Dylan, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, and The Day the Music Did Not Die

65 years ago this week, young Bobby Z made eye contact with his hero, and three days later, Buddy was dead. Fifteen Buddy covers here by Dylan and various Beatles, Stones, Ronstadt, Springsteen, more.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

On this date in 1959, Buddy Holly and the rest of the rock ‘n roll “caravan” played a gig in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with plans to make their way in a cold bus to the next date in frigid Clear Lake, Iowa. The night before, a budding teen musician who hailed from Hibbing, Minnesota, made eye contact with Buddy (he later claimed) at a show in his hometown of Duluth at the National Guard Armory. The former Bobby Zimmerman would recall decades later:

I saw him only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn’t disappointed. He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only six feet away. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the eyes behind the glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit. Everything about him. He looked older than 22. Something about him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction.

Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I didn’t know what. And it gave me the chills.

Dylan would even cite the moment in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I’d have to start with Buddy Holly. From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin. I felt related like he was an older brother. I even thought I resembled him.

Buddy played the music that I loved, the music I grew up on—country western, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues. Three separate strands of music that he intertwined and infused into one genre. One brand. And Buddy wrote songs, songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great, sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype, everything I wasn’t and wanted to be.

That spring, in his high school yearbook, Dylan (see below) would forecast his future as: “Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard.'" A few weeks later he briefly joined a band backing the Buddy-influenced Bobby Vee.

Sadly, after the February 2, 1959, gig in Clear Lake, Buddy, Bopper and Ritchie, fearing another toes-numbing drive, would meet their fate in the small plane facing severe weather. You’ve probably read most of the facts and legends by now, such as Dion and Waylon Jennings allegedly giving up their seats on the doomed plane, so I will spare you more. Dion did a lengthy video memoir on the tragedy not long ago.

My favorite memory marking all this: As editor of Nuclear Times magazine in 1984, I shared a lot of political and musical fun with one of the junior editors, young David Corn. We were both big Buddy fans and determined to do something special to mark the 25th anniversary of his passing. David scheduled a party at his NYC apartment. I had the nerve, on a wild guess, to call phone information for Lubbock, Texas, searching for Buddy’s mom. They had no Holly but…real name was Holley, and they had that. I called and Mrs. Holley, first name Ella, picked up and we had a cheery little chat. I turned on my cassette tape recorder and asked her to send a special greeting to our partygoers and she did, thanking us for remembering her boy. As if.

A Buddy documentary produced by Paul McCartney had been released a few months (or years) back, but none of us had a tape. Again taking a flyer, I called old friend, and original E Streeter, Garry Tallent who I knew was another Buddy freak and had an apartment in New York. Sure enough, he had the tape, and he even brought it to the office that afternoon. So at the party I aired the message from Mrs. Holley, we rolled the tape, and David and a Nuclear Times intern strummed guitars and sang some Holly.

Then, to cap it off, we took a stroll ten blocks away to the tall apartment building on lower Fifth Avenue where Buddy and new wife Elena spent his final months. David played and sang a little more, then asked the aged doorman if he knew that Buddy Holly once lived in this building. That’ll be the day.

Below, a few covers by other Buddy fans, including a Dylan and George Harrison duet few have probably seen. Enjoy, then subscribe, it’s still free (this is a lot of work daily for no money, folks)! Check out my home page here for previous highlights and most popular posts.

Buddy’s Buddies

First, the poster for the fateful concert tour:

Rolling Stones, “Not Fade Away”

Modest Mouse, “That’ll Be The Day”

Fiona Apple, “Everyday”

Bob Dylan & George Harrison: Rough and little-seen live duet on “Peggy Sue,” 1987.

The Band, “Slippin’ and a Slidin’” from 1970 (I saw them do this live a few months earlier in Buffalo)

Linda Ronstadt, “It’s So Easy”

The Beatles, 1963 (so influenced by Buddy they modeled their name on The Crickets), here with “Crying, Wishing and Hoping.”

Paul, who bought Holly’s song publishing, here with a Buddy song covered by the Beatles early on, “Words of Love.”

John Lennon noodling around with “Maybe Baby”

Sandy Denny, “Playing the Game”

Springsteen and E Streeters live, 1978, “Rave On”

Lyle Lovett (who knows Lubbock well…all right). And, yes, I did see Blind Faith do this live in Toronto in 1969.

Jackson Browne, “True Love Ways”

John Doe with strange but moving “Peggy Sue Got Married”

Buddy’s old Crickets joined by Nanci Griffith….