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Sonny Curtis, Crickets Frontman Behind ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ Theme, Dies at 88
The Hollywood Reporter ^ | September 20, 2025 | Mike Barnes

Posted on 09/20/2025 1:28:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway

In addition to “Love Is All Around,” the Texan wrote “I Fought the Law,” “Walk Right Back” and “More Than I Can Say,” hits for The Clash, The Everly Brothers and Leo Sayer, respectively.

Sonny Curtis, the singer and guitarist who played with Buddy Holly, fronted The Crickets and wrote and performed “Love Is All Around,” the indelible theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died. He was 88.

Curtis died Friday after a “sudden illness,” his daughter, Sarah, announced on Facebook.

Curtis also wrote the rebellious “I Fought the Law” in 1958 and recorded it with The Crickets following the death of Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (“The Big Bopper”) and pilot Roger Peterson in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959.

The Bobby Fuller Four took the song to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, and it also was memorably covered by The Clash, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams Jr., Green Day, the Dead Kennedys and dozens of other acts over the years.

His songwriting credits also included “Walk Right Back” and “More Than I Can Say,” top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 for The Everly Brothers and Leo Sayer in 1961 and 1980, respectively.

To rectify an oversight, Curtis was inducted by special committee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 alongside three fellow Crickets: drummer Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan. (They were not inducted with Holly in 1986.)

In 1970, Curtis wrote and performed “Love Is All Around” — known for such lyrics as “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” — which accompanied footage of Moore tossing her hat into the air in the middle of a busy Minneapolis intersection for her fabled CBS sitcom that ran from 1970-77.

He had been given a four-page treatment of the show “about a young girl who gets jilted in this small community in the Midwest and moves to the big city in Minneapolis and gets a job at a news station and rents an apartment she has a hard time affording,” he told Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning in 2022.

“I homed in on the part that she rented an apartment she had a hard time affording and wrote, ‘How will you make it on your own? … this world is awfully big, and this time you’re on your own.’”

The second youngest of six children, Curtis was born on May 9, 1937, in Meadow, Texas. His parents, Arthur and Violet, were cotton farmers. He learned to play the guitar when he was 4, inspired by his uncles, Edd, Herb and Smokey, who as The Mayfield Brothers were one of the first bluegrass outfits in Texas.

Curtis was 15 when he first met Holly, and they formed a band with Holly’s high school friend Bob Montgomery. They performed on bills with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, and he played lead guitar on Holly’s 1956 song “Blue Days, Black Nights” and on his own composition, “Rock Around With Ollie Vee.”

After high school, Curtis left Holly to tour with Slim Whitman, then joined Buddy Holly & The Crickets in late 1958. He became the frontman after Holly’s death.

The Crickets recorded “I Fought the Law” for their first post-Holly album, 1960’s In Style With the Crickets, but it was not a hit for them. The LP also included “More Than I Can Say”; written by Curtis and Allison, it was a hit for Bobby Vee in 1961 and for Sayer, who took it to No. 2 in 1980.

Curtis had been drafted into the U.S. Army in 1959, and during basic training in California, he wrote “Walk Right Back” and performed it for Allison, then the drummer for The Everlys. The singers recorded it and brought it to No. 7. (Anne Murray also had a hit with it in 1978.)

Curtis moved to Los Angeles after the service and wrote jingles for commercials. He also had a solo career while also playing with The Crickets until the death of Mauldin in 2015.

Other Curtis songs were recorded by the likes of Glen Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro (“The Straight Life”), Keith Whitley (“I’m No Stranger to the Rain,” named the Country Music Association’s Single of the Year in 1989) and Andy Williams (“A Fool Never Learns”).

Curtis lived near Nashville was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991. Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Louise.


TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: buddyholly; hollywoodreporter; ifoughtthelaw; mikebarnes; rockandroll; sonnycurtis; thecrickets
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To: DiogenesLamp

Husband had a theory on how to slow down time. In a bored period, I put out a book proposal with an agent for a book on husband’s thoughts.

