![]() Capitol had signed Gene Vincent after a nationwide talent search, and Decca felt strongly that they needed a similar performer. Presley’s contract had just been sold to RCA. When Elvis Presley played Lubbock, Holly went backstage to meet the new singing sensation from Memphis, and it was soon after his meeting that Holly resolved to go after the big time as a rock’n’roll star.Īfter a good deal of hustling he was given a contract with Decca Records in Nashville. While Holly churned out country standards for the good people of Lubbock, they were already flirting with black R&B, a flirtation that would eventually create the fusion that would be rock’n’roll.Įven in the comparative isolation of Lubbock, Buddy Holly was becoming fascinated by the more lively music of people like Hank Ballard and John Lee Hooker. This grip was so strong that drum kits were actually banned from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry until the mid-50s.ĭespite all this there was a group of younger musicians determined to break out of the restrictions created by this early 50s Nashville mafia. Things, however, were moving in the outside world that would change all that.Īfter the disruption of the Korean war, which interrupted cthe areers of many young country musicians, a situation was created where the old guard of country pickers, who had risen to fame in the 30s and 40s, had a very conservative stranglehold on the country music output. It seems that even at that early age he had an uncompromising faith that somewhere, somehow, there was career for him in music.īuddy and Bob might have gone on playing supermarket openings, fairs, and local talent shows until they were old and grey. He teamed up with another local boy, Bob Montgomery, to form a country duo called Buddy and Bob. His first stumble into show business was made during his high school days. He grew up in the small Texas town of Lubbock, close to the New Mexico border. Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley on 7 September 1936. ![]() His songs had such lasting merit that more than half a dozen of them have earned a prominent place in the catalogue of all-time rock standards, and are still hitting the charts today in such grisly guises as Showaddywaddy’s Heartbeat. In terms of seminal creativity, Holly must rank close to Chuck Berry as one of the greatest innovators of the 50s. Holly may not have been over strong on charisma, but that didn’t mean that he was in any way short on talent. Dylan also includes Buddy Holly in his list of early heroes, while John Lennon went to great pains to make the Peggy Sue cut on his Rock’n’Roll album a loving tribute to one of his first idols. In a number of interviews, Clapton has cited Holly as the artist who first inspired him to take up the guitar. Holly was the first star who made it clear that just about anyone could make it in rock‘n’rollĪmong today’s superstars who fell under Holly’s persuasive spell was one Eric Clapton. ![]() He was the first star who made it clear that just about anyone, given a lot of application and the right breaks, could actually make it in the wonderful world of rock’n’roll. His high, rather, lightweight tenor could be copied by any spotty third former who posed in front of a mirror with a six-pound mail-order guitar, while with his capped teeth and myopic grim he was certainly no winner in the beauty stakes. Holly was the really accessible early rock star. Only the extremely talented or the extremely crass could attempt to seriously emulate Elvis Presley’s dramatic hoodlum good looks and wide local range, Little Richard’s maniac energy, or Gene Vincent’s delinquent meanness. Most of the early rock’n’roll stars had so much going for them that they tended to overawe the average fan. Precisely that Holly was the one who, above all others, convinced a large number of nondescript male children that maybe they too could be rock performers. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” you ask. In any final analysis of the contribution of the stars of the 50s to the general steam of rock and roll, Holly has to be singled out as the man who made possible a whole lot of what came later.
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