Buddy Holly - Remembered 60 years on

Buddy Holly's legacy - 60 years on

Colourised picture of Buddy Holly, England 1958

February 3rd 1959, the day the music died but didn't.

The legacy of Buddy Holly's musical life remains strong and rightly so. If you dig into the past, here was a performer whose music shaped much that followed.

Buddy Holly was in the right place at the right time, in post WW2 America. America emerged from WW2 in a better position than countries in the European region devastated by 6 years of war.

Bill Haley's Comets - Hot Rods and rock n' roll - 

ingredients that lit the fuse for a generation

In the Texas state, in 50's America, Western Swing, Hillbilly mountain music and country music were ingredients waiting when Bill Hailey lit the fuse commercially in 1954 with Rock around the clock.

Buddy Holly's journey through musical styles led to country and as soon as Elvis played Lubbock, Buddy's style changed overnight. In 1955, Texas Rockabilly became an important local style of music - like jazz, it moved forward gaining and developing as new players emerged on the scene.

Being able to pick up music from Mexican radio stations had an influence on Buddy and the Crickets too, Heartbeat being just one of Buddy's songs, with the Latin beat combined with a country music double-stop intro and solo. 'Tex-Mex' they called it.

Norman Petty the genius musical producer

Whilst Buddy Holly was emerging as a songwriter and evolving his musical group into the Crickets, another catalysing force was about to enter the story. 

Norman Petty had learned about electronics during his WW2 military service and became the Texas answer to Sam Phillips who ran the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis producing Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and countless other stars.

Like Sam Phillips and Les Paul, Norman Petty was pushing the technological and music recording boundaries. All three were using echo, microphone effects and multi tracking and producing ground-breaking sound.

Fender Sunburst Stratocaster

In 1954, Leo Fender put his legendary Fender Stratocaster guitar into production and Buddy Holly purchased one in 1956 with the help of his brother. This guitar looked futuristic then and has not dated really since, seeing off many imitators and copies.

In the studio, Buddy Holly's style and songs combined with the studio production and use of the then basic studio effects produced legendary music. The Stratocaster and his 4x10 Fender Bassman amplifier were integral to this process too.

Use of tripping echo by Petty, where Buddy's vocal line was decaying as he was starting to sing a new one sound very effective. Flipping the drums through a natural sound and echo chamber sound during the solo, was simple but effective. 

Buddy Holly used his guitar as more than just accompaniment. His guitar was used more dynamically, like a piano and right out at the forefront. 

Although Buddy did play lead runs on the guitar, various Crickets line-ups did include lead guitarists such as Sonny Curtis or Tommy Allsup for example.

Hank Marvin in 1960 - the influence extended to the glasses!

However the end result was arrived at, the legacy of this great music continues. You only have to play one of the tracks and the sound is just electric. There is something that just sets it apart from a lot of other music. It never dates.

Play along to Buddy Holly's songs and something mystical happens, you start playing things that you wouldn't normally play, phrases, notes, chord variations - it is mystical and plain spooky. It is almost like the legacy is pushing you on, evolving.

The Buddy Holly legacy even in its early days influenced guitarists who would influence others. In Britain, guitarist Hank Marvin who would find fame with the Shadows wanted a Stratocaster after seeing one on the Chirping Crickets LP cover, going on to play the first new one imported into the UK in 1959.

The Buddy Holly statue in Lubbock Texas

The Shadows (then the Drifters) backing Cliff Richard, recorded a live LP at Abbey Road studios including a Buddy Holly track the day before Buddy died. Hank Marvin developed an instrumental style of playing and covered a number of Buddy Holly tracks on his Hank plays Holly CD.

Although Buddy Holly never was able to use the tremolo arm in his playing, Hank Marvin did, incorporating it into his style, to help the guitar emulate a singing human voice.

Players including Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, Andy Summers and George Harrison amongst many, cited Hank Marvin as a major influence.Keith Richards was also influenced by Buddy Holly's music too, 'he had everything' Richards said on a television program about Buddy Holly. Indeed he did. 

Bobby Vee - who stepped in to play on Feb 3rd 1959

The immediate vacuum left by Buddy Holly's death was filled by artists such as Bobby Vee, who would later play with a version of the Crickets and put out some catchy hits such as 'Rubber Ball'. 

The music that followed was in retrospect syrupy and often bland, succumbing to a 'Bobby syndrome'  - a singer often named 'Bobby' whether their original name or not, usually wearing a sport jacket, driving a Ford Thunderbird and with an immaculately coiffured hair.

This fitted the direction America was going in the 1950's towards a consumer society of white picket fence, white middle class citizens living in a land of plenty and opportunity. And safe. Like something out of a 1950's soap series.

