction, which featured Steve Buscemi playing a waiter impersonating Buddy.   In 1997, Buddy received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, as well. In 2010, Grant Speed's statue of Buddy and his guitar was taken down for repairs, and construction of a new Walk of Fame began. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. The same year, on why would be Buddy's 75th birthday, a star with his name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.   There were two tribute albums released in 2011: Verve Forecast's Listen to Me: Buddy Holly,  featuring Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, and Ringo Starr plus 13 other artists, and Fantasy/Concord's Rave on Buddy Holly, which had tracks from Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, the Black Keys, and Nick Lowe, among others.  Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens released his own Holly tribute album in 2009. Universal released True Love Ways, an album where original Holly recordings were overdubbed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2018, just in time for Christmas. That album debuted at number 10 on the U.K. charts. Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, to construct a new performing arts center in Lubbock, TX, dubbed the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a $153 million project in downtown Lubbock completed in 2020 located at 1300 Mac Davis Lane.   Recently, on May 5, 2019, an article on gearnews.com had a pretty cool story, if it's true.   The famous Fender Stratocaster played and owned by Buddy Holly that disappeared after his death in 1959 has been found, according to a new video documentary called "The '54".   Gill Matthews is an Australian drummer, producer, and collector of old Fender guitars. According to the documentary, he may have stumbled upon Buddy Holly's legendary guitar. The film is The '54 and tells the history of one particular 1954 Fender Stratocaster Gil purchased two decades after the plane crash that claimed Buddy's life. Experts cited in the film say there is a good chance that the guitar in Matthews' possession is indeed Buddy Holly's actual original '54 Fender Stratocaster. If this is true, it is possibly one of the most significant finds in guitar history. You can watch the video at gearnews.com and see all the evidence presented during the film.     Sources: A biography on allmusic.com written by Bruce Eder was the main source of information here with other info coming from the following Rave on: The Biography of Buddy Holly written by Phillip Norman   Buddy Holly : Rest In Peace by Don Mclean "Why Buddy Holly will never fade away" an article on The Telegraph website written by Phillip Norman   Various other articles were used and tidbits taken from wikipedia.   And Adam Moody   Consider becoming a producer of the show. www.accidentaldads.com www.iconsandoutlaws.com       

Dr. Jerry Allison, a medical director at Molina Health of Texas, joined the podcast to talk about quality improvement, virtual care, primary care and more.

Episode one hundred and thirty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Fought the Law", and at the mysterious death of Bobby Fuller. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and the Shondells. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com No Mixcloud this week due to the large number of tracks by the Bobby Fuller Four Resources Information about the Crickets' post-Holly work comes from Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh. There are two books available about Bobby Fuller -- the one I consulted most is Rock and Roll Mustangs by Stephen McParland, which can be bought as a PDF from https://payhip.com/cmusicbooks I also consulted I Fought the Law: The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller by Miriam Linna and Randell Fuller. One minor note -- both these books spell Bob Keane's name Keene. Apparently he spelled it multiple ways, but I have chosen to use the spelling he used on his autobiography, which is also the spelling I have used for him previously. There are several compilations available of the Bobby Fuller Four's material, but the best collection of the hit singles is Magic Touch: The Complete Mustang Singles Collection.  And this is an expanded edition of the Crickets' In Style album. Erratum I say Sonny Curtis wrote "Oh Boy!" -- I meant Sonny West. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A warning, before I begin. This episode, more than most, deals with events you may find disturbing, including graphic descriptions of violent death. Please check the transcript on the podcast website at 500songs.com if you are worried that you might be upset by this. This episode will not be a pleasant listen. Now on with the episode... More than anything, Bobby Fuller wanted desperately to be Buddy Holly. His attitude is best summed up in a quote from Jim Reese, the guitarist with the Bobby Fuller Four, who said "Don't get me wrong, I thought the world of Bobby Fuller and I cared a lot for him, so I say this with the best intentions -- but he was into Buddy Holly so much that if Buddy Holly decided to wear one red sock and one blue sock and Bobby Fuller found out about it, Bobby Fuller would've had one red sock and one blue sock. He figured that the only way to accomplish whatever Buddy Holly had accomplished was to be as much like Buddy Holly as possible." And Reese was right -- Bobby Fuller really was as much like Buddy Holly as possible. Buddy Holly was from Texas, so was Bobby Fuller. Buddy Holly played a Fender Stratocaster, Bobby Fuller played a Fender Stratocaster. Buddy Holly performed with the Crickets, Bobby Fuller's biggest hit was with a Crickets song. Buddy Holly recorded with Norman Petty, Bobby Fuller recorded with Norman Petty. Of course, there was one big difference. Buddy Holly died in an accident when he was twenty-two. Bobby Fuller lived to be twenty-three. And his death was no accident... [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "I Fought the Law"] After Buddy Holly quit the Crickets in 1958, they continued recording with Norman Petty, getting in guitarist Sonny Curtis, who had been an associate of the band members even before they were a band, and who had been a frequent collaborator with Buddy, and vocalist Earl Sinks. But while they kept recording, Petty didn't release any of the recordings, and the group became convinced that he wasn't really interested in doing so. Rather, they thought that he was just using them as leverage to try to get Buddy back. "Love's Made a Fool of You" was the record that made the Crickets lose their faith in Norman Petty. The song was one that Buddy Holly and Bob Montgomery had written way back in 1954, and Holly had revived it for a demo in 1958, recording it not as a potential song for himself but to give to the Everly Brothers, reworked in their style, though they never recorded it: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Love's Made a Fool of You"] When Holly and the Crickets had parted ways, the Crickets had recorded their own version of the song with Petty producing, which remained unreleased like everything they'd recorded since Buddy left. But on the very day that Buddy Holly died, Petty shipped a copy of the tape to Decca, express mail, so that a single could be released as soon as possible: [Excerpt: The Crickets, "Love's Made a Fool of You"] The Crickets never worked with Norman Petty again after that, they were so disgusted at his determination to cash in on the death of their friend and colleague. Petty continued to exploit Holly's work, getting in a band called the Fireballs to add new instrumental backing to Holly's old demos so they could be released as new singles, but the split between Petty and Holly's living colleagues was permanent. But the Crickets didn't give up performing, and continued recording new material, mostly written either by Sonny Curtis or by the group's drummer Jerry Allison, who had co-written several of the group's earlier hits with Holly. "More Than I Can Say" was written by Curtis and Allison, and didn't make the top forty in the US, but did become a top thirty hit in the UK: [Excerpt: The Crickets, "More Than I Can Say"] That was later also covered in hit versions by Bobby Vee and Leo Sayer. The B-side, "Baby My Heart", wasn't a hit for the Crickets, but was covered by the Shadows on their first album, which made number one on the UK charts. That performance was one of the few Shadows records at this point to have vocals: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Baby My Heart"] The group's first post-Holly album collected all their singles without Holly to that point, plus a few new filler tracks. The album, In Style With the Crickets, didn't chart in the US, but was a success in the UK. Around the time that album was released, Earl Sinks quit the group, and became a songwriter. He collaborated with Buddy Holly's old musical partner Bob Montgomery on a variety of hits for people like Brenda Lee, and in the seventies went back into performing for a while, having minor solo country hits as Earl Richards, and then bought a chain of abbatoirs. Allison and Curtis supplemented their income from the Crickets with session work -- Allison backed the Everly Brothers on "Til I Kissed You": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Til I Kissed You"] and both of them played on Eddie Cochran's last studio session, playing on "Three Steps to Heaven", with Curtis playing the electric lead while Cochran played the acoustic: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] After that, the group went on tour in the UK as the backing band for the Everly Brothers, where they coincidentally bumped into Cochran, who told them "If I knew you guys were coming, I'd have asked you to bring me a bottle of American air.” They would never see Cochran again. Shortly after that tour, Sonny Curtis was drafted -- though while he was in the army, he wrote "Walk Right Back" for the Everly Brothers, as we discussed in the episode on "Cathy's Clown": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Walk Right Back"] Joe Mauldin gave up on music for a while, and so for a while The Crickets consisted of just Jerry Allison, new singer Jerry Naylor, and guitarist Tommy Allsup, who had played with Holly after Holly left the Crickets. That lineup recorded the "Bobby Vee Meets the Crickets" album, with Bobby Vee singing lead: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee and the Crickets, "Well... All Right"] Curtis would return once his time in the army was over, and eventually, in the 1970s, the group would stabilise on a lineup of Curtis, Mauldin, and Allison,  who would play together more or less consistently until 2015. But for a few years in the early sixties there was a lot of lineup shuffling, especially as Allison got drafted not long after Curtis got out of the Army -- there was one UK tour where there were no original members at all, thanks to Allison's absence. When Curtis was out of the group around the time of the Bobby Vee album, Snuff Garrett tried to get a friend of his to join as the group's new lead singer, and brought him to LA, but it didn't work out. Garrett later said "He and Jerry didn't hit it off in the way I imagined. After a few months, it was over and the guy started playing clubs around LA. I did demos with him and took them to my boss, the president of Liberty, and he said, ‘You've got enough of your friends signed to the label. You've signed the Crickets and Buddy Knox and they're not doing much business, and this guy can hardly speak English.' I said, ‘Well, I think he's going to be something.' ‘Okay,' he said, ‘Drop one of the acts you've got and you can sign him.' I said, ‘Forget it.' A year later, he was an international star and his name was Trini Lopez" Lopez's big hit, "If I Had a Hammer", was recorded in a live show at a club called PJs: [Excerpt: Trini Lopez, "If I Had a Hammer"] PJs was owned by a gangster named Eddie Nash, who is now best known as the prime suspect