Scott Lewandoske
Sheboygan, WI(Hometown of the Chordettes)

Thanks for the Chris Isaac MP3 blue days black nights – I really enjoyed it!

http://www.imeem.com/jukeboxmusic13/music/hE3OIWjo/rogue_wave_everyday/

A young Bob Dylan attended the Duluth National Guard Armory show on 31st January 1959, two nights before Holly’s death.

The family name was “Holley”. When Buddy received his first recording contract from Decca Records in 1956, they inadvertently spelled his last name as “Holly”. He kept it that way for the rest of his career.

Buddy failed his draft physical because of his poor eyesight, (and he also had a stomach ulcer).

Many groups from the era named themselves after insects, they did the same and choose “Crickets” as it was the only insect, which made its own “music”, by chirping. (They almost named themselves the Beetles!).

Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison had watched a John Wayne movie titled The Searchers. Each time that Wayne became disgruntled with something someone said, he’d mutter “That’ll be the day”. That catch phrase became the title of the first hit record by Buddy Holly.

“Peggy Sue” was an actual person. Peggy Sue Gerron attended Lubbock High School and was the girlfriend and eventual wife of Jerry Allison, Buddy Holly’s drummer.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets were the first all-white group to perform at New York’s famed Apollo Theatre.

The Crickets were the first self-contained band and what you heard on record is what you heard at live performances, (The Beatles molded themselves after the Crickets).

He was one of the first rock ‘n’ rollers to use overdubbing when one-track recording was the rule, and one of the first to use strings on a rock ‘n’ roll record. Buddy Holly was one of the few to write the majority of his own material and then perform it.

Their tour busses kept breaking down and when they arrived in Clear Lake, Iowa to perform at the Surf Ballroom the evening of February 2, 1959, Buddy decided to charter a small plane to take he, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) to their next stop.

The red Beechcraft Bonanza, took off from Mason City, ten miles east of Clear Lake, at around 1:50 AM on February 3, 1959. The weather was cold and snowy. The plane crashed just after taking off, eight miles from the Mason City airport. The pilot, Valens, Richardson and Holly, (who was found twenty feet from the point of impact) all died.

Don McLean’s 1971 “American Pie” is inspired by the day of the plane crash.

Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Holly No.13 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly’s song catalogue.

The 1992 Nirvana video for “In Bloom” is filmed in Black and white using 1950s era television cameras and shows the band appearing in 1950s attire, (including Kurt Cobain wearing Buddy Holly style glasses) in an apparent tribute.

Weezer’s self-titled debut album features the single “Buddy Holly.”

On Feb 29th 1980, the glasses that Buddy Holly had been wearing when he died were discovered in a police file in Mason, Iowa after being there for over 21 years.