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In the late 1950s, Lubbock, Texas was one of the most unlikely music capitals on Earth. Out of its flat West Texas plains came Buddy Holly, whose records changed rock and roll permanently. And in the orbit of that scene, a teenage saxophonist named Bobby Keys was getting his education.
Keys grew up in nearby Slaton and was part of the broader Lubbock area music world as a teenager. He described his encounter with Buddy Holly simply: “He was the first guy I heard play electric guitar and it impressed the hell out of me.” Holly’s playing — that Telecaster bite, that hiccuping rhythm — left a mark that Keys carried for the rest of his career. He “kind of weaseled his way into the perimeter of the garage,” as he put it, and absorbed what he could.
By fifteen, Keys was already a professional. He started touring with Buddy Knox, a fellow Texan who had hit number one in 1957 with “Party Doll” — one of the first independently released rock and roll records to top the national chart. Keys and Knox were part of the same West Texas generation that was reshaping American popular music from the unlikeliest of places.
A Generation That Changed Everything
The Lubbock of Bobby Keys’ teenage years was also the Lubbock of Waylon Jennings, who played bass in Buddy Holly’s band and was supposed to be on the ill-fated February 1959 tour. Roy Orbison was a few hours away in Wink, Texas. Joe Ely would come from the same Lubbock scene a decade later. The South Plains produced musicians with a specific quality: players who could hold a groove without ornamentation, who served the song above everything else.
That was the Bobby Keys approach. He never played over the music. He played into it, finding the space where a tenor saxophone could make a record come alive. You can hear it in the solo on “Brown Sugar,” which does in eight bars what most soloists could not do in a full song. Lubbock gave him the discipline. The road gave him the rest.