Episode 61: “That’ll Be the Day” by The Crickets

A history of folk music and 500 songs

by Andrew Hickey.

Episode 61.

That'll be the day

by the Crickets.

And so, far later in the story than many people might have been expecting, we finally come to Buddy Holly, the last of the great 50s rockers to appear in our story.

Nowadays, Holly gets counted as a pioneer of rock and roll, but in fact, he didn't turn up until the genre had become fairly well established in the charts.

Which is not to say that he wasn't important or innovative, just that he was one of the greats of the second wave.

From a 21st century perspective, Buddy Holly looks like one of the people who were there when rock and roll was invented.

But by the time he had his first hit, Bill Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, and Gene Vincent had all had all their major chart hits, and were on their way down and out.

Little Richard was still touring, but he had already recorded his last rock and roll record of the fifties.

And while Fat's Domino was still making hit records, most of the ones he's remembered by, the ones that changed music, had already been released.

But Holly was arguably the most important figure of this second wave.

Someone who, more than any other figure of the mid-50s, seems at least in retrospect to point the way forward to what rock music would become in the decade after.

So today we're going to look at the story of how the first really successful rock group started.

Because while these days, That'll Be the Day is generally just credited to Buddy Holly, at the time the record came out, it didn't have any artist name on it other than that of the band that made it, The Crickets.

Charles Hardin Holly grew up in Lubbock, Texas, a town in the middle of nowhere that has produced more than its fair share of famous musicians.

Other than Buddy Holly, the two most famous people from Lubbock are probably Whalen Jennings, who briefly played in Holly's band in 1959 before going on to his own major successes, and Mac Davis, who wrote several hits for Elvis before going on to become a country singer of some note himself.

Holly grew up with music.

His elder brothers performed as a country duo in much the same style as the Louvin brothers, and as a recording of Holly singing the old country song To Time in Woman in 1949, when he was twelve, before his voice had even broken.

He told me that he loves me better, hard to live and lose it all.

By his mid-teens, he was performing as Buddy and Bob with a friend, Bob Montgomery, playing pure country and western music, with Buddy on the mandolin while Bob played guitar.

He would also appear on the radio with another friend, Jack Neal, as Buddy and Jack.

Some early recordings of that duo survive as well, with Jack singing while Buddy played guitar.

last night

after

you said that

we were through

Why

should I

care

for you

after

you said that

we were through?

When Jack Neal, who was a few years older than Buddy, got married and decided he didn't have time for the radio anymore, the Buddy and Jack Show became the Buddy and Bob Show.

Around this time, Buddy met another person who would become important both to him and the crickets, Sonny Curtis.

Curtis was only a teenager like him, but he had already made an impression in the music world.

When he was only 16, he had written a song, Someday, that was recorded by the country star, Webb Pierce.

happiness there.

Buddy 2 was an aspiring songwriter.

A typical early example of his songwriting was one he wrote in collaboration with his friend Scotty Turner, My Baby's Coming Home.

The song wasn't recorded at the time, but a few years later, a demo version of it was cut by a young singer called Harry Nilson.

I let my best friend take my baby out to the show, uh-huh.

I saw him walking home that day.

Hey, hey.

And for me, friends, that was the beginning of the end.

Because my best friend took my girly pal away.

That makes the last time that I'll trust my love with a friend.

But it wasn't until he saw Elvis Live in 1955 that Buddy Holly knew he didn't want to do anything other than become a rock and roll star.

When Elvis came to town, the promoter of Elvis' show was a friend of Buddy and Bob, and so he added them to the bill.

They became friendly enough that every time Elvis passed through town, which he did often in those early years of his career, they would all hang out together.

Bob Montgomery used to reminisce about going to the cinema with Elvis to watch Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and Elvis getting bored with the film half an hour in, and leaving with the rest of the group.

After seeing Elvis, Buddy almost immediately stepped up his musical plans.

He had already been recording demos with Bob and Sonny Curtis, usually with Bob on vocals.

to be a cold

Why must a heart

that has been true be broken and sad so

empty and cold

I gambled my heart and I lost it the bass player on that song Larry Welbourne believed in Buddy's talents and lent him a thousand dollars a a massive amount of money in nineteen fifty five so he could buy himself a fender stratocaster, an amp, and a stage suit.

Holly's friend Joe B.

Malden said of the strat that it was the first instrument he'd ever seen with a gear shift.

He was referring there to the tremolo arm on the guitar, a recent innovation that had only been brought in that year.

Buddy kept playing guitar with various combinations of his friends.