Long gone was the now out of fashion wild and leather clad style of Gene Vincent or MArlon Brando's 'Wild one'. Eddie Cochran's 'Something else' predated Punk Rock by twenty years, but was way ahead of its time. It didn't fit with the preppy and acceptable saccharine mush of the new decade of the 1960s.

Buddy Holly was in his last months refining his songwriting style and moving and developing his career into something bigger. His move to Manhattan in New York, a cosmopolitan 24-hour town, away from the staid and conservative Lubbock, was opening up new possibilities for him including acting. 

Interestingly, John Lennon, another performer greatly influenced by Buddy Holly also lived in New York in his final months. If you compare one of Lennon's last tracks 'Nobody told me,' you can hear a 'Holly-esque' echo laden sound, it is almost like the whole thing came full circle.

The simple memorial stone to Buddy Holly at Lubbock

With Buddy Holly's death, we are fortunate that Maria Elena Holly and Buddy's family have allowed the legacy of work and his life to be accessible.

With a Buddy Holly Centre and a museum devoted to artefacts Buddy owned in his life, we are thankfully able to see the legacy large as life and not hidden away for the privileged few or family to see.

Rave On - a great compilation album

In 1983 I bought a double cassette tape that was called 'Then came rock n' roll.' I still have it, on that was 'That'll be the day' by Buddy Holly and it was just such a great sound. 

Around that time I was in a band with some friends I had been at school with and I was in a second hand shop that also sold guitars and I found 'Rave on' a compilation of Buddy Holly's songs. It opened with 'Rave on'.

When I heard that song I was blown away, I played it again to appreciate the sound and what was going on. It sounded immense. Having tracked down many of Buddy's songs over the years, what is apparent is there was so much potential in that music, intensely written and recorded. Who knows where it would have gone onto?

In 1992 I saw the Buddy Holly stage show in London and bought the cassette tape, on that was a track I hadn't heard called  'Its so easy' and what a great track that is. In the round, there are just so many great tracks to choose from them in this legacy that is Buddy Holly. 

Can you choose a definitive Buddy Holly track? Difficult. There are so many. Everyone has a favourite. That's the great thing, the songs sound fresh as though they were recorded yesterday and people still love them.

Buddy Holly remembered - not fading away

The late great Buddy Holly

Every February 3rd, I take a Sunburst Stratocaster from the guitar rack and play along to some Buddy Holly songs.

The music is great and something strange happens, I often find that some really magical playing comes out of this.

Feb 3rd 1959

Sadly, one of Buddy Holly's players in his last line up Tommy Allsup died recently, his playing on 'Its so easy' is one of my favourite guitar solos from the Buddy Holly musical legacy.

Elvis rocks - on a piece of rock on the road to Aberystwyth, Wales

Although I like Elvis, Buddy Holly was a songwriter and performer which I think gave Buddy the edge, what would have been the situation if Buddy had lived on? Regardless of this, we still have a great musical legacy from both of these artists.

I really like to play along to their music and we are fortunate to have so many of their performances on film to watch.

Rockabilly - the Frankenstein music - and why it refuses to die!

Rockabilly - the true Frankenstein of music

a right old lash up and mash up of styles and sounds!

Define Rockabilly - not an easy job.

Ask any non-specialist DJ to define the genre and the examples they'd probably state as being worth mentioning might be a revival group or two.

So what are the roots? Well, its a right old melange of musical styles. The structure is usually around a blues type of sequence of 3 chords. The music is hard to define, it sort of was like adding different bits into a cement mixer and eventually you got something you could say 'well there's a bit of that in it.'.... 

The real down home roots of it is the Hill Billy and Western swing style, plus an injection of black blues music, which had suggestive lyrics, sometime but not always, toned down for the white folks.

That's where Bill Haley came from, as one of the originators of Rock and Roll, he served up a slightly cleaned up version of the original meaty music styles. Shake, Rattle and Roll, is one such number, slightly amended so as not to shock the local Vicar.

Ike Turner came along with his Rhythm and Blues style in his song Rocket 88, which came from the opposite side of the screen and then when Elvis jigged up the country music songs like you'd hear on the Louisiana Hayride television program, you were starting to get the cocktail stirred and built.

The real Howdy Doody of the music though, was the new sound. The electric sound.

Gretsch, one of the new breed of guitar makers 'gone electric'

a 6118 Anniversary model guitar, based on the earlier Electromatics

Rockabilly came along bang on cue with the new developments in music technology, namely the practical and purpose made electrical guitar and amplifier situation. Developments such as the echo chamber, tape echo machine, reverb tank and multi track recording all had their exposure around the start of the 1950's.

Elvis Presley with his 1942 Martin guitar

at the famous Sun Studios c. 1954

The first commercially made 'electric' guitars had appeared in the 1930's and after the hiatus of WW2, production started up again, building on new technology developed in the war.

