Day 331: Buddy Holly & the Crickets – The “Chirping” Crickets
I’m nearing the end of the year-long project (boo) so there’s no time to waste, I need to go through classic artists who I don’t know very well. Today, that’s Buddy Holly. He’s never really someone I’d put on but I like the songs I’ve heard by him, so why not see if I just like him in general.
Album cover courtesy of Brunswick
Buddy Holly was born in 1936 in Lubbock, Texas into a musical family, where he learned how to sing and play music alongside the rest of his siblings. At 11 years old he took piano lessons, but he convinced his parents to let him learn how to play guitar instead. By 1953, he was performing regularly on local television. He started off as a country artist but switched to rock n roll after he saw Elvis perform, and by 1955, he was opening for Elvis at the Fair Park Coliseum.
Holly had had a solo record deal with Decca but they decided not to renew his contract, so he formed the band the Crickets, along with drummer Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan, with Sullivan later dropping out and making them into a trio. Their first and only album release from when Buddy Holly was alive, The “Chirping” Crickets, became an immediate hit, with their first single “That’ll Be the Day” reaching number one on the charts in the US and UK.
It’s an album of short, sweet and simple rock n roll songs, with several of them being iconic and instantly recognisable to anyone, like “Maybe Baby” or “Oh Boy!” Most of the album was written by Buddy Holly and the rest of the group, and they’re masterfully written – it’s not a particularly complex album by any measure, but there’s something about the melodies that is just so good.
I love the album just in itself, but thinking about the impact that Buddy Holly had in his short life as an artist is also insane, we probably wouldn’t have rock music in the form that we do without him. I mean he and the Crickets only released one album, and the Beatles named themselves after the group, not to even mention how much he inspired their sound – the first song they ever recorded was a cover of “That’ll Be the Day”.
Sometimes you listen to a historic album and it’s just good because of the impact or the story attached to it, but this one is musically just undeniably good. It’s so simple but intoxicating, and there’s something very romantic about the whole ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll sound that you just can’t help but be charmed by. It’s a strong 9/10, Buddy Holly is going into the rotation.