in a notorious case known as the Wonderland Murders, when in 1981 four people were horribly beaten to death, either with the assistance of or to send a message to the porn star John Holmes, depending on which version of the story you believe. If you're unfamiliar with the case, I advise you not to google it, as it's very far from pretty. I bring this up because PJs would soon play a big part in the career of the Bobby Fuller Four. Bobby Fuller was born in the Gulf Coast of Texas, but his family moved about a lot during his formative years, mostly in the Southwestern US, living in Lubbock, Texas, Hobbs, New Mexico, and Salt Lake City, Utah, among other places, before finally settling down in El Paso. El Paso is a border town, right up close to the border with Mexico, and that meant that it had a complicated relationship with Juarez, the nearest large town on the Mexican side of the border. Between 1919 and 1933, the selling and consumption of alcohol had been made illegal in the United States, a period known as Prohibition, but of course it had not been criminalised in Mexico, and so during those years any time anyone from El Paso wanted to get drunk they'd travel to Juarez. Even after Prohibition ended, Juarez had a reputation as a party town, and Randy Fuller, Bobby's brother, would later tell a teen magazine "You can grow up in El Paso and get really bad -- it's Juarez that makes it that way. Whatever personality you have, you have it 100%. You can go to Juarez and get drunk, or stay in El Paso and get religion" Of course, from the outside, that sounds a whole lot like "now look what YOU made ME do". It's not the fault of those white people from Texas that they travel to someone else's city in someone else's country and get falling-down drunk and locked up in their jails every weekend, but it's the fault of those tempting Mexicans. And when Bobby and Randy Fuller's older brother Jack disappeared in 1961, while Bobby was off at university, that was at first what everyone thought had happened -- he'd gone to Juarez, got drunk, and got locked up until he could sleep it off. But when he didn't reappear after several days, everyone became more concerned. It turned out that Jack had met a man named Roy Handy at a bus depot and started chatting with him. They'd become friendly, and had gone off to do some target shooting together in the desert. But Handy had seen what looked like a wad of thousand-dollar bills in Jack's sun visor, and had decided to turn the gun on Jack rather than the target, killing him. The thousand-dollar bills had been play money, a gift bought for a small child who lived nearby. Because of the murder, Bobby Fuller moved back to El Paso from Denton in North Texas, where he had been studying music at university. He did enroll in a local college, but gave up his studies very quickly. Bobby had been something of a musical prodigy -- his original plan before going to North Texas State University had actually been to go to Juilliard, where he was going to study jazz drumming. Instead, while Bobby continued his drumming, he started living a party lifestyle, concentrating on his car, on women -- he got multiple women pregnant in his late teens and early twenties -- and on frequent trips to Juarez, where he would spend a lot of time watching a local blues musician, Long John Hunter: [Excerpt: Long John Hunter, "El Paso Rock"] Meanwhile, a music scene had been growing in El Paso since the late 1950s. A group called the Counts were at the forefront of it, with instrumentals like "Thunder": [Excerpt: The Counts, "Thunder"] The Counts splintered into various groups, and one of them became The Embers, who Bobby Fuller joined on drums. Fuller was also one of a tiny number of people at this time who actually had a home studio. Fuller had started out with a simple bedroom studio, but thanks to his parents' indulgence he had repurposed a big chunk of their house as a studio, including building, with his brother Randy, an echo chamber (though it didn't work very well and he stuck with tape echo). It was in that home studio that the Embers recorded their first single, "Jim's Jive", with Fuller on drums and Jim Reese on lead guitar: [Excerpt: Jerry Bright and The Embers, "Jim's Jive"] That was released on a tiny local label, Yucca Records, which also released the Embers' second single -- and also released two Bobby Fuller solo singles, starting with "You're in Love": [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller, "You're in Love"] That was recorded at Fuller's home studio, with the Embers backing him, and became the number one single locally, but Yucca Records had no national distribution, and the record didn't get a wider release. Fuller's second single, though, was the first time his Buddy Holly fixation came to the forefront. Fuller was, by many accounts, *only* interested in sounding like Buddy Holly -- though his musical tastes were broad enough that he also wanted to sound like Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, and the Crickets. But that was the extent of Fuller's musical world, and so obviously he wanted to work with the people who had worked with Holly. So his second single was recorded at Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, with Petty's wife Vi, who had played keyboards on some Buddy Holly records, on keyboards and backing vocals: [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller, "Gently My Love"] But as it turned out, Fuller was very underwhelmed by the experience of working with Petty, and decided that he was going to go back to recording in his home studio. Fuller left the Embers and started performing on his own, playing rhythm guitar rather than drums, with a band that initially consisted of his brother Randy on bass, Gaylord Grimes on drums, and Jim Reese on lead guitar, though there would be constant lineup changes. Two of the many musicians who drifted in and out of Fuller's revolving band lineup, Larry Thompson and Jerry Miller, were from the Pacific Northwest, and were familiar with the scene that I talked about in the episode on "Louie, Louie". Thompson was a fan of one of the Pacific Northwest bands, the Frantics, who had hits with tracks like "Werewolf": [Excerpt: The Frantics, "Werewolf"] Thompson believed that the Frantics had split up, and so Fuller's group took on that name for themselves. When they found out that the group *hadn't* split up, they changed their name to the Fanatics, though the name on their bass drum still read "The Frantics" for quite a while. Jerry Miller later moved back to Seattle, where he actually joined the original Frantics, before going on to become a founder member of Moby Grape. Fuller started his own record label, Eastwood Records, and put out another solo single, which covered the full breadth of his influences. The B-side was "Oh Boy!", the song Sonny Curtis had written for Buddy Holly, while the A-side was "Nervous Breakdown", which had originally been recorded by Eddie Cochran: [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller, "Nervous Breakdown"] Everything was very fluid at this point, with musicians coming and going from different lineups, and none of these musicians were only playing in one band. For example, as well as being lead guitarist in the Fanatics, Jim Reese also played on "Surfer's Paradise" by Bobby Taylor and the Counts: [Excerpt: Bobby Taylor and the Counts, "Surfer's Paradise"] And Bobby's record label, renamed from Eastwood to Exeter, was releasing records  by other artists as well as Bobby and the Fanatics, though none of these records had any success. In early 1963 Fuller and his latest lineup of Fanatics -- Randy, drummer Jimmy Wagnon, and guitarist Tex Reed -- travelled to LA to see if they could become successful outside El Paso. They got a residency at the Hermosa Biltmore, and also regularly played the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, where the Beach Boys and Dick Dale had both played not long before, and there they added some surf instrumentals to their repertoire. Bobby soon became almost as keen on surf music as he was on rockabilly. While in LA, they tried all the record companies, with no success. The most encouragement they got came from Bob Keane at Del-Fi, the label that had previously been Ritchie Valens' label, who told him that the tapes they brought him of their El Paso recordings sounded good but they needed better songs, and to come back to him when they had a hit song. Bobby determined to do just that. On their return to El Paso, Bobby Fuller and the Fanatics recorded "Stringer" for Todd Records, a small label owned by Paul Cohen, the former Decca executive who had signed Buddy Holly but not known what to do with him: [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller and the Fanatics, "Stringer"] Fuller also opened his own teen nightclub, the Teen Rendezvous, which he named after the Balboa ballroom. The Fanatics became the regular band there, and at this point they started to build up a serious reputation as live performers. The Teen Rendezvous only stayed open for a few months, though -- there were complaints about the noise, and also they booked Bobby Vee as a headliner one night. Vee charged a thousand dollars for his appearance, which the club couldn't really afford, and they didn't make it back on the doors. They'd hoped that having a prestigious act like Vee play there might get more people to come to the club regularly, but it turned out that Vee gave a sub-par performance, and the gamble didn't pay off. It was around this time that Fuller made his first recording of a song that would eventually define him, though it wasn't his idea. He was playing the Crickets In Style album to his brother Randy, and Randy picked up on one song, a Sonny Curtis composition which had never been released as a single: [Excerpt: The Crickets, "I Fought the Law"] Randy thought the Crickets' actual record sounded horrible, but he also thought the song had the potential to be a really big hit. He later explained "The James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause had made a big impression on me, and I told Bobby, 'Man, let's do that one... it oughta sell a million copies'. Everyone was into the whole rebel thing, with switchblades and stuff like that. It just seemed like a natural thing for us to do." Fuller recorded his own version of the song, which once again became a local hit: [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller, "I Fought The Law (El Paso version)"] But even though the record did get some national distribution, from VeeJay Records, it didn't get any airplay outside the Southwest, and Fuller remained a local star with absolutely no national profile. Meanwhile, he was still trying to do what Bob Keane had asked and come up with a hit song, but he was stuck in a musical rut. As Jim Reese would later say, "Bobby was a great imitator. He could sing just like Holly, McCartney, Lennon, or Eddie Cochran. And he could imitate on the guitar, too. But Bobby never did Bobby". To make matters worse, the Beatles came on to the American musical scene, and caused an immediate shift in the public taste. And Bobby Fuller had a very complicated relationship with the Beatles. He had to play Beatles songs live because that's what the audiences wanted, but he felt that rock and roll was *American* music, and he resented British people trying to play it. He respected them as songwriters, but didn't actually like their original material. He could tell that they were huge Buddy Holly fans, like him, and he respected that, but he loathed Motown, and he could tell they were listening to that too. He ended up trying to compromise by playing Buddy Holly songs on stage but introducing them by talking about how much the Beatles loved Buddy Holly. Another person who was negatively affected by the British Invasion was Bob Keane, the man who had given Fuller some encouragement. Keane's Del-Fi Records had spent the previous few years making a steady income from churning out surf records like "Surf Rider" by