The dedicated electric guitar, not merely an existing acoustic with a pickup lashed on to the body was now a recognised tool for the working musician. More likely to be found in the conservative venues of jazz and swing dives, being be-bopped in a Charlie Christian style.  

A 2015 Fender Stratocaster, little changed from the 1954 original

one of those 'right first time' designs

In 1954, California radio engineer Leo Fender came up with the guitar that changed music forever, the Fender Stratocaster. Building on the success of the Precision Bass and the Telecaster, his bolt together guitars took the Henry Ford production line approach.

Over in Memphis, Scotty Moore and friends were asked to back a young singer called Elvis Presley. Sam Phillips, the Sun owner had been looking for a white man who could sing like a black man and when Elvis jived up an old Bill Monroe song Blue Moon of Kentucky between studio takes, Phillips had found valhalla.

Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on bass and later DJ Fontana on drums, backed Elvis on guitar, in what would be some of the embryonic rockabilly into rock and roll music. It sounded alive and exciting, it still does over 60 years later.

Gretsch guitars in the 50's were rarer than they are today

Sam Phillips, Norman Petty and Les Paul were three movers in the music technology world of the 1950's. Sam and Norman, both record producers developed ways to get unique sounds from their artists, Les Paul, was a great innovator both on musical instrument technology and music recording fronts, besides his excellent playing ability and style.

Norman Petty did for Buddy Holly, what Sam did for Elvis. Gave him a great studio sound. This was a young man's music and both Buddy Holly and Elvis were young and vibrant, that's why the music sounds fresh, even today.

What Elvis and Buddy did, was to originally take old music and shake it up. Borrowing from the Western swing, giving it a harder edge and more pace.

But then it changed, Elvis was provided with songs and Buddy Holly started writing his own, the divergent paths away from the roots had started, the music was evolving. Inevitably, record labels wanted 'their' Elvis or 'their' Buddy and anyone young with a modicum of talent started to get into music, to be the 'next whoever.

It is interesting now to look back at the diverse plethora of artists from the 1954-57 era that had a go and put their efforts onto Shellac. Many were the classic 'one hit wonders' but some survived to move out into more 'acceptable' music styles in later years.

Rockabilly started to get the harder edge and a harder look. Gone were the check shirt ploughboy cowboy hicks of 1954 and in came black leather, greased pomps and loud motorcycles of the 'Wild One' era.

Oh, and public outrage. Much as would emerge 20 years later in the Punk Rock era.

So what about the modern rockabilly scene? Well, its a varied bag of groceries, that's for sure.

After the deaths of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and the call up of Elvis into the Army, Rock n Roll as a hard edge sound gave way to a pappy, preppy, bobby soxin' bubble gum music, where it was a Bobby this or Bobby that singing it. The sort of toned down pomp haired boy next door look, in a pastel sport coat and tie look that'd probably get you called a queer a few years earlier.

Yep, public outrage and corporate America cleaned it up... but not for long.

Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats, Gretschmaniac

In the 1970's, a movement started to gather ground to revive the corpse of the old music. At that time, many of the original 50's stars were still young enough to perform and made appearances on the circuit. They were probably amazed at the level of renewed interest.

The untimely death of Elvis Presley, likely sparked the interest in the music again and that brought the music back up. A number of bands who had been on the fringes of the pop world were now 'booked' to record and fill the new fashion.

The UK had a big following for the music, some of its late 50's stars such as Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and others were still making records and new 'revival' acts followed, bands like Matchbox, Darts and the 'Cod Rock' set of others 'sort of in the style of'. Many were performing their own material, some covered old hits.

The movie 'Grease' came out in 1978 and further ignited the interest, although it featured music written originally for the stage show version, which starred Shakin' Stevens for a while I beleive?

In 1980, a band called the Stray Cats hit the scene and they sounded more authentic than some of the revival offerings. Their debut hit 'Runaway Boys' sounded like a train coming past you, it was exciting, vibrant and they looked the part.

With this 70's revival, in the shadows, people started to buy up the old early 50's records, usually imported in from America by the bucket load. A scene started, reviving the clothes and bands started their own efforts at the music going.

These days it has all become rather 'serious.' People are adopting rockabilly as a 'lifestyle' not old geezers, but young people. Fitting out a house with old style furniture, dressing the part and prices for some of the artefacts and clothing from the era are getting out of reach.

A Gretsch 6120 Brian Setzer Hot Rod model

In the 1970's, the revivalists often never used the 'real' guitars the music was originally made on. The great fallacy was that everyone played a Gretsch or a Fender guitar on early recordings.

The reality was that in the 1950's, many couldn't afford one of these guitars at the time, a Gretsch 6120 being around $500USD.

