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Today the music lives

11/30/03

John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic

How much would you give to have been at this gig?

Elvis Presley was the headliner. And the opening act wasn't too shabby,
either - a teenage up-and-comer by the name of Buddy Holly.

Wanda Jackson not only was there in 1955 at the coliseum in Holly's
hometown of Lubbock, Texas, she was on the bill, too.

Jackson, a rockabilly singer from Oklahoma, performed between Holly and
Presley, who was then on the cusp of superstardom. The other guy also
seemed destined for big things.

"Buddy sang good," Jackson said. "His band was good, too. They had their
own sound. They weren't just trying to copy Elvis, which many people
were doing.

"The audience went crazy. . . . I thought, This young man has a good
future ahead of him.' "

Tragically, Holly died only four years later. But his elemental
contributions to rock 'n' roll would not fade away.

Jackson performs Saturday night as part of an all-star Holly tribute
concert at the Cleveland Play House's Drury Theatre, along with John
Mellencamp, Marshall Crenshaw, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci
Griffith, Bill Pinkney and the Drifters, Lenny Kaye, Kevin Montgomery
and John Mueller. The Bacon Brothers - Kevin and Michael - handle
master-of-ceremonies duties.

Tickets sold out in six minutes. The show promises to deliver a grand
finale for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's American Mu sic
Masters salute to Holly. He was one of the first 10 performers in ducted
into the rock hall in 1986.

Also on the agenda is a daylong conference Saturday at Case West ern
Reserve University, with scholars and musi cians weighing in on Holly's
artistry. Holly's widow, Maria Elena Holly, will be on hand for the
hoopla.

"Buddy's music has brought a lot of happiness to people," she said. "I
remember him saying to me, 'I want my music to be joyful. That's my
dream.' " Holly wrote a lot of his own material, bucking the norm at the
time. The guitar-playing singer and his band, the Crickets, also
established two guitars, bass and drums as a template for rock groups.

They notched a No. 1 single in 1957 with "That'll Be the Day," followed
by the Top 10 hits "Peggy Sue" and "Oh, Boy!" Holly and the Crickets
also recorded such future rock standards as "Not Fade Away" and "Rave
On."

In the 1950s, heartland rocker Mellencamp grew up listening to his
father's Holly records at home in Indiana.

"The further we get away from the original, the worse it gets, which is
why music is so bad today," Mellencamp said. "It's constructed by guys
my age and forced on kids. There's no magic.

"There was magic in Buddy Holly and the Crickets. . . . The songs are so
rich and plain-spoken. And the melodies have such a nice pop appeal."

Holly was famous for wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Behind the four-eyed
facade was a tenacious visionary who would not be denied.

On their very first date, Holly asked Maria Elena to marry him. They
tied the knot two months later, on Aug. 15, 1958.

Shortly afterward, Holly and the Crickets parted ways.

"People saw a shy, laid-back, geeky-looking person," Maria Elena said.
"But that wasn't Buddy. . . . He was very intense. When he wanted
something, nothing would stop him."

Holly died Feb. 3, 1959, at the age of 22. He was killed along with J.P.
"The Big Bopper" Richardson and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash near
Mason City, Iowa, en route to a concert in Minnesota.

Holly's guitarist, Tommy Allsup, who lost his seat on the doomed flight
to Valens in a coin toss, will anchor the house band for the American
Music Masters concert.

The rock hall tried to get the Crickets - drummer Jerry "J.I." Allison,
singer-guitarist Sonny Curtis and bass player Joe B. Mauldin - on the
bill, to no avail. Holly's ex-bandmates still are miffed about not being
invited to the ceremony when the rock hall inducted Holly, let alone not
being inducted themselves.

Before his death, Holly had been contemplating all kinds of career
moves.

"Buddy and I talked a lot about the future," said Maria Elena, who
remarried after Holly died and later divorced.

Holly wanted to do movie soundtracks, as well as duet albums with
Mahalia Jackson and Ray Charles, Maria Elena said.