the Lively Ones: [Excerpt: The Lively Ones, "Surf Rider"] And the Surfer's Pajama Party album by the Bruce Johnston Surfing Band: [Excerpt: Bruce Johnston, "The Surfer Stomp"] But as surf music had suddenly become yesterday's news, Del-Fi were in financial trouble, and Keane had had to take on a partner who gave the label some financial backing, Larry Nunes. Now, I am going to be very, very, careful about exactly what I say about Nunes here. I am aware that different people give very, very, different takes on Nunes' personality -- Barry White, for example, always said that knowing Nunes was the best thing that ever happened to him, credited Nunes with everything good in his career, and gave him credit on all his albums as his spiritual advisor. However, while White made Nunes out to be pretty much a saint, that is not the impression one gets from hearing Bob Keane or any of Bobby Fuller's circle talk about him. Nunes had started out in the music business as a "rack jobber", someone who ran a small distribution company, selling to small family-owned shops and to secondary markets like petrol stations and grocery stores. The business model for these organisations was to get a lot of stock of records that hadn't sold, and sell them at a discount, to be sold in discount bins. But they were also a perfect front for all sorts of criminal activity. Because these were bulk sales of remaindered records, dead stock, the artists weren't meant to get royalties on them, and no real accounting was done of the sales. So if a record label "accidentally" pressed up a few thousand extra copies of a hit record and sold it on to a rack jobber, the artists would never know. And if the Mafia made a deal with the record pressing plant to press up a few thousand extra copies, the *record label* would never know. And so very, very, quickly this part of the distribution system became dominated by organised crime. I have seen no proof, only rumours, that Nunes was directly involved in organised crime, but Bob Keane in particular later became absolutely convinced he was. Keane would later write in his autobiography: “I wondered if I had made a deal with the Devil. I had heard that Larry had a reputation for being associated with the Mob, and as it turned out three years later our relationship ended in deception, dishonesty, and murder. I consider myself very lucky to have come out of my relationship with Nunes in one piece, virtually unscathed." Again, this is Keane's interpretation of events. I am not saying that Larry Nunes was a mobster, I am saying that Bob Keane repeatedly made that accusation many times, and that other people in this story have said similar things. By late 1964, Bobby Fuller had come up with a song he was pretty sure *would* be a successful single, like Keane had wanted, a song called "Keep on Dancing" he'd written with Randy: [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller, “Keep On Dancing”] After some discussion he managed to persuade Randy, Jim Reese, and drummer DeWayne Quirico to move with him to LA -- Bobby and Randy's mother also moved with them, because after what had happened to her eldest son she was very protective of her other children. Jim Reese was less keen on the move than the others, as he thought that Fuller was only interested in himself, not in the rest of the Fanatics. As Reese would later say, "Bobby wanted us all to go to California, but I was leery because it always had been too one-sided with Bobby. He ran everything, hired and fired at the least whim, and didn't communicate well with other people. He was never able to understand that a musician, like other people, needs food, gasoline, clothes, a place to live, etc. I often felt that Bobby thought we should be following him anywhere just for the thrill of it." Eventually, Fuller got them to go by agreeing that when they got to LA, everything would be split equally -- one for all and all for one, though when they finally made a deal with Keane, Fuller was the only one who ended up receiving royalties. The rest of the group got union scale. Keane agreed that "Keep on Dancing" could be a hit, but that wasn't the first record the group put out through one of Keane's labels. The first was an instrumental titled "Thunder Reef": [Excerpt: The Shindigs, "Thunder Reef"] That wasn't released as by the Fanatics, but as by The Shindigs -- Keane had heard that Shindig! needed a house band and thought that naming the group after the show might be a way to get them the position. As it happened, the TV show went with another group, led by James Burton, who they called the Shindogs, and Keane's plan didn't work out. The Shindigs single was released on a new Del-Fi subsidiary, Mustang, on which most future records by the group would be released. Mustang was apparently set up specifically for the group, but the first record released on that label was actually by a studio group called The Surfettes: [Excerpt: The Surfettes, "Sammy the Sidewalk Surfer"] The Surfettes consisted of Carol Connors, the former lead singer of the Teddy Bears and writer of "Hey Little Cobra", and her sister Cheryl. Carol had written the single with Buzz Cason, of Brenda Lee's band, and the session musicians on that single included several other artists who were recording for Del-Fi at the time -- David Gates, Arthur Lee, and Johnny Echols, all of whom we'll be hearing more about in future episodes. Almost simultaneously with the Shindigs single, another single by the Fanatics was released, "Those Memories of You": [Excerpt: Bobby Fuller and the Fanatics, "Those Memories of You"] That single, backed by a surf instrumental called "Our Favourite Martian", was released on Donna Records, another Del-Fi subsidiary, as by Bobby Fuller and the Fanatics, which made the other group members furious -- what had happened to one for all and all for one? Randy Fuller, who was a very aggressive young man, was so annoyed that he stormed into Bob Keane's office and frisbeed one of the singles at his head. They didn't want to be Bobby's backing band, they wanted to be a proper group, so it was agreed the group's name would be changed. It was changed to The Bobby Fuller Four. Jim Reese claimed that Keane and Fuller formed The Bobby Fuller Four Inc, without the other three members having participation, and made them employees of the corporation. Reese said "this didn't fit in with my concept of the verbal agreement I had with Bobby, but at least it was better than nothing". The group became the house band at the Rendezvous, playing their own sets and backing people like Sonny and Cher. They then got a residency at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood, and then Jim Reese quit the band. Fuller phoned him and begged him to come back, and as Reese said later "I again repeated my conditions about equal treatment and he agreed, so I went back -- probably the biggest mistake I ever made." The group's first single as the Bobby Fuller Four, released on Mustang as all their future records were, was "Take My Word": [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Take My Word"] The record was unsuccessful -- Keane's various labels, while they were better distributed than Bobby's own labels back in El Paso, still only had spotty distribution, and Mustang being a new label it was even more difficult to get records in stores. But the group were getting a reputation as one of the best live acts in the LA area at the time. When the club Ciro's, on the Sunset Strip, closed and reopened under its new name It's Boss, the group were chosen to perform at its grand reopening, and they played multiple four- to six-week residencies at PJ's. The next record the group released, "Let Her Dance", was a slight rewrite of "Keep on Dancing", the song the Fuller brothers had written together, though Bobby was the only credited writer on the label: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Let Her Dance"] That was the first single they recorded at a new state-of-the-art studio Keane had opened up. That studio had one of the first eight-track machines in LA, and a truly vast echo chamber, made up from a couple of unused vaults owned by a bank downstairs from the studio. But there were big arguments between Fuller and Keane, because Fuller wanted only to make music that could be reproduced live exactly as it was on the record, while Keane saw the record as the important thing. Keane put a percussion sound on the record, made by hitting a bottle, which Fuller detested as they couldn't do it live, and the two would only end up disagreeing more as they continued working together. There's a lot of argument among Fuller fans about this -- personally I can see both sides, but there are people who are very much Team Bobby and think that nothing he recorded for Mustang is as good as the El Paso recordings, because of Bob Keane diluting the raw power of his live sound. But in an era  where studio experimentation was soon to lead to records like "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Good Vibrations", I think a bit of extra percussion is hardly an unforgivable dilution: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Let Her Dance"] KRLA radio started playing "Let Her Dance" every hour, at the instigation of Larry Nunes -- and most of the people talking about this have implied that he bribed people in order to get this to happen, or that it was through his alleged Mob connections. Certainly, he knew exactly when they would start playing the record, and how frequently, before they did. As a result of this exposure, "Let Her Dance" became a massive local hit, but they still didn't have the distribution to make it a hit outside California. It did, though, do well enough that Liberty Records asked about putting the record out nationally. Keane came to a verbal agreement, which he thought was an agreement for Liberty to distribute the Mustang Records single, and Liberty thought was an agreement to put out the single on their own label and have an option on future Fuller recordings. Liberty put the record out on their own label, without Keane having signed anything, and Keane had to sue them. The result was that the record was out on two different labels, which were suing each other, and so it hardly had any chance at any kind of success. The legal action also affected the next single, "Never to Be Forgotten": [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Never to Be Forgotten"] That's often considered the best of the band's originals for Mustang, and was written by the Fuller brothers -- and both of them were credited this time -- but Liberty sued Keane, claiming that because they'd released "Let Her Dance", they also had an option on the next single. But even though the group still weren't selling records, they were getting other opportunities for exposure, like their appearance in a film which came out in April 1966. Though admittedly, this film was hardly A Hard Day's Night. Indeed, a lot of people have claimed that The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini was cursed. The film, which went through the working titles Pajama Party in a Haunted House, Slumber Party in a Haunted House, Bikini Party in a Haunted House, and Ghost in a Glass Bikini, was made by the cheapy exploitation company American International Pictures, and several people involved in it would die in the next four years, starting with Buster Keaton, who was meant to appear in the film, but had to back out due to his health problems and died before the film came out. Then on the first day of filming, a grip fell to his death. In the next four years, two of the film's young stars, Sue Hamilton and John Macchia, would die, as would Philip Bent, an actor with a minor role who died in July 1966 in a plane crash which also took the life of Peter Sachse, an extra on the film who was married to a cast member. Three more stars of the film, Francis X Bushman, Basil Rathbone, and Boris Karloff would also all be dead within a handful of years, but they were all elderly and unwell when filming