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Back to Podcast EpisodesBuddy Holly and The Day the Music Died (Part One)
On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly was in the middle of the tour from hell and would do anything to avoid another three hundred mile, overnight bus ride that already had inflicted frostbite on another band member. That determination changed American popular music forever.
Charles Hardin Holley was born in Lubbock, Texas on September 7, 1936. The “e” in his surname would be dropped when Decca Records misspelled Holley on one of his first recording contracts. Nicknamed Buddy by his mother, as she considered “Charles,” too formal, he was the youngest of four siblings. The family was Baptist and deeply religious, attending church routinely but singing hymns from an early age probably developed Buddy’s interest in music. Despite Lubbock’s location in the heart of the bible belt, Holly was also intrigued by country and rhythm and blues popular tunes that were available via radio stations from larger midwestern radio stations. By the seventh grade, he was playing with another junior high school student, Bob Montgomery, in a duet called Buddy and Bob, mostly country music covers of artists like Hank Williams.
1957 began with Buddy getting a predictable release from his Decca contract. If you were out of Lubbock, Texas in 1957 and had just been dropped from a major label there wasn’t much of a Plan B. The best Buddy could come up with was heading to Clovis, New Mexico and the Norman Petty Studio to pay for his own demo and hope to interest a regional industry professional, in this case Norman Petty, in getting interested in representing Holly. Norman Petty was one of the many small time independents that operated on the fringes of 1950’s rock and roll. Less successful than the legendary Sam Phillips of Memphis’ Sun records who discovered Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, Petty still had a reputation for recognizing performers that he plugged either to record companies or radio stations. But in early 1957, he also was still looking to get involved with talent that would translate into national success. That’s why, when Buddy Holly returned to Petty’s studio in January of 1957 and cut a demo, Norman recognized that Holly had greatly evolved. He told Buddy to get some more material together, polish it up and come back in February and they would seriously conce
Published on 3 years, 6 months ago