February 3, 1959: The Day the Music Died

Buddy Holly was #13 on Rolling Stones’ 100 Greatest Artists list, and John Mellencamp wrote a very touching couple of paragraphs about Buddy Holly as the ultimate hillbilly, and how important that was:

I was just a little kid when I first heard Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” You may not understand what it was like being about nine years old in 1957 or ’58, but it was quite a treat. All of this music was just coming out of nowhere — Memphis and Texas. I was in a band when I was in sixth grade, and we played “Not Fade Away.” You shouldn’t even be in a band if you haven’t played that song. It’s two chords, beautiful melody, with a nice message. Holly’s songs never really left my consciousness.

Speaking of which, here’s “Not Fade Away.”

Ritchie Valens, another of the Big Three who died in that crash, is mainly known for “La Bamba”: he turned a Mexican folk song into a rock ‘n’ roll song now ranked 354 on The Rolling Stones‘ list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. While the other country boys – boys from Texas like Buddy Holly, boys from Tennessee like Carl Perkins and Elvis – were taking the songs from their diverse cultural heritage (country, gospel, rhythm & blues) – Ritchie Valens, of Mexican descent, brought his own culture into the mix (reluctantly, at first), and the success of “La Bamba” (how many times has that damn thing been covered? Los Lobos covered it in 1987 and it went to #1 on the Billboard charts … AGAIN) was an example – and maybe even a better example than the other guys – of how flexible the new music style could be. It could also “take” a folk song, sung entirely in Spanish … and turn it into a hit that teenagers wanted to dance to. And they probably still do.

“The Big Bopper” (J.P. Richardson, Jr.), the third of the Triumvirate, was, like Holly, from Texas, and had started out as a DJ. He did some time in the Army, studied pre-law, but was drawn back into the radio business. He wrote songs, and those songs became hits for the artists who sang them. He was a big personality (you have to be if you host a radio show). He started recording his stuff, and the first tunes were country tunes, which failed to gain any traction. He hit pay dirt with “Chantilly Lace.” Here’s such a fun live performance. Listen to that opening voiceover. What a VOICE. A radio voice, mixed with the lunacy of a big personality. Irrepressible.

Watch him pretend to have a phone conversation with his girlfriend.

Humorously, the song was so huge that the one and only Jayne Mansfield recorded an “answer” to it, where she imagined what the girlfriend was saying on the other end.

Buddy Holly appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show three times, and there are a bunch of now-legendary stories about the clashes between Sullivan and Holly. Holly wanted to play “Oh Boy,” Sullivan nixed it, it was too get-up-and-go, he wanted something more toned down.

Here they are performing “Peggy Sue” on The Ed Sullivan Show:

Listen to how nuts that drumming is. The song has kind of a sweet melody, yes? Peggy Sue. Marriage. I love you. Etc. Those drums tell another story.

Here’s “Oh Boy.” You can see Ed Sullivan’s fear of this song. (If you imagine yourself in a conservative 1950s mindset. Give it a try. It’s the only way to understand the revolution of this kind of music. To give Sullivan credit: despite his misgivings, he had these guys on his show. He had Elvis on, he had them all on, he introduced The Beatles to America. He was no dummy: he wanted the ratings. But still: “Oh Boy” is ferocious, both in energy and the imagery of the lyrics. It’s not really about love, it’s about the feeling you get for your girl dry-humping in the backseat of your 1956 Cadillac at the drive-in.

And here they are, performing “That’ll Be the Day” on The Ed Sullivan Show:

In December, 1957, Buddy Holly appeared on The Arthur Murray Dance Party television program. (Here’s a very good article about why that appearance was – and still is – such a big deal. The boys from Lubbock played “Peggy Sue Got Married.”

The story of why they all got on that plane, during the “Winter Dance Party” tour across the Midwest, is the story of one ominous mishap after another. The artists had been going from gig to gig in busses, but the weather was freezing, and everyone was getting sick. The tour was being adversely affected as guys lost their voices, had to take to their beds, etc. The gigs were clustered close together and yet the distances between them were large, putting the pressure on the artists to travel long distances quickly. Buddy Holly finally got frustrated enough at the situation that he chartered a plane to get them to Minnesota. Waylon Jennings, also on the tour, gave up his seat to Big Bopper, who had the flu. Valens and Tommy Allsup tossed a coin to see who would get to fly. These random decisions, humorous and/or kind at the time, had devastating consequences. The weather conditions were miserable, icy and wintry, and the pilot lost control, the plane went down, killing all three singers, as well as the pilot.

Rockabilly God Eddie Cochran was killed in a car accident the following year, but not before he recorded a touching song for the three dead men (written by Tommy Dee) called “Three Stars.”

The deaths had an enormous cultural impact.