started. I don't believe in curses myself, but it is a horrible run of bad luck for a single film. To make matters worse, the group weren't even playing their own music in the film, but lipsynching to tracks by other musicians. And they had to play Vox instruments in the film, because of a deal the filmmakers had made, when the group all hated Vox instruments, which Jim Reese thought of as only good for starting bonfires. For the next single, Keane had discussed with Fuller what songs the group had that were "different", but Fuller apparently didn't understand what he meant. So Keane went to the rest of the group and asked them what songs always went over well in live performances. All three band members said that "I Fought the Law" should be the next single. Bobby disagreed, and almost got into a fistfight with his brother over it -- they'd already released it as a single once, on his own label, and he didn't want to do it again. He also wanted to record his own material not cover versions. But the others prevailed, and "I Fought the Law" became the record that would define the group: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "I Fought the Law"] "I Fought the Law" became the group's breakthrough hit. It made the top ten, and turned the song, which had previously been one of the Crickets' most obscure songs, into a rock and country standard. In the seventies, the song would be recorded by Hank Williams Jr, the Clash, the Dead Kennedys and more, and all of them would be inspired by the Bobby Fuller Four's version of the song, not the Crickets' original. Around this time, the group also recorded a live album at PJs, in the hope of duplicating Trini Lopez's success with his earlier album. The album was shelved, though, because it didn't capture the powerhouse live act of the group's reputation, instead sounding rather dull and lifeless, with an unenthused audience: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Oh Boy!"] While "I Fought the Law" was a huge success, it started a period of shifts within the band. Shortly after the PJs album was recorded, DeWayne Quirico quit the band and moved back to El Paso. He was temporarily replaced by Johnny Barbata, who would later become a member of the Turtles, before Fuller's preferred replacement Dalton Powell was able to get to LA to join the band. There seems to have been some shuffling about, as well, because as far as I can tell, Powell joined the band, then quit and was replaced by Barbata returning, and then rejoined again, all in about a six month period. Given the success of "I Fought the Law", it only made sense that at their first recording session with Powell, the group would record more tracks that had originally been on the Crickets' In Style album. One of these, their version of "Baby My Heart", went unreleased at the time, though to my taste it's the best thing the group ever did: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Baby My Heart"] The other, "Love's Made a Fool of You", became the group's next single: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "Love's Made a Fool of You"] "Love's Made a Fool of You" was also a success, making number twenty-six in the charts, but the group's next session, which would produce their last single, was the cause of some conflict. Keane had noticed that soul music was getting bigger, and so he'd decided to open up a sister label to Mustang, Bronco, which would release soul and R&B music. As he didn't know much about that music himself, though of course he had worked with Sam Cooke, he decided to hire an A&R man to deal with that kind of music. The man he chose was a piano player named Barry White, still several years from making his own hit records. White had had some success as an arranger and producer already, having arranged "The Harlem Shuffle" for Bob and Earl, on which he also played piano: [Excerpt: Bob and Earl, "The Harlem Shuffle"] Despite White's remit, the records he produced for Bronco and Mustang weren't especially soulful. "Back Seat 38 Dodge" by Opus 1, for example, is a psychedelic updating of the kind of car songs that the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean had been doing a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: Opus 1, "Back Seat 38 Dodge"] White was present at what became the final Bobby Fuller Four session, though accounts differ as to his involvement. Some have him arranging "The Magic Touch”, others have him playing drums on the session, some have him co-producing. Bob Keane always said that the record had no involvement from White whatsoever, that he was there but not participating, but various band members, while differing on other things, have insisted that White and Fuller got into huge rows, as Fuller thought that White was trying to turn his music into Motown, which he despised. The finished record does sound to me like it's got some of White's fingerprints on it: [Excerpt: The Bobby Fuller Four, "The Magic Touch"] But "The Magic Touch" flopped -- it departed too far from the updated Buddy Holly sound of the group's hit singles, and audiences weren't responding. “The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini” came out and was an embarrassment to the band – and on July the eleventh the next in that horrible series of deaths linked to the film happened, the plane crash that killed Philip Bent and Peter Sachse. On July the sixteenth, William Parker, the long-serving chief of the LAPD, had died. If, hypothetically, someone wanted to commit a crime in LA and not have it investigated too closely, the few days after Parker's death, when the entire department was in mourning and making preparations for a massive public funeral, would have been a good time to do so. Two days after Parker's death, July the eighteenth 1966, was going to be the crunch point for the Bobby Fuller Four. They had a recording session scheduled for 8:30AM, but they also were planning on having a band meeting after the session, at which it was likely the group were going to split up. Jim Reese had just got his draft notice, Bobby and Randy were getting on worse, and nobody was happy with the music they were making. They were going to finish the album they were working on, and then Bobby was going to go solo. Or at least that was what everyone assumed -- certainly Ahmet Ertegun had been sniffing round Bobby as a solo artist, though Bobby kept saying publicly he wanted to continue working with the band. There were also later rumours that Morris Levy had been after Bobby, and had even signed him to a deal, though no documentary evidence of such a deal has surfaced. It seemed that if there was to be a group at all, it would just be a name for any random musicians Bobby hired. Bobby also wanted to become a pure recording artist, and not tour any more -- he hated touring, thought people weren't listening to the band properly, and that being away from home meant he didn't have time to write songs, which in turn meant that he had to record what he thought of as substandard material by other people rather than his own original material. He wanted to stay in LA, play clubs, and make records. But even though making records was what he wanted to do, Bobby never turned up for the recording session, and nor did he turn up for the group meeting afterwards. The group's next single had been announced as "It's Love Come What May": [Excerpt: Randy Fuller, "It's Love Come What May"] When that was released, it was released as a Randy Fuller solo single, with Randy's voice overdubbed on top of Bobby's. Because there was no use putting out a record by a dead man. Here's what we actually know about Bobby Fuller's death, as far as I can tell. There are a lot of conflicting claims, a lot of counternarratives, and a lot of accusations that seek to tie in everyone from Charles Manson to Frank Sinatra, but this is as close as I can get to the truth. Bobby and Randy were living together, with their mother, though Randy was out a lot of the time, and the two brothers at that point could barely stand to be in the same room with each other, as often happens in bands where brothers work together. On the night of July the seventeenth, Bobby Fuller left the house for a couple of hours after getting a phone call -- some people who were around said he was going to see a girlfriend named Melody to buy some acid from her, but she says he didn't see her that night. Melody was a sex worker, who was also reputedly the girlfriend of a local nightclub owner who had Mob connections and was jealous of her attachments to other men -- though she denies this. Nobody has ever named which club owner, but it's generally considered to be Eddie Nash, the owner of PJs. Melody was also friends with Larry Nunes, and says she acted as a go-between for Nunes and Fuller. Fuller got back in around 2:30 AM and spent some time having beer with the building manager.  Then at some point he went out again -- Bobby was a night owl. When his mother, Lorraine, woke up, she noticed her car, which Bobby often used to borrow, wasn't there. She had a terrible bad feeling about her son's whereabouts -- though she often had such feelings, after the murder of her eldest son. She kept checking outside every half hour or so to see if he was coming home. At 5PM, two musicians from El Paso, Ty Grimes and Mike Ciccarelli, who'd come to LA to see Fuller, pulled into the parking lot near his apartment block. There were no other cars nearby. A car pulled in beside them, but they didn't pay any attention. They went up the stairs and rang the doorbell. While they were ringing the doorbell, Lorraine Fuller was out checking the mail, and noticed her car, which hadn't been there earlier. She opened the door. Ty Grimes later said "When we walked back to Mike's car, Bobby's car was now parked next to Mike's, and he was laying in the front seat already dead. We also saw his mom being helped toward the apartment." Fuller had been dead long enough for rigor mortis to have set in. While Lorraine Fuller later said that his hand had been on the ignition key, there was actually no key found in the car. He had apparently died from inhaling petrol. His body was covered in bruises, and the slippers he was wearing looked like they'd been dragged across the ground. His body was covered in petrol, and his right index finger was broken. Bob Keane has later said that Larry Nunes knew some details of the crime scene before he was told them. According to the other members of the band, there was an eight hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on Bobby's life, held by the record company. Keane didn't get any money from any such policy, and stated that if such a policy existed it must have been taken out by Nunes, who soon stopped working with Keane, as Keane's labels collapsed without their one remaining star. The death was initially ruled a suicide, which would not pay out on an insurance claim, and later changed to accidental death, which would. Though remember, of course, we have only the word of Bobby's other band members that any insurance policy existed. No real police investigation was ever carried out, because it was such an open-and-shut case. At no point was it ever considered a murder by the famously corrupt LAPD. Bob Keane hired private investigators to investigate the case. One of them was shot at, and the others gave up on the investigation, scared to continue. The autopsy report that was issued months after the fact bore no resemblance to what any of the witnesses said they saw of the state of Fuller's body. More than thirty years later, Keane tried to get the information the LAPD held about the case, and was told that it could only be accessed by a family member. Keane contacted Randy Fuller, who was then told that the entire case file was missing. So all we can go on as far as the official records go is the death certificate. Which means that I lied to you at the start of the episode. Because officially, no matter what impression you might have got from everything I just said, Bobby Fuller's death *was* an accident.

