Phil and Buddy were best friends but Buddy’s death devastated Don even more to the point he couldn’t even go to the funeral and wouldn’t fly on planes for years after.
Right before his death, Buddy was writing a song for Don and Phil and Phil and Buddy sang backup (falsetto) on a record Buddy produced for Lou Gordiano.
Both the Everly’s and Holly were huge influences not just for the Beatles but many UK artists of the 1960’s.
I have a great picture of Buddy playing a lick on his guitar, Jerry Lee Lewis watching Buddy like he is trying to change it over to piano, and Don just standing there, mouth agape, in awe.
Every time one of the great ones dies I think of Don McClean’s THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED. It dies a little each time.
There’s an old cassette somewhere of my brother and be singing BYE BYE LOVE. It was taped back in the mid 70s. I sang Don’s part and my brother sang Phil’s. We would also sing their songs while we picked cotton. My brother is gone. Now we say goodbye to Phil.
Had a friend once how had a piece of the airplane Buddy was killed in. I think it ended up being donated to a museum. His father was in the area and picked it up. His father, being an old man, didn’t know who Buddy Holly was.
I’ve heard artistic types say if Buddy hadn’t died, there would have been no Elvis. And if James Dean hadn’t died there would have been no Paul Newman. I don’t think they mean Elvis and Newman took their places. They mean there was only room for so many.