speed of dark

Hearing Buddy Holly's delightful little "Dearest" on the Juno soundtrack prompted me to search for other jewels by one of the founding fathers of rock and roll. I much prefer the ones with less orchestra, the plainer ones with less production.

I was alive but not even a teenager yet at the time of his death. It's surprising to read that Buddy Holly played rock and roll for only two years and died at the young age of 22. The reason his career seems much longer is that he had written and recorded so many songs that his record company was able to keep releasing new material for another ten years. These songs were a huge influence on other artists who developed rock and roll more fully.

Listen to "Blue Days, Black Night," and you hear exactly what inspired George Harrison's guitar style on the Beatles' early albums, while "Brown-eyed Handsome Man" shows you what McCartney and Lennon liked. The Beatles covered "Words of Love" and modeled several of their early songs on Holly's style. "Rave On" and "Changing All Those Changes" lead you straight to Elvis and Carl Perkins. I particularly like this unadorned version of "Rave On" with its boxy-sounding drums.

From For the First Time Anywhere (1983):
Maybe Baby
Brown-eyed Handsome Man

From The Memorial Album (1995)
Blue Days, Black Nights
Rave On

Official Website | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | Buddy Holly Online
Buy at Amazon.com, iTunes, and eMusic

For an admirable effort to trace the history of country rock, check out this fine post, Who Invented Country Rock?, at Setting the Woods On Fire blog.

The photo above is from the Encyclopedia Britannica online. I always had the sneaky idea that Buddy Holly was less nerdy-looking than so many of his photos.