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Quarter to Three” by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode seventy-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly, and at the reasons he ended up on the plane that killed him. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper.  Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/—-more—- Before I get to the resources and transcript, a quick apology. This one is up more than a day late. I’ve not been coping very well with all the news about coronavirus outbreak (I’m one of those who’s been advised by the government to sel-isolate for three months) and things are taking longer than normal. Next week’s should be up at the normal time. Also, no Mixcloud this week — I get a server error when uploading the file to Mixcloud’s site. Erratum I mention that Bob Dylan saw the first show on the Winter Dance Party tour with no drummer. He actually saw the last one with the drummer, who was hospitalised that night after the show, not before the show as I had thought.  Resources   I’ve used two biographies for the bulk of the information here — Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh, and Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman. I also used  Beverly Mendheim’s book on Ritchie Valens. There are many collections of Buddy Holly’s work available, but many of them are very shoddy, with instrumental overdubs recorded over demos after his death. The best compilation I am aware of is The Memorial Collection, which contains almost everything he issued in his life, as he issued it (for some reason two cover versions are missing) along with the undubbed acoustic recordings that were messed with and released after his death. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before I begin, this episode will deal with both accidental bereavement and miscarriage, so if you think those subjects might be traumatising, you may want to skip this one. Today, we’re going to look at a record that holds a sad place in rock and roll’s history, because it’s the record that is often credited as “the first posthumous rock and roll hit”. Now, that’s not strictly true — as we’ve talked about before in this podcast, there is rarely, if ever, a “first” anything at all, and indeed we’ve already looked at an earlier posthumous hit when we talked about “Pledging My Love” by Johnny Ace. But it is a very sad fact that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly ended up becoming the first of several posthumous hit records that Holly had, and that there would be many more posthumous hit records by other performers after him than there had been before him. Buddy Holly’s death is something that hangs over every attempt to tell his story. More than any other musician of his generation, his death has entered rock and roll mythology. Even if you don’t know Holly’s music, you probably know two things about him — that he wore glasses, and that he died in a plane crash. You’re likely also to know that Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in the same crash, even if you don’t know any of the songs that either of those two artists recorded. Normally, when you’re telling a story, you’d leave that to the end, but in the case of Holly it overshadows his life so much that there’s absolutely no point trying to build up any suspense — not to mention that there’s something distasteful about turning a real person’s tragic death into entertainment. I hope I’ve not done so in episodes where other people have died, but it’s even more important not to do so here. Because while the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper is always portrayed as an accident, the cause of their death has its roots in exploitation of young, vulnerable, people, and a pressure to work no matter what. So today, we’re going to look at how “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” became Buddy Holly’s last single: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] People often talk about how Buddy Holly’s career was short, but what they don’t mention is that his chart career was even shorter. Holly’s first chart single, “That’ll Be the Day”, was released in May 1957. His last top thirty single during his lifetime, “Think it Over”, was released in May 1958. By the time he went on the Winter Dance Party, the tour that led to his death, in January 1959, he had gone many months without a hit, and his most recent record, “Heartbeat”, had only reached number eighty-two. He’d lost every important professional relationship in his life, and had split from the group that had made him famous. To see how this happened, we need to pick up where we left off with him last time. You’ll remember that when we left the Crickets, they’d released “That’ll Be the Day”, and it hadn’t yet become a hit, and they’d also released “Words of Love” as a Buddy Holly solo single. While there were different names on them, the same people would make the records, whether it was a solo or group record — Buddy Holly on vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, Jerry Allison on drums, Joe Mauldin on bass, and producer Norman Petty and his wife sometimes adding keyboards. They didn’t distinguish between “Buddy Holly” and “Crickets” material when recording — rather they separated it out later. The more straight-ahead rock and roll records would have backing vocals overdubbed on them, usually by a vocal group called the Picks, and would be released as Crickets records, while the more experimental ones would be left with only Holly’s vocal on, and would be released as solo records. (There were no records released as by “Buddy Holly and the Crickets” at the time, because the whole idea of the split was that DJs would play two records instead of one if they appeared to be by different artists). And they were recording *a lot*. Two days after “That’ll be the Day” was released, on the twenty-seventh of May 1957, they recorded “Everyday” and “Not Fade Away”. Between then and the first of July they recorded “Tell Me How”, “Oh Boy”, “Listen to Me”, “I’m Going to Love You Too”, and cover versions of Fats Domino’s “Valley of Tears” and Little Richard’s “Ready Teddy”. Remember, this was all before they’d had a single hit — “That’ll Be the Day” and “Words of Love” still hadn’t charted. This is quite an astonishing outpouring of songs, but the big leap forward came on the second of July, when they made a second attempt at a song they’d attempted to record back in late 1956, and had been playing in their stage show since then. The song had originally been titled “Cindy Lou”, after Buddy’s niece, but Jerry Allison had recently started dating a girl named Peggy Sue Gerrison, and they decided to change the lyrics to be about her. The song had also originally been played as a Latin-flavoured number, but when they were warming up, Allison started playing a fast paradiddle on his snare drum. Holly decided that they were going to change the tempo of the song and have Allison play that part all the way through, though this meant that Allison had to go out and play in the hallway rather than in the main studio, because the noise from his drums was too loud in the studio itself. The final touch came when Petty decided, on the song’s intro, to put the drums through the echo chamber and keep flicking the switch on the echo from “on” to “off”, so it sounded like there were two drummers playing: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] Someone else was flicking a switch, too — Niki Sullivan was already starting to regret joining the Crickets, because there really wasn’t room for his rhythm guitar on most of the songs they were playing. And on “Peggy Sue” he ended up not playing at all. On that song, Buddy had to switch between two pickups — one for when he was singing, and another to give his guitar a different tone during the solo. But he was playing so fast that he couldn’t move his hand to the switch, and in those days there were no foot pedals one could use for the same sort of effect. So Niki Sullivan became Holly’s foot pedal. He knelt beside Holly and waited for the point when the solo was about to start, and flicked the switch on his guitar. When the solo came to an end again, Sullivan flicked the switch again and it went back to the original sound. [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] It’s a really strange sounding record, if you start to pay attention to it. Other than during the solo, Holly’s guitar is so quiet that you can hear the plectrum as loudly as you can hear the notes. He just keeps up a ram-a-ram-a quaver downstrum throughout the whole song, which sounds simple until you try to play it, at which point you realise that you start feeling like your arm’s going to fall off about a quarter of the way through. And there’s just that, those drums (playing a part which must be similarly physically demanding) with their weird echo, and Holly’s voice. In theory, Joe Mauldin’s bass is also in there, but it’s there at almost homeopathic levels. It’s a record that is entirely carried by the voice, the drums, and the guitar solo. Of course, Niki Sullivan wasn’t happy about being relegated to guitar-switch-flicker, and there were other tensions within the group as well. Holly was having an affair with a married woman at the time — and Jerry Allison, who was Holly’s best friend as well as his bandmate, was also in love with her, though not in a relationship with her, and so Holly had to keep his affair hidden from his best friend. And not only that, but Allison and Sullivan were starting to have problems with each other, too. To help defuse the situation, Holly’s brother Larry took him on holiday, to go fishing in Colorado. But even there, the stress of the current situation was showing — Buddy spent much of the trip worried about the lack of success of “That’ll Be the Day”, and obsessing over a new record by a new singer, Paul Anka, that had gone to number one: [Excerpt: Paul Anka, “Diana”] Holly was insistent that he could do better than that, and that his records were at least as good. But so far they were doing nothing at all on the charts. But then a strange thing happened. “That’ll Be the Day” started getting picked up by black radio stations. It turned out that there had been another group called the Crickets — a black doo-wop group from about five years earlier, led by a singer called Dean Barlow, who had specialised in smooth Ink Spots-style ballads: [Excerpt The Crickets featuring Dean Barlow, “Be Faithful”] People at black radio stations had assumed that this new group called the Crickets was the same one, and had then discovered that “That’ll Be the Day” was really rather good. The group even got booked on an otherwise all-black tour headlined by Clyde McPhatter and Otis Rush, booked by people who hadn’t realised they were white. Before going on the tour, they formally arranged to have Norman Petty be their manager as well as their producer. They were a success on the tour, though when it reached the Harlem Apollo, which had notoriously hostile audiences, the group had to reconfigure their sets, as the audiences didn’t like any of Holly’s original material except “That’ll Be the Day”, but did like the group’s cover versions of R&B records like “Bo Diddley”: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Bo Diddley (Undubbed Version)”] Some have said that the Crickets were the first white act to play the Apollo. That’s not the case — Bobby Darin had played there before them, and I think so had the jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and maybe one or two others. But it was still a rarity, and the Crickets had to work hard to win the audience around. After they finished that tour, they moved on to a residency at the Brooklyn Paramount, on an Alan Freed show that also featured Little Richard and Larry Williams — who the Crickets met for the first time when they walked into the dressing room to find Richard and Williams engaged in a threesome with Richard’s girlfriend. During that engagement at the Paramount, the tensions within the group reached boiling point. Niki Sullivan, who was in an awful mood because he was trying to quit smoking, revealed the truth about Holly’s affair to Allison, and the group got in a fist-fight. According to Sullivan — who seems not to have always been the most reliable of interviewees — Sullivan gave Jerry Allison a black eye, and then straight away they had to go to the rooftop to take the photo for the group’s first album, The “Chirping” Crickets. Sullivan says that while the photo was retouched to hide the black eye, it’s still visible, though I can’t see it myself. After this, they went into a three-month tour on a giant package of stars featuring Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, the Bobbettes, the Drifters, LaVern Baker, and many more. By this point, both “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue” had risen up the charts — “That’ll Be the Day” eventually went to number one, while “Peggy Sue” hit number three — and the next Crickets single, “Oh Boy!” was also charting. “Oh Boy!” had originally been written by an acquaintance of the band, Sonny West, who had recorded his own version as “All My Love” a short while earlier: [Excerpt: Sonny West, “All My Love”] Glen Hardin, the piano player on that track, would later join a lineup of the Crickets in the sixties (and later still would be Elvis’ piano player and arranger in the seventies). Holly would later also cover another of West’s songs, “Rave On”. The Crickets’ version of “Oh Boy!” was recorded at a faster tempo, and became another major hit, their last top ten: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Oh Boy!”] Around the time that came out, Eddie Cochran joined the tour, and like the Everly Brothers he became fast friends with the group. The group also made an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, with Holly, Mauldin, and Allison enthusiastically performing “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue”, and Sullivan enthusiastically miming and playing an unplugged guitar. Sullivan was becoming more and more sidelined in the group, and when they returned to Lubbock at the end of the tour — during which he’d ended up breaking down and crying — he decided he was going to quit the group. Sullivan tried to have a solo career, releasing “It’s All Over” on Dot Records: [Excerpt: Niki Sullivan, “It’s All Over”] But he had no success, and ended up working in electronics, and in later years also making money from the Buddy Holly nostalgia industry. He’d only toured as a member of the group for a total of ninety days, though he’d been playing with them in the studio for a few months before that, and he’d played on a total of twenty-seven of the thirty-two songs that Holly or the Crickets would release in Holly’s lifetime. While he’d been promised an equal share of the group’s income — and Petty had also promised Sullivan, like all the other Crickets, that he would pay 10% of his income to his church — Sullivan got into endless battles with Petty over seeing the group’s accounts, which Petty wouldn’t show him, and eventually settled for getting just $1000, ten percent of the recording royalties just for the single “That’ll Be the Day”, and co-writing royalties on one song, “I’m Going to Love You Too”. His church didn’t get a cent. Meanwhile, Petty was busy trying to widen the rifts in the group. He decided that while the records would still be released as either “Buddy Holly” or “the Crickets”, as a live act they would from now on be billed as “Buddy Holly and the Crickets”, a singer and his backing group, and that while Mauldin and Allison would continue to get twenty-five percent of the money each, Holly would be on fifty percent. This was an easy decision, since Petty was handling all the money and only giving the group pocket money rather than giving them their actual shares of the money they’d earned. The group spent all of 1958 touring, visiting Hawaii, Australia, the UK, and all over the US, including the famous last ever Alan Freed tour that we looked at recently in episodes on Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. They