Wednesday, December 27, 2023

We remember the greatness of Buddy Holly

Hard core Buddy Holly fans celebrate Dec. 28, as the date that the iconic rock’n’roll singer wrote his last song, “You’re The One,” to win a friendly bet.

It all took place on Dec. 28, 1958 (65 years ago), when Buddy Holly was back home in Lubbock, Texas, visiting his parents during the Christmas holidays.

 

Musician JP McDermott of Orange County, Calif., who is a Buddy Holly disciple, tells the story: “Buddy went down to the local radio station in Lubbock – KLLL (96.3 AM) – to hang out with friends Waylon Jennings, who was a DJ at the station, and Ray “Slim” Corbin, one of the radio station owners. 

During a live broadcast, Holly was commenting about how easy songwriting came to him. Jennings and Corbin challenged Holly to write an entire song from start to finish in less than half an hour, “and bet he couldn’t do it,” McDermott said. “Holly returned 15 minutes later with the lyrics and tune of ‘You’re The One.’”

 


Waylon Jennings


“The three of them recorded the song in the KLLL studio, with Holly singing and playing acoustic guitar. Jennings and Corbin accompanied Holly, softly hamboning and clapping as a substitute for drums. 

During that session, Holly revealed that he had been selected as the headliner for an upcoming “Winter Dance Party” tour. He was only 22 years old, but already a rising star in the music business. 

He recruited Jennings to accompany him as bass guitarist on the tour that intended to crisscross six upper Midwestern states – in the depths of winter. 

Holly also lined up Tommy Allsup to play lead guitar and Carl Bunch as drummer. The brutal schedule called for 24 concerts in 24 cities in 24 days. The tour launched Jan. 23, 1959, in Milwaukee.


 

An unheated bus kept breaking down, and the weather throughout the region was bitterly cold. 

After playing on Jan. 31, in Duluth, Minn., the performers and crew had to be “rescued” by authorities after getting stuck in a blinding snowstorm that blanketed a stretch of highway between Hurley and Pine Lake, Wis. 

Sources said the temperature was “at least 20 degrees below zero.” Bunch suffered frostbite on his feet during the ordeal and was admitted to a community hospital in Ironwood, Mich., just across the Montreal River from Hurley, so he was sidelined for a time.


Drummer Carl Bumch
 

Weary from the unpleasantries of bus travel, Holly decided to charter a small airplane to transport himself and band members Jennings and Allsup from the airport serving Clear Lake to the local airport in Fargo, N.D., separated by the Red River from Moorhead, Minn., which was the next stop on the tour. 

Holly said he wanted to get there, do laundry and get some rest…instead of shivering all night long on the rickety bus as it was plodding along the route – about 365 grueling miles to the Moorhead armory – for the Feb. 3 concert. 

When the other performers got wind of Holly’s plan, Jiles Perry “The Big Bopper” Richardson Jr., who complained of flu-like symptoms, persuaded Jennings to give up his seat on the flight. 

Ritchie Valens pestered Allsup for his seat on the plane. Although annoyed, Allsup agreed to let a coin toss settle it. Valens won. 

Roger Peterson, the 21-year-old pilot of the 1947 Beechcraft 35 Bonanza, departed from the municipal airport in nearby Mason City, Iowa, about 12:55 a.m. with “light snow and winds from 20 to 30 mph.” 

The plane smashed into the ground in Albert Juhl’s cornfield within a matter of minutes. All aboard were killed instantly, according to the coroner’s report.


 J.P. Richardson



Ritchie Valens


Incredibly, the Winter Dance Party organizers didn’t cancel or at least postpone the remaining 13 tour stops. The tour rolled on. Here’s what happened next: 

Jennings agreed to step up to fill the void as lead singer, and other artists who were part of the show – Frankie Sardo and Dion & The Belmonts – would assume larger roles in the concerts. 

Radio stations in the Fargo-Moorhead market put out an alert asking for local talent to volunteer for the Feb. 3 concert. 

