BUDDY HOLLY
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1956–1959 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Words Of Love (1957) |
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THE «CHIRPING» CRICKETS |
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Album
released: Nov. 27, 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) Oh Boy; 2) Not Fade Away; 3)
You’ve Got Love; 4) Maybe Baby; 5) It’s Too Late; 6) Tell Me How; 7) That’ll Be The Day; 8) I’m Lookin’ For Someone To
Love; 9) An Empty Cup (And A Broken Date); 10) Send Me Some Lovin’; 11) Last
Night; 12) Rock Me My Baby. |
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If
you listen to all of the Beatles’ officially released recordings in
chronological order, the very first song you are going to hear is ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ, pressed by the Quarrymen in 1958, approximately just one year after
the song had appeared on the Brunswick label as the first official single by the
Crickets. Naturally, this is no matter of coincidence since, by all accounts,
Buddy Holly was the single greatest
influence (out of many) on the early Beatles, at least up until the band’s
«musical globalization» circa 1965 (and, in fact, for most of their
subsequent lives as well, even extending into Paul McCartney’s solo career). |
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For
the rebellious rock’n’rolling mind, this might seem a little bizarre. When
Buddy made the world aware of his existence, in mid-1957, «rock and roll»
had already been firmly established — Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl
Perkins, Elvis, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis were all recognized stars, with
an imposing bunch of hit singles under their belts and with their
taboo-breaking images firmly entrenched in the popular mind; Buddy was a
relative latecomer to this parade of flashy, aggressive personalities.
Compared to each of them separately, he did not seem to stand much of a
competitive chance. Never a technically great singer like Elvis; never a
particularly gifted or fluent instrumental player like Chuck or Jerry Lee;
definitely nowhere near an «onstage volcano» in terms of performance — just a
normal, quiet Texas kid, happy enough to wear a neatly pressed tuxedo and
bowtie, with a proper haircut and with a pair of silly thick glasses that
really made him look more like an aspiring Ivy League freshman than a rock’n’roller.
In fact, a careless eye could easily pigeonhole him into, if not the «teen
idol» category of Ricky Nelson, then at least into the «rock’n’roll for
parents» category. So
what exactly did Buddy Holly bring to the table that was not already on it? Perhaps,
first and foremost, it was hope —
hope for all those thousands of kids who were not blessed with the vocal
cords of an Elvis, the natural dynamism of a Jerry Lee Lewis, or the cool
looks of a Gene Vincent. It was Buddy who conveyed to them the important message
— what matters is not style or technique, what matters is substance. All of Buddy’s major
achievements lie in the field of songwriting. Had he mostly stuck to covering
other people’s material (like Elvis), he would have remained but a small
footnote in the history of popular music, as his first LP proves without a
doubt: out of the 12 numbers on Chirping
Crickets, the ones that stay with you once it’s over are almost always the
ones where Buddy is credited as chief songwriter. I
will not shy away from saying that I almost always prefer other people’s
covers of Buddy’s material to the originals. Even that early Quarrymen cover
of ʽThat’ll Be The
Dayʼ sounds almost as good as Buddy’s (and would
have sounded even better had the lads had access to better studio equipment,
not to mention had they decided to record it with George Martin any time in
1963-64). ʽNot Fade Awayʼ would eventually be expropriated, toughened up, and
set for early anthemic status by the Stones. And when John Lennon later
covered Buddy’s interpretation of ʽSend Me Some
Lovin’ on his Rock And Roll album,
he raised the bar tenfold in the vocal department, adding explicit emotional
torment where Holly only hinted at it. But
none of that mattered back in 1957 — and even though it matters today, it is
also a pretext to try and figure out why, in the long run, these early songs
have survived and are still listenable today. Sure enough, there is some
stuff on this Crickets debut that is not
all that listenable. In particular, «The Picks», a New Mexican family vocal
outfit, provide a rather corny doo-wop-style backing, spoiling much of the
ballad component of the album (ʽLast Nightʼ, etc.) — not that Buddy
Holly himself was ever made for doo-wop, of course, but it also has to be
kept in mind that, like everything else at the time, The Chirping Crickets was really just a bunch of cool singles
surrounded by obligatory filler. We
will disregard the filler, then, and focus all the attention on the classics:
ʽThat’ll Be The
Dayʼ and ʽNot Fade Awayʼ as the best known; ʽMaybe Babyʼ, ʽTell Me Howʼ, ʽI’m Looking For
Someone To Loveʼ as their
lesser worthy brethren. First and foremost, this is not «threatening» music:
Buddy was not a «rebel», he had a thoroughly «pop» conscience through and
through, and the music avoids dark bass lines, distortion, aggression, etc.,
as much as possible (just look at how niftily the «spooky», «tribal» Bo
Diddley beat is transformed into a happy celebration of love and fidelity on ʽNot Fade Awayʼ). At the same time, it is not cheesy pop — it is jangly, guitar-based pop, no strings, pianos, or production
slickness attached, something that even the rough’n’tough garage-rock crowds
of the early 1960s would find easy to appreciate. Most importantly, it all
just sounds natural and realistic. Where Ricky Nelson (whose public image
appeared the same year as Buddy) gave the impression of «glossy manufacture»
from the start, Buddy simply is as buddy does. What
I really mean to say is that Holly compensates for his technical flaws with
evident charisma — present everywhere, not just in his looks (always clean,
never glossy), but also in his sweet, shaky, naturally-stuttery vocals, and
in his guitar playing, with delicate, memorable phrasing that sometimes
mimicks Carl Perkins or Scotty Moore, but just as frequently consists of
original lines (unfortunately, «The Picks» too often overshadow them — ʽMaybe Babyʼ could have been so much better without all the waah-waahs and the
pa-da-dams). The songwriting ideas might have been replicated and enhanced,
but the personality could not: Buddy Holly offers that perfect compromise
between the «gruff rocker» and the «teen idol» that is actually much harder
to attain than it might look upon first sight. Actually,
Buddy Holly is not so much the epitome of a «teen idol» as he is the epitome
of a teen — heck, maybe even
pre-teen, since the defining spirit of most of his songs is that of sweet,
energetic, totally innocent happiness that we humans usually tend to lose
just a few years after lactose tolerance, and only a select few like Buddy
happen to retain into their grown-up years. For all the cover tunes he did of
