Buddy Holly’s reputation, musical accomplishments shine 60 years after his death
William Kerns wkerns@lubbockonline.com, Online Athens
Sixty years ago, Lubbock native and rock ‘n’ roll innovator Charles Hardin Holley — known to fans worldwide as Buddy Holly, leader of an American band called the Crickets — chartered a four-seat airc…
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Sixty years ago, Lubbock native and rock ‘n’ roll innovator Charles Hardin Holley — known to fans worldwide as Buddy Holly, leader of an American band called the Crickets — chartered a four-seat aircraft simply because he wanted to avoid the cold and have extra time to finish his laundry.

But mostly ... to avoid the freezing cold.

(Buddy Holley left his professional name Holly when it was misspelled on his recording contract.)

As fate would have it, Holly, 22, perished in the wee hours of Feb. 3, 1959, when he and three others — musicians Ritchie Valens and J.P “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and pilot Roger A. Peterson — were determined by coroner Ralph E. Smiley to have died instantly when their plane crashed minutes after takeoff in a field 5 1/2 miles north of Clear Lake, Iowa.

Had Holly survived, he already had plans to return to Lubbock in 1960, according to older brother Larry Holley and Jacqueline Bober, curator at the Buddy Holly Center and interim director of cultural facilities for the city of Lubbock.

Bober explained that only a few activities honoring the 60th anniversary of Holly’s death were planned for two reasons. First, major events and a landmarks tour took place Saturday. Also, she explained, “Feb. 3 happens to be Super Bowl Sunday.

“Brooke (Witcher) told me the last time that Feb. 3 fell on a Super Bowl Sunday, there was a sum total of 10 people at the Buddy Holly Center, and five of them were staff.”

Witcher, recently promoted to assistant city manager, had been managing director of the Buddy Holly Center and other cultural facilities.

Bober added she felt a need to take over the Saturday tour of Holly landmarks after the 2011 death of Holly historian Bill Griggs.

‘The Day the Music Died’

The 1959 tour was called the Winter Dance Party. Shows were very well supported, but travel conditions were miserable. Riding in the bus between concert sites was considered torture. With temperatures consistently dipping below zero, the heating system in the bus did not work.

Dion DiMucci, leader of Dion & The Belmonts, was quoted in udiscovermusic.nl/stories: “It was a rough winter, and we didn’t have those beautiful luxury touring buses. It was a school bus and we slept on the luggage racks, and it (the bus) kept breaking down.”

Among those traveling on the bus: Holly and his three-piece tour band, and also Valens, The Big Bopper and Dion & The Belmonts.

The concert in Green Lake, Wis., on Feb. 1, 1959, took place as scheduled. The next show was on Feb. 2, 1959, 350 miles away, in Clear Lake, Iowa. Unable to arrive at Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom until 6 p.m., Holly decided to charter a plane for his band rather than ride the same bus 500 more miles the next day for a concert in Moorhead, Minn.

The destination for the plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, was Fargo, N.D., the nearest airport to Moorhead.

Holly’s two remaining band members did not board the plane. Waylon Jennings gave his seat to the Big Bopper, who had the flu. Tommy Allsup lost a coin flip with Valens for the remaining seat. Holly’s drummer, Carl Bunch, was left behind in Wisconsin, hospitalized for frostbite experienced on the freezing bus.

It wasn’t until Don McLean released “American Pie” in 1972 that Feb. 3, 1959, became known as “the day the music died.”

Holly had temporarily separated from the original Crickets: best friend Jerry “J.I.” Allison on drums, and standup bassist Joe B. Mauldin. While Holly and his newlywed wife, Maria Elena — married on Aug. 15, 1958 — settled in New York City, Holly was using his own name. Allison and Mauldin, joined by Sonny Curtis, were working as the Crickets at Norman Petty’s recording studio in Clovis, N.M.

With Holly having received no royalty payments from producer Petty, Holly joined the Winter Dance Party because he needed a paycheck. As Allison and Mauldin were unavailable, Holly hired drummer Carl Bunch, guitarist Allsup and bass player Jennings as his backing band.

Jennings told Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, “The only reason Buddy went on that tour was because he was broke. Flat broke. He didn’t want to go, but he had to make some money.”

Despite his comparatively short career, Holly influenced the music industry. He is regarded as the artist who defined the traditional band lineup for rock ‘n’ roll: two guitars, bass and drums. Unlike most in that era, he wrote, recorded and produced his own material — and he was among the first musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

The original two guitarists were Holly and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan. When the latter decided he did not want to tour, Petty suggested that Holly hire Sonny Curtis as a replacement. Curtis recalled this week that Holly, Allison and Mauldin “met in Clovis and decided to continue as a three-piece.”