The reality was that many used catalog bought guitars from the Kay range and others from Sears catalogs and the like. Often, they might not have a high fidelity amplifier and use an adapted unit someone with a bit of savvy had bodged up from what radio parts were around. Ironic that many are trying to emulate a crusty old sound with much better equipment!

So, some of our Roots Rockabilly fanciers of today adopt this 'down home' way and dig out the check shirts and strap on an old Sears guitar or something similar. That's what the hardcore does. Most others go for a Gretsch, because they give you the best sound I think.

A search on YouTube will get you any number of modern revival bands who are out there servicing a willing band of followers, not just in the UK and US but all over Europe and into Japan.

It is surprising to see how serious these people are about the music and the lifestyle.

Rockabilly, the original Frankenstein music.

And there's life in the old beast yet, just crank up the volts and bring the creation to life. Again.

But watch out for the angry villagers with their flaming torches....

Guitar reviews for you - Fender Mexican Standard Stratocaster 2015 sunburst model

                              The Fender Mexican Sunburst Standard Stratocaster 2015

The 2015 model Stratocaster made by Fender in Mexico is an updated version of their standard model guitar.

New features for 2015 include a gloss topped fretboard and headstock face which looks better than the previous model, medium jumbo frets and a parchment pick guard.

The woods chosen on the particular example I own are nicely grained.

So, a basic overview of the instrument that surely needs little introduction. This incarnation of the 1954 model is very little changed in some respects,

Body contouring is not quite to the level of the 1954, but is quite deeply cut and comfortable.

The neck is a slim C shape which is very much like the 1958 pattern neck, it is actually nicer than the 2013 model neck on a Candy Apple one I previously owned. The frets are medium jumbo and comfortable to play, being very well finished with no nasty exposed edges. The Maple used on the neck has a nice grain and is superbly finished.

The headstock logo is the 70's type as found on the small headstock 'Smith' type of Stratocaster of around 1980, when Fender changed from the CBS era large headstock design.

Machine heads are sealed 18:1 Schaller type which are smooth in action and maintain tuning well.

The guitar sounds great plugged in, it is resonant and this helps the sound, although not marketed as a 'vintage' sound in the same way a 50's or 60's reissue guitar would be, nonetheless, I have played it against some Buddy Holly CD's, instrumental music and modern music and it performs well on all counts.

The Tremolo block is a steel block as on the recent upgrade and is good, although the threaded length could be longer.

Build quality is certainly excellent, the finish is superb and the sound is great so it really satisfies, it is better than a 2013 Standard I owned for sure.

Although there has been a price increase on the guitars, I like them very much, I think they are definitely improved over the earlier specification. In fact they are like the USA ones in the mid range used to be, perhaps they are going for that market, but coming in at under half the ticket price of a USA Standard guitar.

I would definitely recommend buying one of these guitars because set up properly they are a dream to play.

Guitar reviews for you - Tokai TST50 Stratocaster in Fiesta Red 1983 lawsuit model

                                         

Tokai TST50 (lower) and Fender 59 Stratocaster (top)

The best maple neck Stratocaster that Fender made originally was the 1958 and 59 models. The slim C-shape neck was a joy to play and players like Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin of the Shadows.

In the 1970's a bloated CBS run Fender Musical Instruments suddenly became aware of a whole industry of Asian usurpers who were making guitars like theirs only better. Having owned a 75 Stratocaster and a 1983 Tokai, the Tokai is the better guitar.

The TST50 really hit the UK market bigtime in 1983 and 1984 although it had been in production since 1982. Essentially it was a replica of the 58/59 Fender Stratocaster. Having been precisely measured from a 1950's original, it could not fail to be a highly playable and amazing sounding instrument. It did not disappoint.

With a slim C shape neck, deep cut out contours on the body, it was a revelation. If you going to buy a copy, this high end guitar was going to be it. Until they fell foul of a trademark word on the strapline of their decal and Fender took action.

The original Tokai guitars had the Tokai name in a 'spaghetti' style as on the vintage guitars, during legal action, the logo became a block letter logo. It later reverted to a spaghetti style.

Essentially, Tokai had replicated the original Fender Stratocaster to a degree that was unheard of, having to change some wording to escape easy pickings for a lawyer, at a distance, the guitars looked like the real thing.

Although now available again with the Fender headstock shape that they had been forced to abandon in the 90's, the guitars are essentially superb as they ever were.

Original Tokai TST50's were £199 in 1983 with an optional tweed hard case at £50 on top. Second hand these guitars are around £400-900 depending on age, condition and finish.

They are amazing to play and I regret selling my first one and had to wait 18 years to find another. So if you do see one for sale, they are a good investment as well as player.