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Next Tuesday (Feb. 3) marks the 50th anniversary of the most famous plane crash in rock'n'roll history, an accident that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Don McLean famously referred to it as "the day the music died" in his 1971 epic, "American Pie." Holly, who was just 22 when he died, holds a unique distinction: He had the shortest lifespan of any artist who has received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award............................
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Losing Buddy like that was one of my biggest heartaches, especially as a lad of 15 years of age.

We have lost many singers way too early.

Why don't you tell us who you miss and who left us too early?

-- Edited by PurplePeopleEater at 21:28, 2009-01-31

http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20090131&Category=Ent&ArtNo=901300157&SectionCat=ENT10&Template=printart

Back Article published Jan 31, 2009
Holly left many marks on music
By HOWARD DUKES Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND Glenn Gass has a simple way to determine Buddy Hollys musical legacy.

A lot of people got to know Buddy Holly through other people doing his songs, the Indiana University Bloomington music professor says.

Thats how Gass learned about Holly, who died in a plane crash along with fellow rock n roll stars Ritchie Valens and J.P. Big Bopper Richardson on Feb. 3, 1959.

Gass was a toddler when Holly died, so his introduction to Hollys music came through cover versions performed by such British bands as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

(The Beatles) did Words of Love and The Rolling Stones did Not Fade Away, Gass says. A lot of bands were covering Buddy Holly songs, and Id see (the song credited to) Buddy Holly or Charles Hardin Holley (Hollys legal name), and Id know that The Beatles didnt make this song.

Gass says that his big brother hipped him to Holly.

Then hed play me the original version.

In later years, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Don McLean all covered Holly songs, and McLeans 1971 song American Pie was inspired by Hollys sudden death.

That is the mark of a great songwriter, Gass says. The songs hold up so well that other people do them, too.

Doug Rice, a guitarist and leader of the band Beat 66, has memories of the day the music died.

I delivered the newspaper that day, he says. I was about 12 years old.

Rice says he actually liked the Big Bopper more than Holly and that he was lukewarm toward the music called rock n roll at that time.

I didnt particularly like Elvis, and I thought Buddy Holly was OK, but who I really liked was The Everly Brothers, he says.

Rice says he was probably turned off by early rock n rolls fusion with country music.

I saw rock as low class, he says. I saw it as hillbilly music.

Rice heard The Beatles five years later, and he fell in love with their music. He also learned Holly influenced The Beatles, right down to their name being an homage to Hollys band, The Crickets.

Buddy Holly kind of defined the model for The Beatles of using two guitars, bass and drums, Rice says.

Local author Gary Clevenger says Holly left a cultural impact in other ways.

Clevenger is editing a book of essays about Holly, the Big Bopper, Valens and pilot Roger Peterson, who also died in the plane crash.

Clevenger says John Lennon was reluctant to perform while wearing his glasses until he saw footage of Holly in concert while wearing his signature horn-rimmed glasses.

Howard Kramer, a curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, agrees with Clevenger that Holly may have been rocks first Every Man.

Chuck Berry was very cool with the thin mustache and he was a showman, Kramer says. Buddy was this tall guy and he wore those glasses. People saw him and felt that they could (make music), too.

Billy McGuigan says the common man sensibility that Holly brought to the music can be heard in the energy of rock music.

Anytime you put on a record by somebody who started in a garage, Buddy Holly is there, the actor and musician says.

McGuigan, who is based in Omaha, Neb., played Holly in South Bend Civic Theatres September 2007 production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story and also performs a Holly tribute show called Rave On. Last Sunday, McGuigan completed a three-week run in The Beatles tribute show Yesterday and Today at Civic, where he set the box office record with Buddy.

That Every Man veneer, however, belied the fact that Holly was a brilliant songwriter. The fact that British acts such as The Rolling Stones were influenced by Holly also reveals the key role the guitarist played in spreading rock music to other parts of the world, Kramer says.

Gass says it isnt surprising that many fans of The Beatles wound up idolizing Holly. He believes it is likely that Holly is one of the few 1950s rock n roll stars who could have had success in the 1960s and beyond.

I think, of all of the 1950s artists, that he was the most varied, Gass says. He could do a sweet ballad with strings, and he could also do a hard rock song and a mid-tempo pop song.