Holly was discouraged by early sessions with a country producer in Nashville. He later traveled with Allison, Mauldin and Sullivan to Petty’s studio in Clovis, where they recorded a 1957 demo of “That’ll Be the Day,” this time with Holly playing lead guitar. Holly and Allison had written the song in Allison’s tiny bedroom, which can be toured today at the Allison home, located next to the Buddy Holly Center.

Allison, 79, mentioned this week from his 50-acre Tennessee farm that he met Holly at J.T. Hutchinson Junior High School. Allison had become interested in drums as a fifth grader, never knowing his style would later be studied. He has been inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and, in 2012, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would correct its 1986 mistake and induct the Crickets, including Allison, to join Buddy Holly.

“One reason I was drawn to Buddy,” said Allison, “was because he practiced like he was in concert. He had loads of charisma, and always went all out.

“Also, Buddy was kind of a smart aleck, and I liked that. Plus, we liked the same kind of music. We being Buddy, me, Jack Neil and Don Guess. And Joe B. But whereas others preferred Grand Ole Opry-type country music, Buddy and I liked to listen to rhythm ‘n’ blues. Nobody was calling it rock ‘n’ roll yet. A lot of folks called it race music.”

He added, “But I’d spend the night at his house, and lots of times he’d spend the night at mine. I’ve got great memories of those nights. It’s such a compliment that they saved my old house and people can see it now.”

Curtis also recalls overnight stays in Lubbock and at his home in Meadow, where he and Holly would stroll out to the car in the driveway late at night, turn on the radio and “listen to Stan’s Record Rack, out of Shreveport. Buddy was a fool for that race music, and we listened to Leadbelly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, all of them. ... Buddy also just loved Elvis and, after we saw him, we booked out for a while playing Elvis stuff.”

Allison, 60 years after Holly’s death, becomes emotional when talking about why he and Mauldin separated from Holly. “Joe B. and me didn’t want to go live in New York, but that also was when Maria definitely was trying to run the band.”

Even so, Allison repeatedly has told the media that he was “trying to call Buddy on the night he got killed.”

He said, “One thing that made me feel so good was, back in 1978, Waylon told me that Buddy had said to him, ’I’m going to get Joe B. and J.I. back together and tour England again. That was one of the most fun times we had.”

Sept. 3 marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Buddy Holly Center and, with help from the CH Foundation, London-based band The Bluejays will travel to Lubbock for a Sept. 7 performance, playing everything from rockabilly to Holly material.

The Buddy Holly Center’s foyer gallery, said Bober, includes the architectural rendering for the house Holly planned to build in Lubbock. “It was in the Bobalet Heights area, at the corner of 22nd Street and Vicksburg. ... A large, one-story ranch style building.

“It was to include a living area for Buddy’s parents, a living area for Buddy and his wife — and also a modern recording studio.”

Material provided by Larry Holley, 93, and his son Randy confirmed that Holly planned to live only two years in New York, learning what he could about the music business. Upon returning to Lubbock in 1960, he wanted to control his own publishing company called Taupe, and his own record company called Prism.

Had Holly lived, said Bober, Lubbock might have changed. “We’ll never know,” she said, “but Lubbock might have become a little more colorblind. Lubbock might have even competed with Nashville.”

“I heard about that recording studio Buddy planned,” said Allison.

Indeed, Allison, the last living original Cricket, definitely misses Buddy and Joe B., the latter considered the band’s “gentle soul,” who lost his battle with cancer on Feb. 15, 2015. He was 74.

Allison also misses his time growing up with Holly, and said, “I don’t talk to many folks in Lubbock these days.” Curtis lives near Allison and they often visit.

Too often, said Allison, people remember Buddy and forget that he was making music with the Crickets. Looking back, Allison claims some of the fault for the separation from Buddy.

“Yes, it was my fault,” said Allison. “No way should best friends be apart like that. The way I look at it now, I was Buddy’s drummer, and Buddy was my singer. It wasn’t just Buddy who had a certain touch; it was Buddy and the Crickets who shared a special touch.

″... I sure didn’t know we were making music that would be remembered 60-some years later. I just wish it could have lasted a little longer, because we sure had fun together, and that’s the truth.”

It so happened that Curtis had the dismal duty of waking up Allison with the news that Buddy had died. “At that age,” said Curtis, “nobody thinks about mortality. We were all devastated. Sixty years later, we still remember how we felt.”