Teenager Bobby Velline raised his hand and cobbled together a band of Fargo schoolboys to fill the bill. They came up with the stage name of “Bobby Vee and the Shadows.” Modeled on Holly’s style, the group was good and was asked to continue on the tour as the opening act.

 


Bobby Vee


Frankie Avalon and Jimmy Clanton were brought in to join the “Winter Dance Party” lineup on Feb. 4. Carl Bunch was released from the hospital and rejoined the tour on Feb. 5. Avalon came down with pneumonia on Feb. 9; Paul Anka and Fabian were brought in as his replacements. The tour ended on Feb. 15 in Springfield, Ill. 

Everything’s set for the return of the “Winter Dance Party” to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake – a big three-day event Feb. 1-3, 2024.



 

It’s going to be a special tribute to the musicians who performed their last show in Clear Lake 65 years ago: Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. 

We’ll check in at the Surf closer to the date.

 

 What else do we know about JP McDermott?

 “I love Buddy Holly’s music,” says musician JP McDermott. “There are so many great songs. This is one of the main reasons I play music. 

“At some point, I have played almost all of the 100 or so songs that Buddy recorded. I love diving deep into the history of the music, and the stories behind it.”


 

“I came to be interested in Buddy Holly through a very fortunate misunderstanding,” McDermott said. “Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1970s, I was exposed to a lot of ‘fifties music.’”  

“One of my favorite songs was ‘Runaround Sue.’ Browsing through some re-issue 45s in a local store, I happened on ‘Peggy Sue,’ confusing it with the other record. When I took it home and listened to it, I was surprised, but I was hooked. I’ve been a devoted Buddy Holly fan ever since.” 

Pause to consider the irony. “Runaround Sue” was released in 1961 by Dion (and co-written by Dion DiMucci and Ernie Maresca). It was Dion’s first song after breaking away from The Belmonts. 



Dion & The Belmonts survived the aforementioned 1959 Winter Dance Party Tour. Dion would say later that his “Runaround Sue” was a “compilation” of some of the girls he knew about while growing up in New York City’s Bronx neighborhood. 

On the other hand, Peggy Sue Gerron of Lubbock, was about the sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet. She was the girlfriend of drummer Jerry Allison, who was one of the original Crickets band members (along with Buddy Holly, Joe B. Mauldin on bass and Niki Sullivan on lead guitar).

 


Allison and Holly co-wrote the song in 1957. Originally, it was titled “Cindy Lou,” after Holly’s niece, the daughter of his sister Pat Holley Kaiter. Allison convinced Holly to switch the name of the song to “Peggy Sue,” as an expression of Allison’s love and affection for Miss Gerron.


 

The tune featured Allison, playing paradiddles on the drums throughout the song; the drums’ sound rhythmically fading in and out, a result of real-time engineering techniques by record producer Norman Petty.

 


Peggy Sue Gerron was impressed. She and Allison were still teenagers when they were married in 1958. The relationship dissolved six years later, however. 

Back to McDermott: “In college, I played in a New Wave band. I was playing a show at a little dive bar (The Gentry) in Washington one night in early February 1982 when it occurred to me that it was the anniversary of the plane crash. I stopped the set, and we played the only the Buddy songs we (barely) knew – ‘Oh Boy,’ ‘Maybe Baby’ and ‘Slippin' and Slidin’.’” 

“Soon after, I stopped playing in bands for a while – marriage, job, kids, etc. But I kept playing guitar in the living room and kept listening to Buddy’s music,” McDermott said. “Around the turn of the century, I really got the itch to play live again and started up a band. What to call it? Western Bop, of course, after Buddy’s early business card advertising both kinds of music – ‘Western and Bop.’” 

“Over the years, I have gotten so much joy out of playing this great music. We play pretty much everything Buddy ever recorded. There is just so much music, of such high quality, recorded so well, and with such variety that it never grows old.

 


“I’m sure I’ll be playing it as long as I live, and hopefully keeping it alive and fresh so that people hear it, and get interested, and learn more for themselves,” McDermott said. 

That may be a consideration for a New Year’s Resolution.

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