got in another guitarist, Tommy Allsup, who took over the lead role while Buddy played rhythm, and who joined them on tour, though he wasn’t an official member of the group. The first recording Allsup played on was “It’s So Easy”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “It’s So Easy”] But the group’s records were selling less and less well. Holly was getting worried, and there was another factor that came into play. On a visit to New York, stopping in to visit their publisher in the Brill Building, all three of the Crickets became attracted to the receptionist, a Puerto Rican woman named Maria Elena Santiago who was a few years older than them. They all started to joke about which of them would ask her out, and Holly eventually did so. It turned out that while Maria Elena was twenty-five, she’d never yet been on a date, and she had to ask the permission of her aunt, who she lived with, and who was also the head of the Latin-American division of the publishing company. The aunt rang round every business contact she had, satisfied herself that Buddy was a nice boy, and gave her blessing for the date. The next day, she was giving her blessing for the two to marry — Buddy proposed on the very first date. They eventually went on a joint honeymoon with Jerry Allison and Peggy Sue. But Maria Elena was someone who worked in the music industry, and was a little bit older, and she started saying things to Buddy like “You need to get a proper accounting of the money that’s owed you”, and “You should be getting paid”. This strained his relationship with Petty, who didn’t want any woman of colour butting her nose in and getting involved in his business. Buddy moved to a flat in Greenwich Village with Maria Elena, but for the moment he was still working with Petty, even after Petty used some extremely misogynistic slurs I’m not going to repeat here against his new wife. But he was worried about his lack of hits, and they tried a few different variations on the formula. The Crickets recorded one song, a cover version of a song they’d learned on the Australian tour, with Jerry Allison singing lead. It was released under the name “Ivan” — Allison’s middle name — and became a minor hit: [Excerpt: Ivan, “Real Wild Child”] They tried more and more different things, like getting King Curtis in to play saxophone on “Reminiscing”, and on one occasion dispensing with the Crickets entirely and having Buddy cut a Bobby Darin song, “Early in the Morning”, with other musicians. They were stockpiling recordings much faster than they could release them, but the releases weren’t doing well at all. “It’s So Easy” didn’t even reach the top one hundred. Holly was also working with other artists. In September, he produced a session for his friend Waylon Jennings, who would later become a huge country star. It was Jennings’ first ever session, and they turned out an interesting version of the old Cajun song “Jole Blon”, which had earlier been a hit for Moon Mullican. This version had Holly on guitar and King Curtis on saxophone, and is a really interesting attempt at blending Cajun music with R&B: [Excerpt: Waylon Jennings, “Jole Blon”] But Holly’s biggest hope was placed in a session that was really breaking new ground. No rock and roll singer had ever recorded with a full string section before — at least as far as he was aware, and bearing in mind that, as we’ve seen many times, there’s never truly a first anything. In October 1958, Holly went into the studio with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, with the intention of recording three songs — his own “True Love Ways”, a song called “Moondreams” written by Petty, and one called “Raining in My Heart” written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who’d written many hits for his friends the Everly Brothers. At the last minute, though, he decided to record a fourth song, which had been written for him by Paul Anka, the same kid whose “Diana” had been so irritating to him the year before. He played through the song on his guitar for Dick Jacobs, who only had a short while to write the arrangement, and so stuck to the simplest thing he could think of, basing it around pizzicato violins: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] At that point, everything still seemed like it could work out OK. Norman Petty and the other Crickets were all there at the recording session, cheering Buddy on. That night the Crickets appeared on American Bandstand, miming to “It’s So Easy”. That would be the last time they ever performed together, and soon there would be an irreparable split that would lead directly to Holly’s death — and to his posthumous fame. Holly was getting sick of Norman Petty’s continual withholding of royalties, and he’d come up with a plan. The Crickets would, as a group, confront Petty, get him to give them the money he owed them, and then all move to New York together to start up their own record label and publishing company. They’d stop touring, and focus on making records, and this would allow them the time to get things right and try new things out, which would lead to them having hits again, and they could also produce records for their friends like Waylon Jennings and Sonny Curtis. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, but it relied on them getting that money off Norman Petty. When the other two got back to Texas, Petty started manipulating them. He told them they were small-town Texas boys who would never be able to live in the big city. He told them that they didn’t need Buddy Holly, and that they could carry on making Crickets records without him. He told them that Maria Elena was manipulating Buddy, and that if they went off to New York with him it would be her who was in charge of the group from that point on. And he also pointed out that he was currently the only signatory on the group’s bank account, and it would be a real shame if something happened to all that money. By the time Buddy got back to Texas, the other two Crickets had agreed that they were going to stick with Norman Petty. Petty said it was fine if Buddy wanted to fire him, but he wasn’t getting any money until a full audit had been done of the organisation’s money. Buddy was no longer even going to get the per diem pocket money or expenses he’d been getting. Holly went back to New York, and started writing many, many, more songs, recording dozens of acoustic demos for when he could start his plan up: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”] It was a massive creative explosion for the young man. He was not only writing songs himself, but he was busily planning to make an album of Latin music, and he was making preparations for two more projects he’d like to do — an album of duets on gospel songs with Mahalia Jackson, and an album of soul duets with Ray Charles. He was going to jazz clubs, and he had ambitions of following Elvis into films, but doing it properly — he enrolled in courses with Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, to learn Method Acting. Greenwich Village in 1958 was the perfect place for a young man with a huge amount of natural talent and appetite for learning, but little experience of the wider world and culture. But the young couple were living off Maria Elena’s aunt’s generosity, and had no income at all of their own. And then Maria Elena revealed that she was pregnant. And Norman Petty revealed something he’d kept hidden before — by the terms of Buddy’s contract, he hadn’t really been recording for Brunswick or Coral, so they didn’t owe him a penny. He’d been recording for Petty’s company, who then sold the masters on to the other labels, and would get all the royalties. The Crickets bank account into which the royalties had supposedly been being paid, and which Petty had refused to let the band members see, was essentially empty. There was only one thing for it. He had to do another tour. And the only one he could get on was a miserable-seeming affair called the Winter Dance Party. While most of the rock and roll package tours of the time had more than a dozen acts on, this one had only five. There was an opening act called Frankie Sardo, and then Dion and the Belmonts, who had had a few minor hits, and had just recorded, but not yet released, their breakthrough record “Teenager in Love”: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “Teenager in Love”] Then there was the Big Bopper, who was actually a fairly accomplished songwriter but was touring on the basis of his one hit, a novelty song called “Chantilly Lace”: [Excerpt: the Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”] And Ritchie Valens, whose hit “Donna” was rising up the charts in a way that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” was notably failing to do: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] Buddy put together a new touring band consisting of Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass — who had never played bass before starting the tour — and a drummer called Carl Bunch. For a while it looked like Buddy’s friend Eddie Cochran was going to go on tour with them as well, but shortly before the tour started Cochran got an offer to do the Ed Sullivan Show, which would have clashed with the tour dates, and so he didn’t make it. Maria Elena was very insistent that she didn’t want Buddy to go, but he felt that he had no choice if he was going to support his new child. The Winter Dance Party toured Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, through the end of January and the beginning of February 1959, and the conditions were miserable for everyone concerned. The tour had been put together with no thought of logistics, and it zig-zagged wildly across those three states, with gigs often four hundred miles away from each other. The musicians had to sleep on the tour bus — or buses. The tour was being run on a shoe-string, and they’d gone with the cheapest vehicle-hire company possible. They went through, according to one biography I’ve read, eight different buses in eleven days, as none of the buses were able to cope with the Midwestern winter, and their engines kept failing and the heating on several of the buses broke down. I don’t know if you’ve spent any time in that part of America in the winter, but I go there for Christmas every year (my wife has family in Minnesota) and it’s unimaginably cold in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it. It’s not unusual for temperatures to drop to as low as minus forty degrees, and to have three feet or more of snow. Travelling in a bus, with no heating, in that weather, all packed together, was hell for everyone. The Big Bopper and Valens were both fat, and couldn’t fit in the small seats easily. Several people on the tour, including Bopper and Valens, got the flu. And then finally Carl Bunch got hospitalised with frostbite. Buddy’s band, which was backing everyone on stage, now had no drummer, and so for the next three days of the tour Holly, Dion, and Valens would all take it in turns playing the drums, as all of them were adequate drummers. The shows were still good, at least according to a young man named Robert Zimmerman, who saw the first drummerless show, in Duluth Minnesota, and who would move to Greenwich Village himself not that long afterwards. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy had had enough. He decided to charter a plane to take him to Fargo, North Dakota, which was just near Moorhead, Minnesota, where they were planning on playing their next show. He’d take everyone’s laundry — everyone stank and had been wearing the same clothes for days — and get it washed, and get some sleep in a real bed. The original plan was to have Allsup and Jennings travel with him, but eventually they gave up their seats to the two other people who were suffering the most — the Big Bopper and Valens. There are different stories about how that happened, most involving a coin-toss, but they all agree that when Buddy found out that Waylon Jennings was giving up his seat, he jokingly said to Jennings “I hope your old bus freezes”, and Jennings replied, “Yeah, well I hope your ol’ plane crashes”. The three of them got on the plane in the middle of the night, on a foggy winter’s night, which would require flying by instruments. Unfortunately, while the pilot on the plane was rated as being a good pilot during the day, he kept almost failing his certification for being bad at flying by instrument. And the plane in question had an unusual type of altitude meter. Where most altitude meters would go up when the plane was going up and down when it was going down, that particular model’s meter went down when the plane was going up, and up when it was going down. The plane took off, and less than five minutes after takeoff, it plummeted straight down, nose first, into the ground at top speed, killing everyone on board instantly. As soon as the news got out, Holly’s last single finally started rising up the charts. It ended up going to number thirteen on the US charts, and number one in many other countries. The aftermath shows how much contempt the music industry — and society itself — had for those musicians at that time. Maria Elena found out about Buddy’s death not from the police, but from the TV — this later prompted changes in how news of celebrity deaths was to be revealed. She was so upset that she miscarried two days later. She was too distraught to attend the funeral, and to this day has still never been able to bring herself to visit her husband’s grave. The grief was just too much. The rest of the people on the tour were forced to continue the remaining thirteen days of the tour without the three acts anyone wanted to go and see, but were also not paid their full wages, because the bill wasn’t as advertised. A new young singer was picked up to round out the bill on the next gig, a young Minnesotan Holly soundalike called Bobby Vee, whose first single, “Suzy Baby”, was just about to come out: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Suzy Baby”] When Vee went on tour on his own, later, he hired that Zimmerman kid we mentioned earlier as his piano player. Zimmerman worked under the stage name Elston Gunn, but would later choose a better one. After that date Holly, Valens, and the Bopper were replaced by Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Jimmy Clanton, and the tour continued. Meanwhile, the remaining Crickets picked themselves up and carried on. They got Buddy’s old friend Sonny Curtis on guitar, and a succession of Holly-soundalike singers, and continued playing together until Joe Mauldin died in 2015. Most of their records without Buddy weren’t particularly memorable, but they did record one song written by Curtis which would later become a hit for several other people, “I Fought the Law”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “I Fought the Law”] But the person who ended up benefiting most from Holly’s death was Norman Petty. Suddenly his stockpile of unreleased Buddy Holly recordings was a goldmine — and not only that, he ended up coming to an agreement with Holly’s estate that he could take all those demos Holly had recorded and overdub new backing tracks on them, turning them into full-blown rock and roll songs. Between overdubbed versions of the demos, and stockpiled full-band recordings, Buddy Holly kept having hit singles in the rest of the world until 1965, though none charted in the US, and he made both Petty and his estate very rich. Norman Petty died in 1984. His last project was a still-unreleased “updating” of Buddy’s biggest hits with synthesisers. These days, Buddy Holly is once again on tour, or at least something purporting to be him is. You can now go and see a “hologram tour”, in which an image of a look-not-very-alike actor miming to Holly’s old recordings is projected on glass, using the old Victorian stage trick Pepper’s Ghost, while a live band plays along to the records. Just because you’ve worked someone to death aged twenty-two, doesn’t mean that they can’t still keep earning money for you when they’re eighty-three. And a hologram will never complain about how cold the tour bus is, or want to wash his laundry.