other artists, it is impossible to imagine him covering Bo Diddley’s ‘I’m A
Man’ — because that kind of man he
never was, and never could impersonate. ‘Not Fade Away’, as I have already
said, transforms Bo’s tribal dance into a happy romp around the dining room
table. ‘That’ll Be The Day’ is a very childish refusal to believe that good
things can ever go wrong, borrowing not just its title but also its stubborn
nature from John Wayne. ‘Maybe Baby’ and ‘Tell Me How’ distill the idea of
romance to its most arithmetic essentials, peeling away all the layers of
troubadour and Tin Pan Alley experience. Yet
this minimalism never feels like the product of laziness or lack of talent —
it’s more like Buddy just felt the time was right for getting back to the
basics and building a new foundation for the future edifice of pop
songwriting in the rock’n’roll era. More likely, he did not even realize that
— unfortunately, he died way too young for us to know what he himself thought
of his songwriting principles — but this is how it feels to at least some of
us: on this album, Buddy Holly re-formats pop music for future achievements,
much like the Ramones, twenty years later, would re-format rock music to
bring it into the modern age. From a purely melodic standpoint, these tunes
here are not among his best — the melodies still owe way too much to all the
people who had influenced Buddy himself — but from a symbolic standpoint, he
would never make a sharper, more career-defining point than he had done with
those earliest singles. |
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Album
released: Feb. 20, 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) I’m Gonna Love You Too; 2)
Peggy Sue; 3) Look At Me; 4) Listen To Me; 5) Valley Of Tears; 6) Ready
Teddy; 7) Everyday; 8) Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues; 9) Words Of Love; 10) (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t
Care; 11) Rave On; 12) Little Baby. |
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It
so happened that, for all the tiny amount of time he had to himself on this
Earth, Buddy had to share it between two formal careers — as the
semi-anonymous leader of «the Crickets» and as a solo artist. The only real
difference, however, was that as «The Crickets», Buddy’s backing band worked
together with «The Picks» and had this rather questionable tendency to drift
off into suave doo-wop territory. In other words, as illogical and
anti-intuitive as it may seem, (1) Buddy Holly + the Crickets = «Buddy
Holly»; (2) Buddy Holly + the Crickets + the Picks = «The Crickets». What
this really means for us is that, of the two completed LPs released by Buddy
in his lifetime, the self-titled Buddy Holly is, on the whole, a slightly
better showcase for his songwriting talents and personal charisma — even if, like
so many pop LPs of the time, it neither succeeds in being totally
filler-free, nor even tries to. Then again, out of five «Buddy Holly» singles
released up to that point, it does include three of the best ones and discard
two of the more passable ones, meaning that, up to a certain point, quality
control did matter. |
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Be
that as it may, the inclusion of ʽReady Teddyʼ and ʽBaby I Don’t
Careʼ, two songs more
typically associated with Elvis (and, in the case of the former, Little
Richard, of course), has more of a symbolic nature to it — Buddy openly aligning himself with the leading «rockers» of the day — than actual
entertainment value. For all his versatility, Buddy could never dream of
outplaying the King and his backing band on that toughness-meets-tightness
field, nor could he dashingly open up some new, hitherto unsuspected
dimension in these songs (at the time, they were way too proverbially
one-dimensional to be openable up to anything else, though eventually
technological and spiritual evolution would change that — even John Lennon in
1975, it could be argued, would reinvent ʽReady Teddyʼ quite
radically, if not necessarily for the better). His forced little roar on
‘Ready Teddy’ is more likely to raise a condescending smile than a couple of
tightly clenched fists, and the juggling of high- and low-pitched vocals on
‘You’re So Square’ feels much too imitative of Elvis as well. Also
problematic is the inclusion of Fats Domino’s ʽValley Of Tearsʼ, though the
revision of this Fats Domino classic is easier to defend — not only does it
feature a somewhat special «funeral parlor» organ part played by Norman Petty,
but Buddy also does not try to recapture the lazy New Orleanian nonchalance
of the original, instead giving it a more romantic, fragile reading which
certainly suits him better. I guess that in the process they take all the New
Orleans out of the song, but that’s OK, Buddy Holly and New Orleans were never
meant for each other anyway. Yet
even if we treat all those covers as filler, I would still take solid rock’n’roll
filler over shaky doo-wop filler any day, even more so if the filler in
question is interspersed with the single largest number of indisputable
original classics on a Buddy album. ʽPeggy Sueʼ, ʽI’m Gonna Love You Tooʼ, ʽWords Of Loveʼ, ʽRave Onʼ, ʽEvery Dayʼ — each of these
is practically an institution in itself, definitely so if we judge «objectively»,
on the basis of received accolades and tributary covers. As simple and
natural and obvious as these melodies sound, most of them were actually written either by Buddy or
by his closest partners — on a pre-existing basis of blues, folk, and country
chord sequences, but with their own unique input which only added to the
overall catchiness. ʽPeggy Sueʼ, in particular, had a strange kind of magic to it
that won the hearts of both Lennon
and McCartney — and it would be incorrect to think that this only had to do
with the insane paradiddles of Jerry Allison, since the song works fine even
without its percussive thunderstorm (look for a charming McCartney solo
acoustic performance from 1975); actually, the vocal melody, replete with all
of its hiccups, pretty much sets the standard for «not-one-note-wasted catchy
pop formula», and must have served as the guiding star for the Beatles
throughout their career. The lyrics, the subject, the mood — trivial to
quasi-embarrassment; the vocal movement is all that matters. (There is even
a bit of playfully fake «darkness» as the bridge cuts in with an almost
threatening «pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue...» before the sun comes
out again — a musical red herring if there ever was one within a two-minute
pop song). In
terms of complexity and instrumentation, ʽWords Of Loveʼ, a song that
was not even a single, is the clear winner, although I must insist that the tune
was brought to absolute sonic perfection only six years later, by the Beatles
and George Martin — they happened
to see the amazing potential of that sweetly stinging guitar ring, only
hinted at in Petty’s original production, and realize all of it; I am pretty sure
that Buddy himself, had he had the chance, would have acknowledged the
superiority of Harrison’s lead playing and Martin’s production. Nevertheless,
