The Day Buddy (but not his music) Died
As annual Holly day nears, I reflect on my phone chat with his mom plus covers by: Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Lennon, Ronstadt, Lyle Lovett, Modest Mouse, The Band, Fiona Apple, more.
Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.
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. There Buddy, Bopper and Ritchie 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. Photo above shows a memorial at the crash site.
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. 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.”
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).
John Doe with strange but moving “Peggy Sue Got Married”
Cartoon of the Day
Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.