Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story
The Sheid at Arkansas State University Mountain Home is a performing arts center for concerts, theater, exhibitions, wedding rentals, convention center, and more.
images/favicon.png
Budd;y - The Buddy Holly Story tells the true story of Buddy's meteoric rise to fame, from the moment in 1957 when "That'll be the Day" hit the airwaves until his tragic death less than two years later on "The Day the Music Died." The show features over 20 of Buddy Holly's greatest hits including "That'll be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Everyday," "Oh Boy," "Rave On" and "Raining in my Heart," Plus Ritchie Vealens' "La Bamba" and The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace."

The Incredible legacy of the young man with glasses whose musical career spanned an all-too-brief period during the golden days of Rock & Roll continues to live on in Buddy. Seen by over 22 million people around the world, 'Buddy will have you on your feet adn send you out of the theatre on an unstoppable high (The Boston Globe).'

The action takes place in Lubbock, Texas, Clovis, NewMexico, New York and Clear Lake, Iowa, between January 1956 and February 1959.

Starting out as a Country & Western singer in Lubbock,Texas, Buddy and his two friends Joe and Jerry form ‘The Crickets’, and withthe support of a local radio DJ, ‘Hipockets’ Duncan, they begin to carve out acareer in music.

After an inauspicious start at Decca Records in Nashville,Buddy and the Crickets sign a contract with up-and-coming innovative recordproducer, Norman Petty. Within hours of meeting they start to record Buddy’sbiggest hit “That’ll Be The Day” which will rocket up the charts to number onein a matter of weeks. Buddy Holly & the Crickets suddenly become thehottest act in the country.

Now successful, the Crickets travel to New York, where Buddymeets and proposes to Maria Elena Santiago, the Puerto Rican receptionist ofhis music publisher, after a courtship which takes all of five hours! Newlymarried and ambitious, Buddy completely shifts his focus to New York and aninevitable rift develops between him and the Crickets. After a declaration ofhome truths during a recording session in Clovis, the band split and Buddyunexpectedly finds himself having to pursue a solo career. The ‘Winter DanceParty 1959’ is a tour that is travelling by bus through the Midwest, quenchingthe teenage thirst for the new music called Rock & Roll. The tour is hardwork, the weather conditions appalling and the performers are alternatingbetween sleeping in the luggage racks and dropping into hospital to be treatedfor frostbite.

Here, Buddy’s final performance at the Surf Ballroom inClear Lake, Iowa, with Ritchie Valens (“La Bamba”) and the ‘Big Bopper’ J.P.Richardson (“Chantilly Lace”) is recreated. After the concert, Buddy breaks hispromise to his pregnant wife not to fly as he and the other two headlinersboard a small plane and fly off into the night for Moorhead, Minnesota, only tocrash into a ploughed field shortly after take-off. There are no survivors.

The tragedy snatches away the lives of three dynamic musicaltalents – Buddy Holly (22), Ritchie Valens (17) and the Big Bopper (28) – andas the legend says, it was “the day the music died.”

Buddy Holly’s brief life has become the stuff of legend.Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story is a celebration of the life and times of theyoung man with spectacles and catches that unique mixture of innocence,determination, humour and charm that was Buddy Holly, and wraps it up into apackage that has become:

“THE WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL ROCK & ROLL MUSICAL”

April 8, Sunday at 2 p.m.