this here is the original, and even if the vocal melody may seem a bit sappy,
the guitar lines provide the very foundation of the «jangle-pop» skyscraper,
to be erected by millions of Buddy’s followers. This, after all, was the man
who was taking the art of sweet sentimental balladry away from professional
hacks, glossy syrupy orchestras, and formulaic crooning vocalists, and restoring
it to legions of passionate kids with guitars, almost singlehandedly. Some
of those kids would do it better; but few, if any, could have thought of doing
it before. Where did that A-D-E-A
guitar melody even come from? What inspired it? What preceded it? How come it
embodies so perfectly the feelings you feel when softly caressing a loved
one? As far as I can tell, there is simply no better proof of the touch of
genius on that man than this particular bit of composing. Needless
to say, next to ‘Words Of Love’ Buddy’s more rock-oriented originals look a tad
more pale. Still, ʽRave Onʼ and ʽI’m Gonna Love
You Tooʼ combine pop
catchiness with energetic beat pretty damn well. ‘Love You Too’, in terms of
structure and lyrics, seems to mimic the old folk song tradition, which gives
the song a blunt, stubborn edge — the repeated title at the end of each verse
almost sounds like a mantra, and the ah-ah-ah harmonies are like a triumphant
war cry, emitted by somebody who is damn certain of impending victory.
(Twenty years later, it would be fun to see the gender values of the song
inverted when Debbie Harry would appropriate the song to depict her own imaginary conquests). And
while ‘Rave On’ is much too melodically similar to ‘Oh Boy’ (no surprise
here, since itinerant Texan songwriter Sonny West was essentially responsible
for both), its slightly slower tempo actually suits Buddy better, giving him
more time to lay out the trap of his vocal inflections. The
pure pop songwriting craft is not always on the level of ‘Words Of Love’,
either: thus, ‘Listen To Me’ slips into formula (the ringing guitar melody is
essentially a slight variation on the ‘Words Of Love’ riff), and ‘Look At Me’
delivers its folksy quatrains with sympathy and charm, but no original hooks.
Yet for every so-so composition there may be found a brilliant antidote like
‘Everyday’, with an inventive arrangement featuring the celesta as a lead
instrument and knee-slapping as primary percussion — another excellent
attempt at creating an atmosphere of purry heavenly delight with minimal
means, instead of relying on the tried and true Hollywood orchestration. Also
interesting is a stab at making 12-bar blues go pop: ‘Mailman Bring Me No
More Blues’, driven by Vi Petty’s honky tonk piano and sung by Buddy in sort
of a Hank Williams manner — plaintive, soulful, and seductive, instead of
dark and grizzly in the classic blues manner; hardly a highlight, but it is
amusing that this was one of the tunes played by the Beatles during their Get Back sessions, when they were
dusting off their blues chops while still clinging on to pop stylistics. It
is a little funny that Buddy’s name appears less frequently in the
songwriting credits on this album than it does on the Crickets’ debut — and
yet the record still feels a pinch more «Buddy-true» in the end. Slowly, but
surely, Holly was coming into his own as a visionary songwriter, moving away
from the general rock’n’roll stylistics of his peers and into the realm of
rock’n’roll-influenced, but deeply individual, popcraft, where his nerdy
looks, shakey-hiccupy vocals, and simplistically sincere attitude could
provide far huger benefits than ‘Ready Teddy’ or ‘Rock Me My Baby’. There
were understandable limits to that shift in the context of late Fifties’
America, but it certainly was a
shift that went much deeper than just taking off his glasses on the album
cover — a move which you could with equal probability call coldly calculated
(because hot girls do not go for guys with glasses) or boldly executed
(because how can you truly establish a soul-to-soul connection with those
heavy FAOSA frames?). |
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Album
released: April 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) You Are My One Desire; 2) Blue
Days, Black Nights; 3) Modern Don Juan; 4) Rock Around With Ollie Vee; 5)
Ting A Ling; 6) Girl On My Mind; 7) That’ll Be The Day; 8) Love Me; 9) I’m Changing
All Those Changes; 10) Don’t Come Back Knockin’; 11) Midnight Shift. |
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Technically,
this LP should have been listed as Buddy’s first: all of the songs here are
taken from his first recording sessions for Decca, held at various dates
throughout 1956, approximately one year prior to finding success with
Brunswick. The story goes that, since Buddy’s first singles with Decca
flopped and the label was not quite sure what to make of him, they simply did
not renew his contract — but as time went by and he eventually started
treading the road to stardom, all these early tunes, including all the flop
singles as well as a number of previously unreleased outtakes, were hastily
cobbled together for an LP; easily done, since Decca still held the rights
to all of them, and a common practice for labels stupid enough to have lost
their stars before they became stars. |
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In
retrospect, the Decca decision makes more sense than it made in 1958: for
those with an academic interest in Buddy Holly, these earliest recordings
should be priceless, but for serious Buddy Holly fans who were growing up
together with Buddy, they were most probably disappointing. First of all,
Side A is almost entirely devoid of originals. Three of the songs are
credited to Don Guess, Buddy’s buddy and original bass fiddle player, and are
little more than average doo-wop (ʽGirl On My Mindʼ, with Buddy unconvincingly forcing his vocals to
emulate the smooth soulfulness of classic doo-wop crooners) or second-hand
rockabilly (ʽModern Don Juanʼ, which Buddy is anything but; the song might have been more successful in the hands of a
Carl Perkins). Much gutsier is ʽRock Around
With Ollie Veeʼ, credited to
Buddy’s original lead guitarist Sonny Curtis — the players
get into this one with an almost unexpected ferocity, although flat
production and Buddy’s vocal limitations remain inescapable curses in this
style. Following
Elvis’ love for classic and recent Atlantic hits, Buddy also tried to follow
suit by choosing the Clovers’ ʽTing-A-Lingʼ, one of the most desperate odes to teenage libido
of its time; he manages well enough to slip into character, with a suitably
hysterical vocal tone, but on the whole, this attempt to transform
professionally arranged and produced R&B into crude, spontaneous
rockabilly is half-hearted and lacks imagination. It almost seems like a
copycat exercise — hey, Elvis did this thing right with ‘Money Honey’, why
can’t we do it with another catchy Atlantic vocal band tune? (You can clearly
hear the influence of Scotty Moore’s ‘Money Honey’ solo on Sonny Curtis’
soloing in this track: considering that Buddy and his band toured as a
support act for Elvis in early 1956, this should not be too surprising).