Holly loved to experiment with different instruments and studio techniques, Gass says, and he embraced overdubbing well before it became a common practice in the industry.

He was working on an album of Ray Charles songs when he died, he says. He was very inquisitive, and for a guy who died at age 22, he would have been coming right into his prime at the time when The Beatles came to America.

Kramer says it isnt clear Holly would have been any more successful in the 1960s than any of his 50s contemporaries.

Holly, however, would have had plenty of other options. Kramer says Holly could have been a successful country artist as well.

Hollys death means Kramer and Gass can only speculate on what might have been, but his death also means he will forever be a rock n roll pioneer to his fans.

Buddy never got the chance to make a caricature of himself, McGuigan says. Well always have him at 22. As Buddy says, Death is very often referred to as a good career move.




Staff writer Howard Dukes: hdukes@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6369

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/38783382.html

http://www.startribune.com/photos/?c=y&img=2maria0202.jpg


StarTribune.com
Buddy Holly's wife to attend 50th anniversary tribute

By PAMELA HUEY, Star Tribune

February 2, 2009

Fifty years ago Monday, Maria Elena Holly talked by phone with her husband, Buddy, as he was about to take the stage at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.

He promised to call her from Moorhead, Minn., the next stop on the Winter Dance Party Tour. He didn't tell her he was planning to fly.

"He always said to me, 'When I get to the next one, I'll give you a call,'" she said in a telephone interview Sunday from Iowa. "I said, 'Make sure you do, so I know you got there safe.'" She never got that call.

It's now legend: After the show at the Surf on Feb. 2, 1959, Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. (the Big Bopper) Richardson boarded a single-engine plane that crashed shortly after takeoff. The three and the pilot were killed.

Tonight at the Surf, Maria Elena Holly, 73, will join a long lineup of old rock 'n' rollers -- including Tommy Allsup, who was on the '59 tour, and Bobby Vee, who filled in at the Moorhead show -- for a 50th-anniversary tribute to "The Day the Music Died."

"Celebrating Buddy's music, that's what I'm here for," she said. "I actually have a bittersweet feeling because, of course, you can't stop thinking this is where it happened. But when I come in and see all the fans that are here, 2,000 people at the Surf, dancing and enjoying themselves, that erases from my mind that this is where this happened."

Maria Elena Santiago married Charles Hardin Holley (family spelling) in August 1958, about two months after they met in New York City, where she worked for a music publisher. After his death, she eventually remarried, had three children and divorced.

Maria Elena, now living in Dallas, has dedicated her life to preserving Holly's musical legacy. That legacy is evident, she says, by the way his music inspired other rock legends, including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

"What he really wanted was for his music to be liked and enjoyed, and 50 years later, it is still fresh. ... You hear the fans say, 'Oh, this music will never die.'"

Fans also tell her that his music appeals across generations. "You can see at the Surf -- they bring their children and you see them dancing to Buddy's music."

She has vivid memories of the last time she saw him. They were living in a New York City apartment and he took the gig with the Midwest Winter Dance Party tour because they needed the money.

Ordinarily, she accompanied him. But she was pregnant (she later lost the baby), and he insisted she stay home.

"He said, 'Honey, it's just going to be two weeks. I don't want you to get sick and lose our baby.' Still, I had my suitcases all beside the door, and up to this day, I say to myself, 'My God, I should have put my foot down and followed him there because I know as a fact, he would have never, never [taken a plane]. I would have taken over and found new transportation."

The tour had been plagued by frozen buses that broke down and a travel schedule that pingponged across the Upper Midwest. She said Buddy chartered the airplane in Mason City to give him time to make arrangements for better buses.

Maria Elena, who is terrified of flying in small planes, also blames the service that chartered the plane for allowing a takeoff in bad weather.

But she tries to remember the good times and revel in the joy his music brings to people: "That is really my consolation for losing Buddy at such a tender age."

Pamela Huey 612-673-7044

I loved his sound.

Tonto wrote:

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Check out some Def Leppard. That's some pretty awesome stuff at least the early stuff was. You know Hysteria, Adrenalize, Pyromania. Also like Barbara Mandrell and Paula Abdul. Also love the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera. Check out All I ask of You." Would love to hear Shania sing All I ask of You.
Warmest regards as always,
Tonto

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This thread is about singers who have departed from this mortal plane.