Charles Hardin Holley, known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll.
60 Facts About Buddy Holly
2.
Buddy Holly was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas, during the Great Depression, and learned to play guitar and sing alongside his siblings.
3.
Buddy Holly's style was influenced by gospel music, country music, and rhythm and blues acts, which he performed in Lubbock with his friends from high school.
4.
Buddy Holly made his first appearance on local television in 1952, and the following year he formed the group "Buddy and Bob" with his friend Bob Montgomery.
5.
Buddy Holly opened for Presley three times that year; his band's style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll.
6.
Unhappy with Bradley's musical style and control in the studio, Buddy Holly went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", among other songs.
7.
Buddy Holly made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1958 and soon after toured Australia and then the UK.
8.
Buddy Holly is often regarded as the artist who defined the traditional rock-and-roll lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums.
9.
Buddy Holly was a major influence on later popular music artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Hollies, Elvis Costello, Dave Edmunds, Marshall Crenshaw, and Elton John.
10.
Buddy Holly was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986.
11.
Buddy Holly was of mostly English and Welsh descent, and had small amounts of Native American ancestry as well.
12.
Buddy Holly was baptized a Baptist, and the family were members of the Tabernacle Baptist Church.
13.
The elder Holley brothers performed in local talent shows; on one occasion, Buddy Holly joined them on violin.
14.
At age 11, Buddy Holly took piano lessons but abandoned them after nine months.
15.
Buddy Holly switched to the guitar after he saw a classmate playing and singing on the school bus.
16.
Buddy Holly's parents bought the guitar from a pawnshop, and Travis taught him to play it.
17.
Buddy Holly would sit in his car with Curtis and tune to distant radio stations that could only be received at night, when local transmissions ceased.
18.
Buddy Holly was further encouraged after seeing Elvis Presley perform live in Lubbock, whose act was booked by Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV.
19.
On January 26,1956, Buddy Holly attended his first formal recording session, which was produced by Owen Bradley.
20.
Buddy Holly attended two more sessions in Nashville, but with the producer selecting the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became increasingly frustrated by his lack of creative control.
21.
Now playing lead guitar, Buddy Holly achieved the sound he desired.
22.
Recordings credited to the Crickets would be released on Brunswick, while the recordings under Buddy Holly's name were released on another subsidiary label, Coral Records.
23.
Buddy Holly booked them for appearances in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and New York City.
24.
Buddy Holly was impressed by Allsup and invited him to join the Crickets.
25.
Buddy Holly asked her out on their first meeting and proposed marriage to her on their first date.
26.
Petty's suggestion created friction with Buddy Holly, who had started to question Petty's bookkeeping.
27.
Santiago later said that Buddy Holly was keen to learn fingerstyle flamenco guitar and that he would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there.
28.
Buddy Holly planned collaborations between soul singers and rock and roll.
29.
Buddy Holly wanted to make an album with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson.
30.
Buddy Holly had ambitions to work in film and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
31.
Buddy Holly took care of the laundry and equipment set-up and collected the concert revenues.
32.
Buddy Holly planned to retrieve his royalties from Petty and to later fire him as manager and producer.
33.
At the recommendation of the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly hired lawyer Harold Orenstein to negotiate his royalties.
34.
Under New York law, because Buddy Holly's royalties originated in New York and were directed out of the state, the payments were frozen until the dispute was settled.
35.
Petty then could not complete the transfers to Buddy Holly, who considered him responsible for the missing profit.
36.
Buddy Holly produced the single "Jole Blon" and "When Sin Stops " for Jennings.
37.
Buddy Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music, recording, and publishing scene.
38.
The split was amicable and based on logistics: Buddy Holly had decided to settle permanently in New York, where the business and publishing offices were, and the Crickets preferred not to leave their home state.
39.
Buddy Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock and visited Jennings's radio station in December 1958.
40.
Buddy Holly's idea was to depart following the show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, via Fargo, North Dakota, allowing them time to rest and launder their clothes and avoid a rigorous bus journey.
41.
The report did not mention a gun belonging to Buddy Holly that was found by a farmer two months after the crash.
42.
Buddy Holly's funeral was held on February 7,1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock.
43.
Buddy Holly's body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the eastern part of the city.
44.
Buddy Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.
45.
Buddy Holly's singing style was characterized by his vocal hiccups and his alternation between his regular voice and falsetto.
46.
Buddy Holly's "stuttering vocals" were complemented by his percussive guitar playing, solos, stops, bent notes, and rhythm and blues chord progressions.
47.
Buddy Holly often strummed downstrokes that were accompanied by Allison's "driving" percussion.
48.
Buddy Holly bought his first Fender Stratocaster, which became his signature guitar, at Harrod Music in Lubbock for $249.50.
49.
Fender Stratocasters were popular with country musicians; Buddy Holly chose it for its loud sound.
50.
Buddy Holly played his first Stratocaster, a 1954 model, until it was stolen during a tour stop in Michigan in 1957.
51.
The brothers advised Buddy Holly to replace his old-fashioned glasses with horn-rimmed glasses, which had been popularized by Steve Allen.
52.
The new release was successful enough to warrant an album drawing upon the other Buddy Holly demos, using the same studio personnel, in January 1960.
53.
Buddy Holly developed in collaboration with Petty techniques of overdubbing and reverb, while he used innovative instrumentation later implemented by other artists.
54.
Buddy Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.
55.
In 1980, Grant Speed sculpted a statue of Buddy Holly playing his Fender guitar.
56.
Buddy Holly was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
57.
The name of the British rock band the Hollies is often claimed as a tribute to Buddy Holly; according to the band, they admired Buddy Holly, but their name was mainly inspired by sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas 1962.
58.
Buddy Holly was depicted in a 1989 episode of the science-fiction television program Quantum Leap titled "How the Tess Was Won"; Buddy Holly's identity is only revealed at the end of the episode.
59.
Buddy Holly's follow up to that hit song is featured in the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola film Peggy Sue Got Married, in which a 43-year-old mother and housewife facing divorce played by Kathleen Turner is thrust back in time and given the chance to change the course of her life.
60.
In 1985, the German punk band Die Arzte composed a song centering on Buddy Holly's glasses, titled "Buddy Holly's Brille".