Unfortunately, Buddy Holly is no Elvis when it comes to carrying a classic
R&B tune, and Sonny Curtis is no Scotty Moore when it comes to designing
a terrific guitar solo and playing it as if it were improvised. The
second half of the album is overshadowed by the title track, which actually is
the original recording of ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ — slightly slower, seriously looser, more
high-pitched and hysterical, lacking vocal harmonies, and generally showing
the important difference between early, «formative» Buddy Holly and the later,
more self-assured and perfectionist Buddy Holly. Even the guitar introduction
shows that difference: the original one features a simple, shirll, one-note
opening line, directly descended from Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Broom’ — the new
version has the guitar spirally moving downward through several chords, a
well-crafted flourish suggesting an already advanced level of pop craft. But
just as important is the realization that it took Buddy a few years to come
to terms with his own voice, and settle it into a mild, natural style which
let it express itself with more clarity and passion than when it had to be
forced into a screechy, let’s-rock-this-house-down pattern just because it
was 1956 and all the hip people were doing that stuff. The
other early originals that surround the title track are halfway decent (in
particular, the B-side ʽLove Meʼ, which was Buddy’s very first single, and the
lyrically clever ʽI’m Changing
All Those Changesʼ), but still do
not advance far beyond standard rockabilly or sped-up country-western. Too
many of them simply sound like sincere, but not highly interesting tributes
to Elvis and Carl Perkins from a young boy who has yet to grow himself the
balls of either. Consequently,
one would have to be really mean and haughty to blame Decca for not spotting
the future genius of ʽPeggy Sueʼ or ʽWords Of Loveʼ in these cautious first moves at trying to
construct one’s own artistic identity — also,
considering that Buddy got his new contract with the smaller Brunswick label that
was legally under Decca anyway, the record industry cannot be said to have
treated the rising wannabe star too cruelly. It is, however, ironic and even
cruel that That’ll Be The Day
would be only the second and very last LP of Buddy Holly material that the
artist himself would see released in his lifetime — and while I do not know
of his reaction to Decca’s commercial move, I am sure it must have been
similar to the average reaction of a successful writer to the sudden
publication of his teenage poetry exercises. At
the very least, unlike the stream of rudely doctored and tampered musical
sketches that followed Buddy’s demise, these are fully authentic documents
that give you Buddy Holly in his rawest and most spontaneous state of mind —
things that are held dear by certain types of people, meaning that there are
most likely some fans out there who actually prefer the early version of
‘That’ll Be The Day’ to the more complex and polished re-recording, just like
there are fans out there who swear by the «wild» Hamburg period of the early
Beatles before Brian Epstein and George Martin put them in suits and pacified
their musical aesthetics. Problem is, some of them are indeed «born to be
wild», but others are rather «born to sweet delight», and this album — a
relatively wild one — happened to be released right in the middle of Buddy’s
sweetest delight period, which made things confusing back then and continues
to make them confusing even in retrospect. |
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Compilation
released: Feb. 28, 1959 (Vol. 1) April 1960 (Vol. 2) |
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Tracks: The Buddy
Holly Story – 1) Raining In My Heart; 2) Early In The Morning; 3)
Peggy Sue; 4) Maybe Baby; 5) Everyday; 6) Rave On; 7) That’ll Be The Day; 8)
Heartbeat; 9) Think It Over; 10) Oh Boy; 11) It’s So Easy; 12) It Doesn’t
Matter Anymore. The Buddy Holly Story Vol. II
– 1) Peggy Sue Got Married; 2) Well....All Right; 3) What To Do; 4) That
Makes It Tough; 5) Now We’re One; 6) Take Your Time; 7) Crying, Waiting,
Hoping; 8) True Love Ways; 9) Learning The Game; 10) Little Baby; 11)
Moondreams; 12) That’s What They Say. |
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REVIEW
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Anyway,
whatever the actual circumstances might have been, the bad news were that
Buddy Holly (along with his good friends Ritchie Valens and J. P. «The Big
Bopper» Richardson of ʽChantilly Laceʼs fame) was, indeed, dead, and that we would,
therefore, be forever left in the dark as to where his talent might have led
him in the golden decade of rock music. The only slight bit of consolation
was that, prior to dying, he left behind an impressive stockpile of
unfinished recordings — one that would keep the small market for devoted
Buddy fans occupied for years and years to come. But even this «good» news
was seriously soured by the fact that most of the recordings had to be seriously
tampered with in order to acquire «commercially viable» form, and that the
tamperings were not always up to par (a rather unpleasant, but not uncommon,
side of the music business; the same story would be repeated a decade later
for the prematurely departed Jimi Hendrix). The
vaults were, in fact, opened less than a month after the funeral, although
the first installation was fairly modest: The Buddy Holly Story consisted entirely of A- and B-sides
released during the artist’s lifetime (the most recent single to be included
was ʽIt Doesn’t
Matter Anymoreʼ / ʽRaining In My Heartʼ, which came out in January, just a couple of weeks before the
accident). Less than a year later, in response to the high chart performance
of the album, Coral followed it up with The
Buddy Holly Story Vol. II — an entirely
different story altogether, mainly consisting of «from-the-vault» stuff. Much
of it came from Buddy’s last recording session in December 1958, which he
held in the living room of his own New York apartment, taping simple acoustic
demos with nothing but his voice and guitar on show. Naturally, the record
label decided that the sound would have to be brought up to standards, and...