His idea was that when we live a life that is repetitious - when we park in the same place at the grocery, we come home at the same time to watch the same TV shows, and eat one of our standard meals - all those times merge together in our mind and seem like a single experience. Time flies as it skips over the sameness.

But when something startling happens, then we think back to each separate event clearly and that slows our perception of time.

So it was a book of 100 events that could be done by anyone any day that were so out of the ordinary that if you did one per day, your memory of the recent past would be so full of events that your sense of time passing would slow. A lot of the events were binding ones that pulled you closer to friends and relatives.

Husband is brilliant, bless his adorable heart!


21 posted on 09/20/2025 3:36:22 PM PDT by mairdie
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To: nickcarraway

It’s funny how time changes things.

I Fought the Law by the Clash is now a classic.

But it definitely wasn’t a hit, as this article describes it

It wasn’t even released in the US except as part of a bonus 7” single included with the second US release of a Clash album.


22 posted on 09/20/2025 3:46:04 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan
It wasn’t even released in the US except as part of a bonus 7” single included with the second US release of a Clash album.

Actually, It's kind of the opposite. It was released on an EP in the U.K. in May 1979. In late July 1979, it was released as the A side. Supposedly it got them their first U.S. airplay, but I don't know about that.

It may be the second most known version of the song, but I don't think it's in the top 20 Clash songs you hear.

23 posted on 09/20/2025 3:55:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: dfwgator

Where did you hear that?


24 posted on 09/20/2025 3:58:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: SunkenCiv

There are several recorded variants of the song (Crickets and Bobby Fuller):

1. Robbing people with a zip gun...
2. Robbing people with a shot gun...
3. Robbing people with a six gun...

There’s another interesting question in the Crickets version. They sang...

“I miss my baby and uh good fun...”

But did he really sing “I miss my baby and uh good ****”?

Either way, it’s a great song, and the Crickets’ version was the best in my opinion.

RIP Sonny.


25 posted on 09/20/2025 4:06:38 PM PDT by Fresh Wind ( "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine")
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To: Fresh Wind

I was disappointed that the article puts the Clash version in instead of the BF4.


26 posted on 09/20/2025 5:22:47 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpin' -- it's not just for DNC shills anymore -- oh, wait, yeah it is.)
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To: mairdie
Sounds like a pretty good theory. I know i've had classes that felt like forever, and day that felt like minutes.
27 posted on 09/20/2025 5:43:36 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp

I was in the computer field and we had frequent meetings that lasted all day but felt like a day was made up of a week’s worth of minutes.

I used to record a lot of my life in music videos as memories. This was an all day meeting of the Common Lisp Working Group in IEEE, of which I was secretary. It goes thru an absolutely typical day meeting that starts with everyone bushy-tailed, still amusing around lunch time, and then gradually everyone slows down, fades, and they even fall asleep. Precious memories of precious people in 5 min rather than 480 min.

X3J13 Common Lisp - Jun 1989 - San Jose - Joseph Blanchard
https://youtu.be/VvU3pJbZBj0


28 posted on 09/20/2025 6:17:42 PM PDT by mairdie
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To: nickcarraway

Yes Cost of Living EP.

Never released in US. US dint release EP’s like in Britain.

You’re saying the single that was included in the second US Clash album release was released as a single on its own also. That’s probably true, but it got no airplay, no chart.

My point is now it’s well known enough that people think it charted or was a “hit” as this article says.


29 posted on 09/20/2025 6:44:19 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: SunkenCiv

🔝🔝

It’s on the CD I have in the car at this very moment


30 posted on 09/20/2025 10:29:57 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: SaveFerris

I’m a little jealous that you still have a CD player in your car.


31 posted on 09/20/2025 10:31:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpin' -- it's not just for DNC shills anymore -- oh, wait, yeah it is.)
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To: SunkenCiv

😁😁😁


32 posted on 09/20/2025 10:32:01 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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