Buddy Holly: Lubbock’s Everlasting Echo

Today is the birthday of Buddy Holly. He would be 90 today.

Charles Hardin Holley was born in Lubbock, Texas on September 7, 1936. The South Plains city was dry and flat and about as far from rock and roll as geography could arrange. But Holly heard Elvis Presley at the Lubbock Fair Grounds in January 1955, and something snapped into place. He formed his own group, started recording in Clovis, New Mexico with Norman Petty, and within two years had invented something new — pop songs built on guitar riffs, syncopated rhythms, and his own hiccupping vocal delivery that nobody had heard before.

The Blueprint That Built the British Invasion

“That’ll Be the Day” hit No. 1 in 1957. “Peggy Sue.” “Oh, Boy!” “Not Fade Away.” “Everyday.” Each one a lesson in how to build a pop song from almost nothing. The Beatles covered four Holly songs before they were signed to a record label. John Lennon said learning Holly’s songs was how he learned to play guitar. Keith Richards said the same. Holly died February 3, 1959, at twenty-two, in the Iowa cornfield crash that also killed Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. He left behind recordings from a single eighteen-month stretch. They have not stopped echoing. Find his place items on Texas Music Map and learn more at the Texas State Historical Association.