Elvis, over in Germany for two years with the Army, was not recording music at the time, and, for all intents and purposes, was gone. And so the deaths seemed even more catastrophic. Who’s left??

There is a very touching hand-written draft of a letter written by Elvis, expressing his condolences and explaining why he couldn’t come to the funeral. It’s been heavily edited (and badly, in my opinion) – probably by Elvis’ father Vernon.

British actor Mike Berry was a huge rock ‘n’ roll fan, and put out a couple of albums with his band “The Outlaws,” produced by the great Joe Meek. His 1961 “Tribute to Buddy Holly,”- according to Wikipedia – did not get radio play in England because it was too “morbid,” perhaps another word for “too soon,” since it had been only two years, and Buddy Holly’s death had left a scar.

Berry re-recorded it, I think, later, and had some chart success with it. It has a wonderful sound, and that thrumming-guitar-drum beat driving it on sounds like the Buddy Holly and the Crickets sound: joyous, adolescent, but with some other energy driving it: restlessness, something slightly out of control, not quite domesticated. It’s a beautiful song.

Weezer’s tribute song “Buddy Holly” features the chorus lyrics: “I look just like Buddy Molly … and you’re Mary Tyler Moore …” The music video places them in Al’s Diner on Happy Days.

In the fourth episode of Season 1 of Quantum Leap, Sam “leaps” into a Texas doctor in 1959. The opening scene shows a nerdy guy with glasses sitting on his front porch, strumming the guitar, aimlessly. Over the course of the episode, which involves a baby pig that Sam nicknames “Piggy,” the kid keeps showing up in the background on that porch, never moving, still strumming the guitar. Over the course of the episode, a song starts to emerge. In the last scene, the kid sings, almost to himself, “Piggy Sue, Piggy Sue, Oh, how my heart yearns for you.” Sam, of course, suggests that the kid change “Piggy” to “Peggy” before leaping on out to another situation. History was made.

Waylon Jennings considered Buddy Holly a mentor/big brother figure. Jennings had guilt for years about giving up his seat on that plane, and also a casual joke thrown at his friends, “I hope the plane crashes” … it haunted him. He thought he had something to do with the plane going down. It took years for him to come to terms with it.

Jennings sang Buddy Holly songs in almost every concert he gave, and also performed medleys of songs from all three singers. He paid tribute, always. He was always present to it.

Waylon Jennings, Buddy Holly, Grand Central Station, 1959, only a month before.

Jennings’ heart-breaking song written to Buddy:

In 2014, my friend Charlie Taylor did an onstage QA with music writer Greil Marcus about his new book, The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs. It was a great event and here’s my transcription of that conversation. Not to be missed! In the book, Marcus discusses the last Beatles sessions, when the band members weren’t speaking anymore but still recording, and one day they start messing around with Buddy Holly songs, finding their way back towards connection. (But read Marcus’ thoughts on it. He goes into exquisite detail – about what those songs meant, represented, what kind of space they opened up for the lads from Liverpool.)

Buddy Holly gets all the press from those who lost their lives. But each one should be celebrated, each one turned his own unique experience and background and culture into the new rock ‘n’ roll style, which turned out to be far more flexible than anyone had realized or even imagined.

When I was 5 years old, my kindergarten class had our first Show ‘n’ Tell Day. Other kids brought in their Barbies, their pet hamsters, their G.I. Joes. I, however, stood up in front of the class and sang “American Pie” in its entirety. I am trying to picture my 5-year-old self belting out “let me teach you how to dance reeeeal slow” and I am thankful that I gave my performance in a day before ubiquitous cell phone cameras. I didn’t even know what I was singing about, I just loved the song! I was obsessed with it. I had no idea what it meant. But on some pre-verbal level, I did. I heard that sadness, I responded to it. I remember responding to it. In my earliest years (2, 3, 4) my family lived in an apartment in a rickety building right next to railroad tracks. Literally, on the wrong side of the tracks. My earliest fuzzy memories come from that house (we moved into the house where I would spend the majority of my childhood when I was 5.) Right down at the corner near that house, was a little deli: Anton’s Deli. Mum and I would walk down there for groceries, with my brother in a stroller. I can “date” my obsession with “American Pie” from when I was 4, because I remember wondering – and actually, on some level, BELIEVING, that Anton’s Deli was the “sacred store” that the man with the scary American-flag painted on his thumb on the album cover, sang about. Every time we went down there to get baloney or milk, I wondered if I would catch a glimpse of the girl who sang the blues, or “the man there” who said “the music wouldn’t play.” Anton’s Deli is no longer a deli, it’s a pizza place, but it’s still there. I took this picture in December on a bitter cold day.

I think of “American Pie” … and Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper every time I drive by it.

That song, without my even knowing it, introduced me to my own culture. And I think I understood that. Before I had language, before I knew anything.

Here’s Don McLean performing it live in 1972:

 
 
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