Buddy Holly, rock music genius

Buddy's music is so musical. The number of great recordings he made in his very short life places him at or beyond the level of any musical artist in almost any category.

They are rock mountains that nobody has climbed. The diversity of Buddy's music is also profound. "Moondreams" and "True Love Ways" are musically as advanced as anything by the great popular composers. Gershwin or Berlin would have marveled at these compositions.

His electric guitars were raw, but controlled like bullwhips. They jingle and jangle freely in "That'll Be the Day" and "Oh Boy," and they snake around in "Words of Love."

The Beatles and the Stones became the behemoths they are on the back of Buddy Holly and the records he made before anyone made records or wrote songs like his. Aside from his geek image and his sudden and cruel death, his music is a wonder that still contains the potency of its original magic. Buddy was a genuine original. He was a genius.

Buddy's death, for me, an impressionable 13-year-old, delivering papers, was an enormous tragedy. The cover photo of the posthumously released "Buddy Holly Story" and "The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2," coupled with liner notes written by his widow, Maria, created a sense of grief that lived inside of me, until I was able to exorcize it with the opening verse of "American Pie."

Through my relationship with Buddy, I was able to discover my peculiar writing talent and, much to my amazement, help bring Buddy and his music back from the dead. In a sense, "American Pie" contains the spiritual connection to Buddy Holly that was always in me. It's as if we both gave each other new life.

I can safely say that Buddy Holly has had no influence on me :)

But seriously...50 years on he is still part of rock's iconography with the glasses and the Stratocaster to say nothing of his music which matured and changed an astonishing amount.

Holly's chords-only guitar solo in 'Peggy Sue' is 1,000 times more interesting and appealing to me than any maimed-cat wailing produced by Jimi Hendrix.

22 years old. That in itself is staggering for what he achieved especially when you consider the stovepipe bureaucracy that was the record business at that time....real rock n roll was being viewed as a threat and the Fabians and Paul Ankas were being trotted out as the safe alternative. As a white man Holly didn't face the same hurdles as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley or Little Richard but Holly had his mischievous and 'real' side also...he was 22!!!

Norman Petty certainly took advantage of Holly at times by changing songwriting credits in order to receive royalties but Petty was willing and able to provide the studio time and energy that might not have been otherwise available to a young buck (similar to Sam Phillips' efforts with Elvis).

A realist will admit that his move to NYC and proximity to that record business already had him changing direction from rockabilly & guitar-based pop to the strings-n-ballads side of the fence but who knows if he would have remained there.

True Love Wayss is a masterpiece!

Try to find the Re-Mastered version title of his 20 Hits "From the Original Tapes" that was remastered by Steve Hoffman on MCA. TLW is last track and has some studio chatter at the beginning so you get a sense of the studio dynamics. REALLLY AWESOME SOUND on this CD, too!!!

This BH "Hits" complilation was Steve's first commercial remastering in the 80's on MCA and created the entire "Remastering from original tapes" industry.

Steve's mastering version is out of print so it's hard to find. Easily THE best sounding version of any BH album. If you have problems finding, contact me and I may be able to help you.

Here is Amazon's link of the album but there are different versions. Be sure to find Steve's for the best sounding CD.

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