Episode seventy-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly, and at the reasons he ended up on the plane that killed him. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com (more…)

Episode sixty-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “That’ll Be the Day” by The Crickets. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by Gene Autry (more…)

  Episode sixty-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “That’ll Be the Day” by The Crickets. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by Gene Autry —-more—- Before I get to the resources and transcript, a quick apology. This one is up many hours later than normal, almost a full day. I’ve been dealing with a combination of health issues, technical problems, and family commitments, any two of which would still have allowed me to get this up on time, but which in combination made it impossible. Errata I say in here that Larry Welborn lent Holly a thousand dollars. That money was actually lent Holly by his brother, also called Larry. I also at one point say “That’ll Be the Day” was co-written by Joe Allison. I meant Jerry Allison, of course — Joe Allison was also a Texan songwriter, but had no involvement in that song.   Resources   I’ve used two biographies for the bulk of the information here — Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh, and Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman.  There are many collections of Buddy Holly’s work available, but many of them are very shoddy, with instrumental overdubs recorded over demos after his death. The best compilation I am aware of is The Memorial Collection, which contains almost everything he issued in his life, as he issued it (for some reason two cover versions are missing) along with the undubbed acoustic recordings that were messed with and released after his death. A lot of the early recordings with Bob, Larry, and/or Sonny that I reference in this episode are included in Down The Line: Rarities, a companion set to the Memorial Collection. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so, far later in the story than many people might have been expecting, we finally come to Buddy Holly, the last of the great fifties rockers to appear in our story. Nowadays, Holly gets counted as a pioneer of rock and roll, but in fact he didn’t turn up until the genre had become fairly well established in the charts. Which is not to say that he wasn’t important or innovative, just that he was one of the greats of the second wave — from a twenty-first-century perspective, Buddy Holly looks like one of the people who were there when rock and roll was invented, but by the time he had his first hit, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, and Gene Vincent had all had all their major chart hits, and were on their way down and out. Little Richard was still touring, but he’d already recorded his last rock and roll record of the fifties, and while Fats Domino was still making hit records, most of the ones he’s remembered by, the ones that changed music, had already been released. But Holly was arguably the most important figure of this second wave, someone who, more than any other figure of the mid-fifties, seems at least in retrospect to point the way forward to what rock music would become in the decade after. So today we’re going to look at the story of how the first really successful rock group started. Because while these days, “That’ll Be The Day” is generally just credited to “Buddy Holly”, at the time the record came out, it didn’t have any artist name on it other than that of the band that made it, The Crickets: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “That’ll Be the Day”] Charles Hardin Holley grew up in Lubbock, Texas, a town in the middle of nowhere that has produced more than its fair share of famous musicians. Other than Buddy Holly, the two most famous people from Lubbock are probably Waylon Jennings, who briefly played in Holly’s band in 1959 before going on to his own major successes, and Mac Davis, who wrote several hits for Elvis before going on to become a country singer of some note himself. Holly grew up with music. His elder brothers performed as a country duo in much the same style as the Louvin Brothers, and there’s a recording of Holly singing the old country song, “Two Timin’ Woman”, in 1949, when he was twelve, before his voice had even broken: [Excerpt: Charles Holley, “Two Timin’ Woman”] By his mid-teens, he was performing as “Buddy and Bob” with a friend, Bob Montgomery, playing pure country and western music, with Buddy on the mandolin while Bob played guitar: [Excerpt: Buddy and Bob, “Footprints in the Snow”] He would also appear on the radio with another friend, Jack Neal, as “Buddy and Jack”. Some early recordings of that duo survive as well, with Jack singing while Buddy played guitar: [Excerpt: Buddy and Jack, “I Saw the Moon Crying Last Night”] When Jack Neal, who was a few years older than Buddy, got married and decided he didn’t have time for the radio any more, the Buddy and Jack Show became the Buddy and Bob Show. Around this time, Buddy met another person who would become important both to him and the Crickets, Sonny Curtis. Curtis was only a teenager, like him, but he had already made an impression in the music world. When he was only sixteen, he had written a song, “Someday”, that was recorded by the country star Webb Pierce: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Someday”] Buddy, too, was an aspiring songwriter. A typical early example of his songwriting was one he wrote in collaboration with his friend Scotty Turner, “My Baby’s Coming Home”. The song wasn’t recorded at the time, but a few years later a demo version of it was cut by a young singer called Harry Nilsson: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, “My Baby’s Coming Home”] But it wasn’t until he saw Elvis live in 1955 that Buddy Holly knew he didn’t want to do anything other than become a rock and roll star. When Elvis came to town, the promoter of Elvis’ show was a friend of Buddy and Bob, and so he added them to the bill. They became friendly enough that every time Elvis passed through town — which he did often in those early years of his career — they would all hang out together. Bob Montgomery used to reminisce about going to the cinema with Elvis to watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Elvis getting bored with the film half an hour in, and leaving with the rest of the group. After seeing Elvis, Buddy almost immediately stepped up his musical plans. He had already been recording demos with Bob and Sonny Curtis, usually with Bob on vocals: [Excerpt: Buddy and Bob, “I Gambled My Heart”] The bass player on that song, Larry Welborn, believed in Buddy’s talents, and lent him a thousand dollars — a *massive* amount of money in 1955 — so he could buy himself a Fender Stratocaster, an amp, and a stage suit. Holly’s friend Joe B. Mauldin said of the Strat that it was the first instrument he’d ever seen with a gear shift. He was referring there to the tremelo arm on the guitar — a recent innovation that had only been brought in that year. Buddy kept playing guitar with various combinations of his friends. For example Sonny Curtis cut six songs in 1955, backed by Buddy on guitar, Larry Wellborn on bass, and Jerry Allison on drums: [Excerpt: Sonny Curtis, “Because You Love Me”] Curtis would later talk about how as soon as Elvis came along, he and Buddy immediately switched their musical style. While it was Buddy who owned the electric guitar, he would borrow Curtis’ Martin acoustic and try to play and sing like Elvis, while Curtis in turn would borrow Buddy’s Strat and play Scotty Moore’s guitar licks. Buddy was slowly becoming the most popular rock and roll singer in that part of Texas — though he had an ongoing rivalry with Roy Orbison, who was from a hundred miles away in Wink but was the only serious competition around for the best local rock and roller.  But while Buddy was slowly building up a reputation in the local area, he couldn’t yet find a way to break out and have success on a wider stage. Elvis had told him that the Louisiana Hayride would definitely have him on at Elvis’ recommendation, but when he and Sonny Curtis drove to Shreveport, the radio station told them that it wasn’t up to Elvis who got on their show and who didn’t, and they had to drive back to Texas from Louisiana without getting on the radio. This kind of thing just kept happening. Buddy and Bob and Sonny and Larry and Jerry were recording constantly, in various combinations, and were making more friends in the local music community, like Waylon Jennings, but nothing was happening with the recordings. You can hear on some of them, though, exactly what Sonny Curtis meant when he said that they were trying to sound like Elvis and Scotty Moore: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Don’t Come Back Knockin'”] These songs were  the recordings that got Buddy a contract with Decca Records in Nashville, which was, at the time, one of the biggest record labels in the country. And not only did he get signed to Decca, but Buddy also got a songwriting contract with Cedarwood Music, the publishing company that was jointly owned by Jim Denny, the man in charge of the bookings for the Grand Ole Opry, and Webb Pierce, one of the biggest country music stars of the period. So it must have seemed in January 1956 as if Buddy Holly was about to become a massive rock and roll star. That first Decca recording session took place in Owen Bradley’s studio, and featured Sonny Curtis on guitar, and a friend called Don Guess on bass. The session was rounded out by two of the regular musicians that Bradley used on his sessions — Grady Martin on rhythm guitar, so Buddy didn’t have to sing and play at the same time, and Doug Kirkham on drums. The songs they cut at that initial session consisted of two of the songs they’d already demoed, “Don’t Come Back Knockin'” and “Love Me”, plus “Blue Days, Black Nights”, a song written by Ben Hall, a friend of Buddy’s from Lubbock. But it was the fourth song that was clearly intended to be the hit. We’ve talked before about the Annie songs, but that was back in March, so I’ll give you a brief refresher here, and if you want more detail, go and listen to episode twenty-two, on “The Wallflower”, which I’ll link in the show notes. Back in 1954, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had recorded a song called “Work With Me Annie”, a song which had been, for the time, relatively sexually explicit, though it sounds like nothing now: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Work With Me Annie”] That song had started up a whole series of answer records. The Midnighters recorded a couple themselves, like “Annie Had a Baby”: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Annie Had a Baby”] Most famously there was Etta James’ “The Wallflower”: [Excerpt: Etta James, “The Wallflower”] But there were dozens more songs about Annie — there was “Annie Met Henry”, “Annie Pulled a Hum-Bug”, even “Annie Kicked the Bucket”: [excerpt: the Nu Tones, “Annie Kicked the Bucket”] And the fourth song that Buddy recorded at this first Decca session, “Midnight Shift”, was intended to be another in the Annie series. It was written by Luke McDaniel, a country singer who had gone rockabilly, and who recorded some unissued sides for Sun, like “My Baby Don’t Rock”: [Excerpt: Luke McDaniel, “My Baby Don’t