For example, Sonny Curtis cut six songs in 1955, backed by Buddy on guitar, Larry Welbourne on bass, and Jerry Allison on drums.

Curtis would later talk about how, as soon as Elvis came along, he and Buddy immediately switched their musical style.

While it was Buddy who owned the electric guitar, he would borrow Curtis's Martin acoustic and try to play and sing like Elvis, while Curtis in turn would borrow Buddy's strat and play Scotty Moore's guitar licks.

Buddy was slowly becoming the most popular rock and roll singer in that part of Texas, though he had an ongoing rivalry with Roy Orbison, who was from a hundred miles away in Wink, but was the only serious competition around for the best local rock and roller.

But while Buddy was slowly building up a reputation in the local area, he couldn't yet find a way to break out and have success on a wider stage.

Elvis Elvis had told him that the Louisiana Hayride would definitely have him on at Elvis' recommendation, but when he and Sonny Curtis drove to Shreveport, the radio station told them that it wasn't up to Elvis who got on their show and who didn't, and they had to drive back to Texas from Louisiana without getting on the radio.

This kind of thing just kept happening.

Buddy and Bob and Sonny and Larry and Jerry were recording constantly in various combinations and were making more friends in the local music community like Wayland Jennings.

But nothing was happening with the recordings.

You can hear on some of them though exactly what Sonny Curtis meant when he said that they were trying to sound like Elvis and Scotty Moore.

closed

Or I won't be home, don't call or knock no more

These songs were the recordings that got Buddy a contract with Decca Records in Nashville, which was, at the time, one of the biggest record labels in the country.

And not only did he get signed to Decca, but Buddy also got a songwriting contract with Cedarwood Music, the publishing company that was jointly owned by Jim Denny, the man in charge of the bookings for the Grand Ole Opry, and Webb Pierce, one of the biggest country music stars of the period.

So it must have seemed in January 1956 as as if Buddy Holly was about to become a massive rock and roll star.

That first Decca recording session took place in Owen Bradley's studio, and featured Sonny Curtis on guitar and a friend called Don Guess on bass.

The session was rounded out by two of the regular musicians that Bradley used on his sessions, Grady Martin on rhythm guitar, so Buddy didn't have to sing and play at the same time, and Doug Kirkham on drums.

The songs they cut at that initial session consisted of two of the songs they'd already demoed Don't Come Back Knockin' and Love Me, plus Blue Day's Black Night, a song written by Ben Hall, a friend of Buddy's from Lubbock.

But it was the fourth song that was clearly intended to be the hit.

We've talked before about the Annie songs, but that was back in March, so I'll give you a brief refresher here.

And if you want more detail, go and listen to episode 22 on the Wallflower, which I'll link in the show notes.

Back in 1954, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had recorded a song called Work With Me Annie, a song which had been, for the time, relatively sexually explicit, though it sounds like nothing now.

That song had started up a whole series series of answer records.

The Midnighters recorded a couple themselves, like Annie Hada Baby.

Annie had a baby, can't work no more.

Annie had a baby,

can't work no more.

Every time we start to to working,

she has to stop and walk the babe across the floor.

Most famously, there was Etha James's The Wallflower.

Roll with Man Ring.

But there were dozens more songs about Annie.

There was Annie Met Henry, Annie Pulled a Humbug, even Annie kicked the bucket.

Annie kicked the bucket.

Oh,

Annie kicked the bucket.

And the fourth song that Buddy recorded at this first Deca session, Midnight Shift, was intended to be another in the Annie series.

It was written by Luke McDaniel, a country singer who had gone rockabilly and who recorded some unissued sides for Sun, like My Baby Don't Rock.

She's a high five mama with electricity view.

But she don't want to dig up these or original glue.

She's not a wiggle maker, that night I'm awake.

She won't rock.

Jim Denny had suggested midnight shift for Buddy, though it seems a strange choice for commercial success, as it's rather obviously about a sex worker.

Well, if you see old Annie, better give her a lift.

Cause Annie's been a working on a midnight shift.

If Annie puts a hair up on her head, paints him lips a bright, bright red.

Wears that dress that festival tight starts staying out till the middle of the night.

Says that a friend, give her a lift.

Well, Annie's been a working on a midnight shift.

Perhaps the label had second thoughts, as Blue Day's Black Knight was eventually chosen as the single.

rather than Midnight Shift.

When the paperwork for it came through for Buddy to sign, he discovered that they'd misspelled his name.

He was born Charles Holly, H-O-L-L-E-Y, but the paperwork spelt it H-O-L-L-Y.