well, the best thing that can be said is that at least those results were
significantly better than some of the sacrileges to follow. Since
the two LPs have this fundamental difference, it might not make too much
sense to combine them in a single review, but I shall do it anyway for a
technical reason — an entire half of the songs on The Buddy Holly Story had already gotten their LP releases in
Buddy’s lifetime, and most of them were discussed in earlier reviews, which
would make a separate entry for just six songs a little superfluous,
particularly since not all of them are masterpieces. Taken
in chronological order, the first of these is ‘Think It Over’, the A-side of
a single released in May ’58 — a bit of 12-bar blues redone in a bouncy pop
format, with a catchy, repetitive guitar / piano riff (you’ll recognize the
same chord sequence, for instance, in the Stones’ ‘Under Assistant West Coast
Promotion Man’); arguably, the song achieved perfection only later, when it
got a new set of lyrics far more suitable to its strolling tempo, recast by
Ernie Maresca and Dion as ‘The Wanderer’.
ʽEarly In The
Morningʼ reflects a
questionable choice in covers (Bobby Darin? come on, Buddy, we know you can
do better than that!), especially given that the song is a lite-rock rewrite
of Ray Charles’ ‘I Got A Woman’. Much better — close to a mini-masterpiece — is ʽIt's So Easyʼ, which all but sets the standard for the inventive, upbeat,
guitar-based pop song of the next decade: catchy and complex choruses and
verses going through multiple parts, melodic guitar solos with tiny
variations from first to second, a certain overtone unity between vocals and
guitars, and a bit of the Crickets’ usual roughness-round-the-edges to put a fat
checkmark in the «for rebellious teenagers» box rather than the one «for
respectable middle class audiences»— those shrill, ragged guitar licks are
definitely for the younger generation. Plus, the chorus itself — "it’s
so easy to fall in love!" — registers like an anthemic statement, less
of a personal statement this time and more like an enthusiastic invocation.
(And don’t forget the "here I go breaking all of the rules" line in
the first verse: what is this, the Crickets or Judas Priest?). Those
sharp vibes would be, however, slightly dulled later in the year. The first
sign was ʽHeartbeatʼ, composed by Buddy’s good old friends Bob
Montgomery and Norman Petty. The arrangement of the tune has a bit of a Cuban
flavor to it, and there is a slight tinge of lounge crooning in Buddy’s
voice: compared to something like ‘Words Of Love’, with its complex lead
guitar fluctuations and intimate vocal atmosphere, ‘Heartbeat’ cannot help
but feel rather fluffy in comparison (rather unsurprising that the song would
later be covered by so many «fluff artists» — Bobby Vee, Dave Berry, Herman’s
Hermits, and the Hollies way past their prime, in 1980). Things
get even more suspicious with the release of ʽIt Doesn't Matter Anymoreʼ, not just
because it was written by the most recent teen idol Paul Anka, but also
because it was heavily dependent on the orchestral overdubs of Dick Jacobs;
the same orchestration was also used for the B-side, ‘Raining In My Heart’,
credited to Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, the court writers for the Everly
Brothers. The orchestral arrangements are not awful per se, featuring quirky
and fun parts written for the harp, but it is fairly evident, I think, that
Buddy’s voice is less than ideal for this material — he has to really strain
and stretch to sustain all the complicated melismatic transitions on ‘Raining
In My Heart’, basically doing something he does not at all feel comfortable
with. The fact that this was the last single to be released in Buddy’s
lifetime is a tad disturbing: we shall never know if this was just a one-time
incongruence or the beginning of a possible new trend of Holly watering down
under the pressure of outside songwriters and mellowing pop tastes, but I
know for sure that if I were a
singer-songwriter and I knew I’d have to go out with a Paul Anka song, I’d
probably rescheduled that flight for several months earlier. In
a certain way, though it expectedly does not contain as many high watermarks,
Vol. 2 is more consistent than the
first album, with ten out of twelve songs written exclusively by Holly or
co-credited to Holly and Petty. There are only two exceptions: ‘Now We’re
One’, another Bobby Darin song which was the B-side to ‘Early In The Morning’
and sounds even more inept than the A-side (if the latter was a Ray Charles
rip-off, then this one largely borrows its melody from Presley’s ‘Too Much’,
with a slight infusion of ‘Money Honey’), and Petty’s ‘Moondreams’, a ballad
Buddy had originally recorded with the Norman Petty Trio back in 1957 and
then revived in late 1958 with more of Jacobs’ orchestral arrangements. It is
not a very good song, honestly, sounding like a Doris Day standard more than
anything else, and the clichéd «salon gypsy violin solo» makes things
even worse. Other
than that, however, Vol. 2 gives
us plenty of worthy goodies. Returning to chronological order, ‘Take Your
Time’ (the original B-side to ‘Rave On’) is a rare case of Buddy being
explicitly shadowed by a prominent Hammond organ, which is a refreshing
change from permanent guitar dependence. (It should also probably be noted
for being one of the first pop-rock songs in which the protagonist "can wait", as opposed to all
those other songs in which he most assuredly can’t — ever the gentleman, Buddy Holly puts no pressure on his