Rock”] Jim Denny had suggested “Midnight Shift” for Buddy — though it seems a strange choice for commercial success, as it’s rather obviously about a sex worker: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Midnight Shift”] Perhaps the label had second thoughts, as “Blue Days, Black Nights” was eventually chosen as the single, rather than “Midnight Shift”. When the paperwork for it came through for Buddy to sign, he discovered that they’d misspelled his name. He was born Charles Holley — h-o-l-l-e-y — but the paperwork spelled it h-o-l-l-y. As he was told they needed it back in a hurry, he signed it, and from then on he was Buddy Holly without the e. For the rest of 1956 Buddy continued recording with Owen Bradley for Decca, and kept having little success. Bradley became ever more disillusioned with Holly, while Paul Cohen, the executive at Decca who had signed Holly, at one point was telling his friends “Buddy Holly is the biggest no talent I have ever worked with.” One of the songs that he recorded during that time, but which wasn’t released, was one that Owen Bradley described as “the worst song I’ve ever heard”. It had been written by Holly and Joe Allison after they’d been to see the John Wayne film The Searchers — a film which later gave the name to a band from Liverpool who would become hugely influential. Holly and Allison had seen the film several times, and they kept finding themselves making fun of the way that Wayne said one particular line: [Excerpt: The Searchers, John Wayne saying “That’ll Be The Day”] They took that phrase and turned it into the title of a song. Unfortunately, the first recording of it wasn’t all that great — Buddy had been told by Webb Pierce that the way to have a hit single was to sing in a high voice, and so he sang the song far out of his normal range: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “That’ll Be The Day”] Around this time, Sonny Curtis stopped working with Holly. Owen Bradley didn’t like his guitar playing and wanted Holly to record with the session musicians he used with everyone else, while Curtis got an offer to play guitar for Slim Whitman, who at the time was about the biggest star in country music. So as 1956 drew to a close, Buddy Holly was without his longtime guitarist, signed to a record company that didn’t know what to do with him, and failing to realise his musical ambitions. This is when Norman Petty entered the story. Petty was a former musician, who had performed crude experiments in overdubbing in the late forties, copying Les Paul and Mary Ford, though in a much less sophisticated manner. One of his singles, a version of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo”, had actually been a minor hit: [Excerpt: The Norman Petty Trio, “Mood Indigo”] He’d gone into the recording studio business, and charged bands sixty dollars to record two songs in his studio — or, if he thought the songs had commercial potential, he’d waive the charge if they gave him the publishing and a co-writing credit. Petty had become interested in rockabilly after having recorded Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings’ first single — the version of “Ooby Dooby” that was quickly deleted: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings, “Ooby Dooby”, Je_Wel Records version] When he heard Sam Phillips’ remake of the song, he became intrigued by the possibilities that echo offered, and started to build his own echo chamber — something that would eventually be completed with the help of Buddy Holly and Buddy’s father and brother. Petty recorded another rockabilly group, Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids, on a song, “Party Doll”, that went to number one: [Excerpt: Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids, “Party Doll”] When the Rhythm Orchids passed through Lubbock, they told Buddy about Norman Petty’s studio, and Buddy went there to cut some demos. Petty was impressed by Holly — though he was more impressed by Sonny Curtis, who was still with Buddy for those demo sessions — and when his contract with Decca expired, Petty and Holly agreed to work together. But they had a problem. Buddy’s contract with Decca said that even though they’d only released two singles by him, and hadn’t bothered to release any of the other songs he’d recorded during the year he was signed to them, he couldn’t rerecord anything he’d recorded for them for another five years. Buddy tried to get Paul Cohen to waive that clause in the contract, and Cohen said no. Holly asked if he could speak to Milt Gabler instead — he was sure that Gabler would agree. But Cohen explained to him that Gabler was only a vice president, and that he worked for Cohen. There was no way that Buddy Holly could put out a record of any of the songs he had recorded in 1956. So Norman Petty, who had been secretly recording the conversation, suggested a way round the problem. They could take those songs, and still have Holly sing them, but put them out as by a group, rather than a solo singer. It wouldn’t be Buddy Holly releasing the records, it would be the group. But what should they call the group? Buddy and Jerry Allison both really liked New Orleans R&B — they loved Fats Domino, and the other people that Dave Bartholomew worked with — and they particularly liked a song that Bartholomew had co-written for a group called the Spiders: [Excerpt: The Spiders, “Witchcraft”] So they decided that they wanted a name that was something like the Spiders. At first they considered “the Beetles”, but decided that that was too creepy — people would want to squish them. So they settled on The Crickets. And so the version of “That’ll Be The Day” that Buddy, Larry, Jerry, and Niki Sullivan had recorded with Norman Petty producing was going to be released as by the Crickets, and Buddy Holly’s name was going to be left off anything that the heads at Decca might see. Amusingly, the record ended up released by Decca anyway — or at least by a subsidiary of Decca. Norman Petty shopped the demos they’d made around different labels, and eventually he took them to Bob Thiele. Thiele had had a similar career to Milt Gabler — he’d started out as a musician, then he’d formed his own speciality jazz label, Signature, and had produced records like Coleman Hawkins’ “The Man I Love”: [Excerpt: Coleman Hawkins, “The Man I Love”] Like Gabler, he had been taken on by Decca, which of all the major labels was the only one that really understood the way that the music business was changing. He’d been put in charge of two labels owned by Decca — Coral, which was being used mostly for insipid white cover versions of black acts, and Brunswick, which was where he released rockabilly tracks by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio. The Crickets were clearly a Brunswick group, and so “That’ll Be the Day” was going to be released on Brunswick — and the contract was sent to Jerry Allison, not Buddy Holly. Holly’s name wasn’t mentioned at first, in case Thiele decided to mention it to his bosses and the whole thing was blown. Norman Petty had assumed that what they’d recorded so far was just going to be a demo, but Thiele said that no, he thought what they had was fine as it was, and put this out: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “That’ll Be The Day”] But the Crickets had still not properly finalised their lineup. The core of Holly and Allison was there — the two of them had been playing together for years — and Niki Sullivan would be OK on rhythm guitar, but they needed a permanent bass player. They eventually settled on Joe B. Mauldin, who had played with a group called The Four Teens that had also featured Larry Welborn. Joe B. had sat in on a gig with the other three, and they’d been impressed with his bass playing.  Before “That’ll Be the Day” was released, they were already in the studio cutting more songs. One was a song that had originally been written by Holly’s mother, though she refused to take credit for it — she was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, and rock and roll was the Devil’s music. She was just about okay with her son playing it, but she wasn’t going to get herself involved in that. So Buddy took his mother’s song and turned it into this: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Maybe Baby”] And at the same time, they also made an agreement that Holly could record solo material for Coral. That would actually be recorded by the same people who were making the Crickets’ records, but since he was coming up with so many new songs, they might as well use them to get twice as much material out — there was no prohibition, after all, on him recording new songs under his own name, just the ones he’d recorded in 1956. And they were recording a ludicrous amount of material. “That’ll Be The Day” still hadn’t been released, and they already had their next single in the bag, and were recording Buddy’s first solo single. That song was based on “Love is Strange” by Mickey and Sylvia, a favourite of Holly’s: [Excerpt: Mickey and Sylvia, “Love is Strange”] Holly took that basic musical concept and turned it into “Words of Love”: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Words of Love”] That wasn’t a hit for Holly, but even before his version was released, the Diamonds, who usually made a habit of recording tracks originally recorded by black artists, released a cover version, which went to number thirteen: [Excerpt: The Diamonds, “Words of Love”] The Crickets were essentially spending every second they could in Petty’s studio. They were also doing session work, playing on records by Jim Robinson, Jack Huddle, Hal Goodson, Fred Crawford, and more. In the early months of 1957, they recorded dozens upon dozens of songs, which would continue being released for years afterwards. For example, just two days after “That’ll Be the Day” was finally released, at the end of May, they went into the studio and cut another song they had patterned after Bo Diddley, who had co-written “Love is Strange”,  as a Crickets side: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Not Fade Away”] and, on the same day, a Holly solo side: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Every Day”] All these songs were written by Holly and Allison, sometimes with Mauldin helping, but the songwriting credits didn’t really match that. Sometimes one or other name would get missed off the credits, sometimes Holly would be credited by his middle name, Hardin, instead of his surname, and almost always Norman Petty would end up with his name on the songwriting credits. They weren’t that bothered about credit, for the moment — there was always another song where the last one came from, and they were piling up songs far faster than they could release them. Indeed, only a month after the “Not Fade Away” and “Every Day” session, they were back in the studio yet again, recording another song, which Buddy had originally intended to name after his niece, Cindy Lou. Jerry, on the other hand, thought the song would be better if it was about his girlfriend. And you’ll be able to find out what happened after they decided between Cindy Lou and Peggy Sue in a few weeks’ time…

Jerry talks about his early days with Buddy Holly and the Crickets,

New American Aquarium, Robyn Hitchcock, Tedeschi Truck Band, Anne & Mark Burnell, The National, Amythyst Kiah + Phantom Blues Band, Diana Krall, Tito Puente, Ian Hunter, New Mastersounds… Birthdays for Jerry Allison, Van Morrison…