As he was told they needed it back in a hurry, he signed it, and from then on he was Buddy Holly without the E.

For the rest of 1956, Buddy continued recording with Owen Bradley for Decker, and kept having little success.

Bradley became ever more disillusioned with Holly, while Paul Cohen, the executive at Decker, who had signed Holly, at one point was telling his friends, Buddy Holly is the biggest no-talent I have ever worked with.

One of the songs that he recorded during that time, but which wasn't released, was one that Owen Bradley described as the worst song I've ever heard.

It had been written by Holly and Joe Allison after they'd been to see the John Wayne film The Searchers, a film which later gave its name to a band from Liverpool who had become hugely influential.

Holly and Allison had seen the film several times, and they kept finding themselves making fun of the way that Wayne said one particular line.

I hope you die.

That'll be the day.

They took that phrase and turned it into the title of a song.

Unfortunately, the first recording of it wasn't all that great.

Buddy had been told by Webb Pierce that the way to have a hit single was to sing in a high voice, and so he sang the song far out of his normal range.

That'll be the day when you made it cry and say don't leave.

You know it's good because

that'll be the day

when I die

Around this time, Sonny Curtis stopped working with Holly.

Owen Bradley didn't like his guitar playing and wanted Holly to record with the session musicians he used with everyone else, while Curtis got an offer to play guitar for Slim Whitman, who at the time was about the biggest star star in country music.

So, as 1956 drew to a close, Buddy Holly was without his longtime guitarist, signed to a record company that didn't know what to do with him, and failing to realise his musical ambitions.

This is when Norman Petty entered the story.

Petty was a former musician who had performed crude experiments in overdubbing in the late 40s, copying Les Paul and Mary Ford, though though in a much less sophisticated manner.

One of his singles, a version of Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo, had actually been a minor hit.

You

ain't been blue

till you've had

that

He'd gone into the recording studio business and charged bands $60 to record two songs in his studio.

Or, if he thought the songs had commercial potential, he'd waive the charge if they gave him the publishing and the co-writing credit.

Petty had become interested in Rockabilly after having recorded Roy Orbison and the Teen King's first single, the version of Oobi-Dooby, that was quickly deleted.

When he heard Sam Phillips' remake of the song, he became intrigued by the possibilities that Echo offered, and started to build his own echo chamber, something that would eventually be completed with the help of Buddy Holly and Buddy's father and brother.

Petty recorded another Rockabilly group, Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids, on a song, Party Doll, that went to number one.

To be ever loving and true and fair, to run her fingers through my hair.

Come along and be my paparty doll.

Come along and be my paparty doll.

Come along and be my paparty doll.

I'll make love to you, to you,

I'll

When the rhythm orchids passed through Lubbock, they told Buddy about Norman Petty's studio, and Buddy went there to cut some demos.

Petty was impressed by Holly, though he was more impressed by Sonny Curtis, who was still with Buddy for those demo sessions.

And when his contract with Decker expired, Petty and Holly agreed to work together.

But they had a problem.

Buddy's contract with Decker said that even though they'd only released two singles by him and hadn't bothered to release any of the other songs he'd recorded during the year he was signed to them, he couldn't re-record anything he'd recorded for them for another five years.

Buddy tried to get Paul Cohen to waive that clause in the contract, and Cohen said no.

Holly asked if he could speak to Milt Gabler instead.

He was sure that Gabler would agree, but Cohen explained to him that Gabler was only a vice president, and that he worked for Cohen.

There was no way that Buddy Holly could put out a record of any of the songs he had recorded in 1956.

So Norman Petty, who had been secretly recording the conversation, suggested a way round the problem.

They could take those songs and still have Holly sing them, but put them out as by a group, rather than a solo singer.

It wouldn't be Buddy Holly releasing the records, it would be the group.

But what should they call the group?

Buddy and Jerry Allison both really liked New Orleans RB.

They loved Fats Domino and the other people that Dave Bartholomew worked with, and they particularly liked the song that Bartholomew had co-written for a group called The Spiders.

It hurts to know that she don't feel the same.

My head is spinning,

going round and round,

my head is spinning,

going round and round.

So they decided that they wanted a name that was something like the Spiders.

At first they considered the Beatles, but decided that that was too creepy.

People would want to squish them.

So they settled on The Crickets.

And so the version of That'll Be the Day that Buddy, Larry, Jerry, and Nikki Sullivan had recorded with Norman Petty Producing was going to be released as by The Crickets, and Buddy Holly's name was going to be left off anything that the heads at Decca might see.

Amusingly, the record ended up released by Decca anyway,

or at least by a subsidiary of Decca.