maiden of choice). Even
more impressive is ʽWell... All
Rightʼ, the original
B-side to ‘Heartbeat’ which, honestly, should have been the A-side: remember
all those artists listed above who covered ‘Heartbeat’? ‘Well... All Right’,
on the contrary, was covered by Blind Faith, Santana, and the Smithereens
(also Kid Rock, but we’ll try to let this one slide, okay?). It’s a song that
seems so far ahead of its own time that it never sounded out of place on
Blind Faith’s self-titled album — in fact, its rhythmic strum has quite a bit
in common with the Beatles’ ‘Get Back’, except that Holly’s acoustic melody
is muted and introvert, suitable for the intimate nature of the song, as
expressed in lines like "...the dreams and wishes you wish / in the
night when the lights are low" (my personal mondegreen with the song is
that I always hear that line as "the dreams and wishes Jewish", and subsequently get
visions of Buddy Holly as a young Orthodox rebel quietly protesting against
the yichud). The song’s lyrics and melody both point a possible way
to a much more mature, introspective Holly bringing wisdom and responsibility
to teenage mentality — the line that would eventually be endorsed by Brian
Wilson and the Beach Boys, but in their own way, close to Buddy Holly’s
artistic ideology but very different in terms of melodic and harmonic
realisation. All
the remaining songs on the album were released posthumously, and it is not
clear if all of them would have been endorsed by the artist had he lived: for
instance, ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’, the tongue-in-cheek sequel to ‘Peggy Sue’,
might have been written and demoed by Buddy as just a joke — it has the exact
same melody and clearly follows the pattern of LaVern Baker’s original ‘Jim
Dandy’ vs. ‘Jim Dandy Got Married’. But the song was still picked up by the
Coral executives, dusted off, overdubbed with a rhythm section and rather
corny-sounding backing vocals, and released as the first single after Buddy’s
death — though, honestly, the A-side should have been ‘Crying, Waiting,
Hoping’, a song particularly famous for its clever overdubbing by the rest of
the Crickets, who had to work with Buddy’s demo and fill in the «echo» vocals
for the title, one of the few «post-Buddy» creative decisions on his work
that has become universally accepted even after the original demo had
surfaced — probably because without the echo vocals the little ladder that
Buddy has constructed in the place of the vocal melody seems to be naturally
lacking several steps, which his co-workers are only too happy to be able to
fill in. This particular tune the Beatles did not improve on, when they
played it live on the BBC — maybe because they highlighted the wrong George
on it (Harrison, whose vocal performance was quite flat compared to Buddy’s,
instead of Martin, who may have given them a few clues on how to gloss it up
properly). The
remaining five songs are of varying quality, which is even more difficult to
assess because of all the sappy orchestral overdubs. I don’t care much for
‘True Love Ways’, another standard-type ballad that’s more Sinatra than Buddy
Holly; I do care for ‘That Makes It
Tough’, as long as somebody bothers to strip it clean of the circa-1950 style
old-fashioned doo-wop backing vocals — in essence, it feels like a
potentially gritty country ballad that might have been great in the hands of
Hank Williams. ‘What To Do’ is a nice, but not outstanding, upbeat
pop-rocker; ‘Learning The Game’ is a good example of folk-pop that I can
easily envisage coming from the likes of the Searchers; and ‘That’s What They
Say’ was perfectly placed as the farewell song at the end of the album — many
a tear must have been shed at hearing Buddy sing "there comes a time for
everybody" in such a decisive, final
style, and even if he is obviously singing about true love rather than
you-know-what, this does not make the verse about "I didn’t hear them
say a word of when that time will be / I only know that what they say has not
come true for me" any less bitter-ironic. In
retrospect, the two volumes of The
Buddy Holly Story do a good job of illustrating all of the artist’s
sides, the great ones and the weak ones, the genius and the corniness. Truth
of the matter is, Buddy Holly was not an «Artiste» (with that decisive final -e):
all he wanted, like pretty much everyone else at the time, was to make pop
singles that would bring fame and fortune, and he was equally happy to record
melodically and spiritually exciting songs one day, and a bunch of corny
schlock the other one — which is why, honestly, I remain fairly skeptical
about the idea that, had he lived, he might have taken pop music to the same
heights as the greatest artists of the next decade. (At best, I think, he
might have attained the reputation of somebody like Roy Orbison — consistent
and always respectable, but well off the cutting edge once the British
Invasion swept away American resistance). On
the other hand, even his late period songs such as ‘Well... All Right’ and
‘Crying, Waiting, Hoping’ show that he was anything but spent as an interesting songwriter, and there is really no
telling what that songwriting style would have evolved into with the arrival
of new trends, from surf-rock to Merseybeat. Clearly, it would be «soft» — we
see a very clear tendency to tone down Buddy’s rocking side from his early to
his late days — but what sort of «soft» (Roy Orbison-soft? Brian Wilson-soft?
