#420 Buddy Holly and the Crickets - The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)

MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:

Now while the 1962 re-release of this debut album is credited to Buddy Holly and the Crickets the original 1957 Brunswick Records release was self-titled The “Chirping” Crickets.

That’s because after Buddy Holly’s tragic death in 1959 he became a legend.

Born the youngest of four children during The Great Depression in Lubbock, Texas Charles Hardin Holley was nicknamed Buddy by his mom to compensate for being the smallest kid.

The Holleys were a musical family and after learning piano and fiddle as a child his brothers taught him guitar.

Buddy played Country & Western through elementary school and by high school he and his musician friends including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison added the R&B elements they heard on distant, late-night, radio stations.

By 1952 he had a duo, first with Jack Neal and then with Bob Montgomery.
In 1955 after graduating high school Buddy became a full-time musician and fell under the rock and roll influence of Elvis Presley, who he opened for a few times.

Adding his childhood friend Jerry Allison on drums and Larry Welborn on stand-up bass they got talent-scouted while opening for Bill Haley & His Comets and by 1956 had a deal with Decca Records.

It was actually Decca’s misspelling on that contract that caused Buddy to permanently change his last name from H-o-l-l-E-y to H-o-l-l-y.

After a few ignored singles with different band names like Buddy Holly and the Two Tones and Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes they were dropped by Decca with the provision that they couldn’t re-record any of their past songs for five years.

Buddy was also frustrated by the sound and lack of control on Decca so he sought out an admired producer named Norman Petty.

The band, which was now Buddy on lead guitar and vocals, Jerry Allison on drums and vocals, Joe B. Mauldin on upright bass, and Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar and vocals, went to Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico recording studio to cut a new demo of a previously recorded original song called, “That’ll Be the Day.”

Petty became their manager and sent the demo to Brunswick Records in New York but due to Buddy’s restrictive solo contract they took Jerry Allison’s idea, inspired by groups with bird and insect names, of calling the band The Crickets.

The demo was released as a single in May of 1957 and due in large part to his hiccup-y vocals, rave up guitar, and non-threatening horn-rimmed glasses image by September it was a hit and Buddy had both a solo and a band record deal with the same line up.

We also have to give props to the amazing back up vocals besides the band.

Most were by The Picks, which were Bill and John Pickering, and Bob Lapham, and the rest were by Ramona and Gary Tollett.

This record was released by The Crickets in 1957 followed by Buddy’s solo record backed by The Crickets the next year.

He even had his old demos and recordings released by Decca to cash in on his huge success.

After seven Top 40 hits between 1957 and 1958 Buddy became fed up with manager/producer Norman Petty but the rest of the band wanted to keep him so Buddy quit and moved to Greenwich Village in New York to pursue life outside of Texas.

In 1959 due to dire financial issues he had to tour the Midwest with the multi-artist Winter Dance Party so he started a new group with guitarist Tommy Allsop, drummer Carl Bunch, and bassist Waylon Jennings… (yes, that Waylon Jennings).

After dealing with broken-down buses and traveling in subfreezing conditions, Buddy chartered a private plane to take him from a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. He was joined by fellow popular performers Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.

The plane crashed only minutes after leaving the ground, killing all on board. Buddy Holly was just 22 years old.

The Crickets carried on a touring career for decades with different singers including Buddy’s childhood friend Sonny Curtis.

While Buddy had only released three albums in his less than 2 year career his musical impact inspired countless fans like Bob Dylan, Elton John, Elvis Costello, The Hollies and The Beatles, both of whose names are homage to him, and obviously Weezer.

And of course he was memorialized in Don McLean’s epic, 1971, #1 song “American Pie.”