Norman Petty shopped the demos they'd made around different labels, and eventually he took them to Bob Thiel.

Thiel had had a similar career to Milt Gabler.

He'd started out as a musician, then he'd formed his own speciality jazz label, Signature, and had produced records like Coleman Hawkins's The Man I Love.

Like Gabler, he had been taken on by Decker, which of all the major labels was the only one that really understood the way that the music business was changing.

He'd been put in charge of two labels owned by Decker, Coral, which was being used mostly for insipid white cover versions of black acts, and Brunswick, which was where he released Rockabelly tracks by Johnny Burnett and the Rock and Roll Trio.

The crickets were clearly a Brunswick group, and so That'll Be the Day was going to be released on Brunswick.

And the contract was sent to Jerry Allison, not Buddy Holly.

Holly's name wasn't mentioned at first, in case Thee decided to mention it to his bosses and the whole thing was blown.

Norman Petty had assumed that what they'd recorded so far was just going to be a demo, but Theo said that no, he thought what they had was fine as it was, and put this out.

All your hugs and kisses

But the Crickets had still not properly finalised their line-up.

The core of Holly and Allison was there.

The two of them had been playing together for years.

And Nikki Sullivan would be okay on rhythm guitar.

But they needed a permanent bass player.

They eventually settled on Joe B.

Malden, who had played with a group called The Four Teens that had also featured Larry Welbourne.

Joe B had sat in on a gig with the other three, and they'd been impressed with his bass playing.

Before That'll Be the Day was released, they were already in the studio cutting more songs.

One was a song that had originally been written by Holly's mother, though she refused to take credit for it.

She was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, and and rock and roll was the devil's music.

She was just about okay with her son playing it, but she wasn't going to get herself involved in that.

So Buddy took his mother's song and turned it into this.

Maybe, baby, you'll be true.

Maybe, baby, I'll have you for me.

It's funny, honey, you don't care.

You never listen to my prayer.

Maybe, baby, you will love me someday.

Well, you are the one that makes me happy.

And at the same time, they also made an agreement that Holly could record solo material for Cobble.

That would actually be recorded by the same people who were making the crickets records.

But since he was coming up with so many new songs, they might as well use them to get twice as much material out.

There was no prohibition, after all, on him recording new songs under his own name, just the ones he'd recorded in 1956.

And they were recording a ludicrous amount of material.

That'll be the day still hadn't been released, and they already had their next single in the bag, and were recording Buddy's first solo single.

That song was based on Love Is Strange by Mickey and Sylvia, a favorite of Holly's.

Love is strange.

Lot of prem

take it for a game.

Want you again.

Holly took that basic musical concept and turned it into words of love.

Hold me close and

tell me how you feel.

Tell me love is real

That wasn't a hit for Holly, but even before his version was released the Diamonds who usually made a habit of recording tracks originally recorded by black artists released a cover version which went to number 13

Hold me close and tell me how you feel.

Tell me love is real.

Words of love, you whisper soft and true.

The crickets were essentially spending every second they could in Petty's studio.

They were also doing session work playing on records by Jim Robinson, Jack Huddle, Hal Goodson, Fred Crawford, and more.

In the early months of 1957, they recorded dozens upon dozens of songs, which would continue being released for years afterwards.

For example, just two days after That'll Be the Day was finally released, at the end of May, they went into the studio and cut another song they had patterned after Beau Diddley, who had co-written Love is Strange as a cricket side.

I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be.

Are you gonna give your love to me?

I wanna love you night and day.

You know my love will not fade away.

And on the same day, a holly solo side.

Every day

it's a getting closer.

Going faster than a roller coaster.

Love like yours will surely come my way.

Hey, ah hey, hey.

Every day it's a getting faster.

Everyone said go ahead and ask her.

Love like yours will surely come my way.

All these songs were written by Holly and Alison, sometimes with Molden helping, but the songwriting credits didn't really match that.

Sometimes one or other name would get missed off the credits.

Sometimes Holly would be credited by his middle name, Hardin, instead of his surname.

And almost always Norman Petty would end up with his name on the songwriting credits.

They weren't that bothered about credit for the moment.

There was always another song where the last one came from, and they were piling up songs far faster than they could release them.

Indeed, only a month after the Not Fade Away and Everyday session, they were back in the studio yet again, recording another song, which Buddy had originally intended to name after his niece, Cindy Lou.

Jerry, on the other hand, thought the song would be better if it was about his girlfriend.

And you'll be able to find out what happened after they decided between Cindy Lou and Peggy Sue in a few weeks' time.

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