Engelbert Humperdinck-soft?) remains unclear. So just blame it on Paul
McCartney. |
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IN STYLE WITH THE CRICKETS |
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Album
released: December 1960 |
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More info:
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Tracks: 1) More
Than I Can Say; 2) Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu; 3)
Great Balls Of Fire; 4) Ting-A-Ling; 5) Just This Once; 6) Deborah; 7) Baby
My Heart; 8) When You Ask About Love; 9) Time Will Tell; 10) A Sweet Love;
11) I Fought The Law; 12) Love’s Made A
Fool Of You; 13*) Someone, Someone; 14*) Don’t Cha Know; 15*) Why Did You
Leave?; 16*) Smooth Guy; 17*) So You’re In Love; 18*) Peggy Sue Got Married. |
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REVIEW
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There
were a couple of problems with that decision, though. With Buddy’s passing,
The Crickets essentially consisted of just the rhythm section — Jerry Allison
on drums and Joe Mauldin on bass. They certainly could play, and both could
even compose a little, but neither of them could sing, play decent guitar
(lead guitar at least) or just have enough confidence to act as a front man
on stage. The guitar problem was the easiest one to solve, though: throughout
Buddy’s early years with the band, his friend Sonny Curtis would often
perform the function of a de-facto extra Cricket, and, in fact, according to
some sources, Curtis officially joined The Crickets even before Buddy’s
demise, some time in late 1958. With plenty of guitar playing skills, a solid
ability to compose new songs, and an established musical reputation, Curtis
rather nicely filled in the position of ship captain. However, he was not
much of a singer, at least not when it came to rock’n’roll, which was still
the main genre The Crickets wanted to play in. After
a short search, the role of lead singer went to Henry Earl Sinks, another
fellow Texan who had also made his first recordings with Norman Petty back in
1958, performing as «Earl Henry» on a couple of semi-decent, but not
particularly imaginative singles (‘Whatcha Gonna Do?’ is
a representative example of «Earl Henry»’s approach to rockabilly — sort of
like a watered down version of Johnny Burnette). Sinks only lasted with the
Crickets until February 1960, when he quit the band over either creative or
financial disagreements; just a few months before that, Curtis was drafted
into the army, which pretty much left The Crickets back where they were at
the moment of Buddy’s death. Unperturbed, Allison and Mauldin carried on,
recruiting yet another fellow
Texan, David Box, to replace both Curtis and Sinks at the same time —
however, since they’d already recorded plenty of new material with those
guys, In Style With The Crickets,
whose release was for various reasons delayed until late 1960, featured no
contributions from Box. The
results of those 1959 sessions were a pretty mixed bag — but, at the very
least, interesting. The main problem was obvious and predictable: there was
no way, certainly not at such short notice, to replace Buddy Holly with
anyone who could have his charisma, let alone talent and vision. Sinks is,
technically, a decent singer, closer in tone and timbre to any one of the
Everley Brothers than to Buddy, but no matter whether he is in «soft» or
«hard» mode, he fails to bring in any serious excitement. He’s just a singer
in a rock’n’roll band, just a-wanderin’ on the face of this earth, like so
many others; God did not grant him any particular gifts other than a desire
to live in the world of art. (Later on, he would have a career as a movie
actor that nobody has ever heard about, and after that, as a record producer
producing artists that nobody has ever heard about. Talk about tough luck
indeed!). Armed
with this rather morose replacement for Buddy, The Crickets make another
mistake by cramming the album full of covers of songs that are just too good
for them to be able to do anything of interest. ‘Rockin’ Pneumonia And The
Boogie Woogie Flu?’ Covered as close as possible to Huey Smith’s original
arrangement, its jokey New Orleanian flavor is only hinted at in this version
— no improvement whatsoever. ‘Great Balls Of Fire’? The collective talents of
Sinks and guest player Dudley Brooks on the piano do not amount to a tenth
part of the excitement generated by Jerry Lee Lewis on any of the studio or
live versions of the song ever captured on tape. ‘Ting-A-Ling’? At least in
this case they try to put their own spin on this old R&B classic from The
Clovers... by setting the vocal melody to the instrumental melody of ‘That’ll
Be The Day’, including the immortal intro riff and an almost note-for-note
recreation of the original guitar solo. Maybe Sonny just wanted, so very
badly, to record his own version of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ that he agreed to
settle for such an odd compromise; in the end, though, all it does is provide
some fuel for the discussion that all pop songs are really one, when you
learn to disregard minor insignificant nuances in chord structure.
(Ironically, the song that is closer
in melody to the original ‘Ting-A-Ling’ on here is ‘Time Will Tell’, credited
to Louisiana-born R&B songwriter Paul Gayten). However,
in spite of all these massively underwhelming covers, In Style With The Crickets still leaves plenty of space for good
songwriting. Most of Curtis’ and
Allison’s contributions here fall either under the easily predictable
category of «Buddy Holly could have written this» or the slightly more
surprising, but ultimately still predictable category of «The Everly Brothers
could have written this». For instance, ‘Just This Once’ is a fast-rollickin’
pop-rock number that is very much up Buddy’s alley; but immediately following
it is ‘Deborah’, a ballad whose guitar melody, lead vocals, and approach to
vocal harmonies owe much more to Phil and Don than to Buddy. ‘When You Ask
About Love’, released as a single (later to be covered by the rockabilly
revival band Matchbox in 1980, whose version was lovingly described as
«pukeabilly» in Record Mirror), is
mid-tempo Buddy Holly; ‘Baby My Heart’ is loud and proud Everly
Brothers-style rock’n’roll with more group harmonies. Interestingly, although
we rarely ever remember ‘Baby My Heart’, its intro riff will be recognizable
as the classic riff of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ ‘Shakin’ All Over’ —
they most likely nicked it from this song, given that it was released as a
B-side in the UK in April 1960, whereas ‘Shakin’ All Over’ came out in June
of the same year; just another reminder of how fickle the concept of
«original songwriting» really is. But
while the only historical function of ‘Baby My Heart’ might have been to
provide external inspiration for a much more enduring classic, its A-side has
deservedly received far more accolades. ‘More Than I Can Say’, driven by
Dudley Brooks’ gentle piano riff rather than guitar (the chord sequence here
eerily sounds like a shortened preview of the famous piano melody of Leiber’s
– and possibly Stoller’s – ‘Spanish Harlem’, which could have very well been influenced by this song), is a Curtis
original that is melodically equidistant from both Buddy and the Everlys, and
is rather a natural precursor to the gentle folk-pop sound of The Searchers.