"Buddy was interested in classical music, too," she said. "We were
planning to have a record company. He wanted to develop other artists.
He was really enthused about going to England. He told me, 'You'll see
how much talent is there. I'd like to record those people.'

"And look who came from there!"

Who knows? Maybe Holly would've signed the Beatles (their name was a nod
to the Crickets) to a recording contract.

"I'm sure!" Maria Elena said. "I'm sure he would've signed the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones [whose first album's opening track was a cover of
"Not Fade Away"] and others. He saw the talent out there."

In the 1960s, the Fab Four and other British Invasion acts "channeled
Buddy Holly's perception of what a good melody can do with the right
words put to it," said Joe Ely, a roots-rocker who grew up in Lubbock.
He took guitar lessons from a guy who lived in Holly's old house.

Holly "had these amazing, almost operatic melodies," Ely said. "I don't
know where [he] got them. . . . when he grew up there, on the dusty ol'
lost end of the earth. All of us who came up after Buddy figured he
must've had contact with aliens or something.

"His music sounds simple. But you try to play what he played, sing at
the same time and write the songs so beautifully, with wonderful chords,
melodies, changes, choruses and bridges. They were meticulously
crafted."

Alt-country hero Jimmie Dale Gilmore, another Lubbock-bred musician, had
his first recording session in the mid-1960s paid for by Holly's
parents. Gilmore reminded them of their departed son.

Holly was "one of those guys, like Elvis or Chuck Berry, who had a
permanent imprint on American popular music," said Gilmore, who plays
with Ely in the Flatlanders.

"I still love it when a Buddy Holly song comes on the radio," Gilmore
said. "In some of his songs, there were very innovative musical ideas,
heralds of what was to come."

Holly's ballad "Everyday" (covered decades later by James Taylor)
featured a celesta and slapped-knee percussion. Toward the end of his
meteoric career, Holly was dabbling with orchestrations.

"Buddy wasn't afraid to incorporate different sounds in his music,"
Maria Elena said. "If you listen to all of his songs, no two are alike."

By the 1970s, Don McLean's chart-topping requiem for Holly, "American
Pie," was mourning "the day the music died," and Linda Ronstadt was
notching Top 20 remakes of Holly's "It's So Easy" and "That'll Be the
Day." The 1978 film "The Buddy Holly Story," with Gary Busey in the
title role, further revived interest in the legendary rocker.

Even punks loved Holly.

"I used to tour with the Clash," Ely said. "They wanted to play Lubbock
because they knew Buddy was from there. They had a huge reverence for
him."

When bespectacled singer- songwriter Marshall Crenshaw released his
debut album in 1982, he often was compared to Holly.

"I fell in love with his music as a child," said Crenshaw, born and
raised in Detroit. "The positive energy of it really came across to me."

Crenshaw played Holly in the 1987 movie "La Bamba." Crenshaw also wrote
the Encyclopedia Britannica's Holly entry.

"He was the first rock 'n' roll performer to have a sense of intimacy in
his music," Crenshaw said. "Because he wrote the songs, they had an
identifiable personal stamp."

Holly also rubbed off on Jackson, who has been known to let a
Holly-style hiccup slip every now and then when she sings. "I only steal
from the best," Jackson said.

The long shadow cast by Holly extends through the modern- rock group
Weezer's 1994 hit "Buddy Holly" all the way to the Raveonettes,
performing Friday night in honor of Holly at the rock hall. The Danish
garage- rock duo adapted its name from the title of one of Holly's most
enduring rock anthems, "Rave On."

In conjunction with the American Music Masters series, an exhibit of
Holly memorabilia - including a pair of his glasses (recovered from the
1959 crash site) and one of his guitars - goes on display Friday at the
rock hall.

And what would Holly make of all this?

"I'm sure Buddy will be looking down from up there," Maria Elena said.
"He'll be more happy than anybody."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jsoeder@..., 216-999-4562



© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.