Sonny himself takes the lead on the song, showing himself in possession of a
far more expressive and charismatic voice than Sinks — just not at all
suitable for singing a Buddy-style rocker, but for this kind of material it
is absolutely perfect. The result is empathetic sentiment without either
pathos or saccharine, reserved but deeply sincere, and far better than the subsequent hit covers by Bobby Vee and
especially Leo Sayer (who completely bypasses the «deep sincerity through
restraint» principle and ends up horribly oversinging it). Do not accept
inferior substitutes — the original version of the song as sung by Sonny
Curtis is the real deal
masterpiece. Perhaps
it should be added that it is also a masterpiece of positioning — being the
opening number on the album, its lyrics ("I miss you every single day / Why must my life be filled with sorrow
/ Miss you more than I can say") are difficult to construe as
anything other than a tender lament for the band’s dearly departed friend and
leader. Of course, when we get to the bridge section with the "do you mean to make me cry, am I just
another guy?" bit, that impression gets a little shattered (unless
we’re talking about a homoerotic connection between Buddy and Sonny, which is
never totally out of the question), but the power of first impression is
never to be underestimated. The only downside of this beautiful opening is
that it provides us with a false hope — the rest of the album never truly
lives up to it, and when a gorgeous original composition welcoming you to
the LP is immediately followed by two completely pointless rock’n’roll
covers, that feeling of heavy disappointment is hardly to be underestimated,
either. Still,
there is at least one more indisputable classic awaiting us later on: the
original version of ‘I Fought The Law’, a song much better known through the
hit version of Bobby Fuller in 1966 and then, of course, The Clash’s cover more
than a decade after Fuller’s. Why Fuller’s version was such a big hit and The
Crickets’ was not can only be ascribed to extra-musical factors — the band released
it as a B-side to the much less distinctive ‘A Sweet Love’, getting no
airplay, while Fuller had it as an A-side (not to mention the sharp rise of
public interest in the song after Fuller’s probable suicide several months
after the song’s release). Essentially, the two versions are very similar,
except that Bobby throws on a little musical reference to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime
Blues’ in his cover, and the production values are, of course, a little higher
for 1965 than they were for 1959 — also, it may be conceded that the song’s unusually
acute level of social conscience is fairly atypical of Sonny "Love Is All
Around" Curtis’ general style and would connect much better with such a
rockabilly rebel as the late Bobby Fuller. But we shouldn’t pretend that The Crickets
themselves do not do the song justice — and, for that matter, if you want 100%
anger and rebelliousness, The Clash blow both versions away anyway. I
came across a couple of interviews with Sonny where sensation-hungry
journalists keep bugging him about whatever it caused him to write such a
glorious outlaw anthem — and, as you can guess, he mostly just shrugs and
says something about writing it on the spot, in about twenty minutes, as a
country pastiche, never ascribing it any particular significance. Musically,
it’s really not that much, just another stereotypical Buddy-like pop-rocker;
and it does not really sound all that much like a rebellious anthem (not even
in the Bobby Fuller version, even if Bobby may already have sensed the
potential), but then again, neither does a heck of a lot of the whole «outlaw
country» thing. It’s just a catchy song with a great lyrical hookline, efficiently
hammered into your head through endless repetition. Could have actually made
a great prison work song if the tempo were slowed down just a bit — no sane
prisoner would ever dare to "break rocks in the hot sun" at such a
suicidal speed. By
this time, you probably get the general idea that In Style With The Crickets is a really, really mixed bag, combining utter throwaways with flashes of
genius — which makes it into quite a curious historical artifact, even if the
best songs from it have long since been hijacked by other artists. Fortunately,
the album remains in print, and one of the later CD releases even offers it
bundled with a bunch of bonus tracks from 1960 — several singles and outtakes
that already feature David Box on guitar and vocals, replacing both Curtis
and Sinks at the same time. They are rather poorly produced, and feature
little of interest other than the «completed» version of Buddy’s unreleased ‘Peggy
Sue Got Married’ and the original version of the folk-rocker ‘Don’t Cha Know’,
later also covered by The Searchers in an aesthetically similar, but
technically superior-sounding version. Overall, Box has a more lilting and
flexible voice than Sinks, but is a less interesting guitar player than Curtis,
so it’s not really clear how much of an improvement he really was. In
any case, the bonus tracks are nice to have, but not essential — although, to
be fair, the only truly essential track
on the album itself is ‘More Than I Can Say’, which, for some reason, nobody
could ever do more justice than its own creator. The best thing I can say
about the rest is that they are rarely embarrassing to listen to (with a
couple of the more obvious mismatches in style like ‘Great Balls Of Fire’). They
simply present very little progress, with the band more concerned about «preserving»
the spirit of Buddy (and, to a lesser extent, the Everly Brothers) than
trying to take risky guesses about where that spirit might have wanted to head,
had Buddy never mounted that plane. Which is, in itself, not a crime as long
as there is some legitimacy behind it (with Allison, Mauldin, and Curtis all
aboard, there’s plenty) and as long as it is mostly done in good taste and
style — and on that count at least, the album’s title certainly doesn’t lie. |
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