Buddy Holly: Biography (21 page)

The Crickets went to their hotel after the rehearsal and returned to Studio 50 for the telecast the next day. Other acts included Sam Cooke, whose recording “You Send Me” was the current No. 1 hit, and
Collier’s
all-American football team, who completely dwarfed the Crickets as they stood together backstage. One of the jocks “petrified” them, Niki recalled, when he asked Buddy who they were and Buddy replied that they were the Crickets; the jock then wanted to know what the Crickets did, and Buddy answered, simply, “That’ll Be the Day,” which ended the exchange.

Niki was depressed by their performance on the first part of the show, which he later described as a “letdown.” They were better in the second half, when Ed Sullivan brought them back to sing “Peggy Sue.” “Buddy Holly, Buddy, Buddy, Buddy, come back here,” said Sullivan, who proceeded to quiz Buddy about the ages of each of the Crickets. Buddy explained that two of them were eighteen, one was twenty, and Buddy was twenty-one. As he spoke, the crew was hastily shoving Jerry’s drum platform into the wings, clearing the stage for the next act. But Sullivan obviously liked Buddy and drew him out about Lubbock and whether they still went to school. Buddy’s demeanor—confident but respectful of his elder—completely won over Sullivan, who had not previously been a rock ’n’ roll fan. Their unlikely rapport seemed to surprise and delight both men, so different in taste, age, and outlook. Visibly relaxing during their chat, Sullivan asked him about the origins of the Crickets and whether they were an overnight sensation. Buddy assured him that they’d had their share of “rough times” but felt lucky to have made it to the Sullivan show this quickly. Obviously pleased, Sullivan called Buddy “Tex,” said he’d enjoyed their conversation, and asked the audience to give the boys a big hand.

All their records on the charts at the time leaped ten points within two weeks of the Sullivan show, Niki calculated.
Cash Box
named them the most promising vocal group of 1957, based on a national poll of jukebox operators. Technically the Crickets were not a vocal group, since Buddy was the only singer. Unfortunately, the Crickets’ excellent vocal group, the Picks—whose work on
The Chirping Crickets,
released on December 1, was a crucial element in the Buddy Holly sound—received no recognition.

After the tour folded in New York in early December 1957, the Crickets flew back to Texas, their first visit home since becoming international recording stars. As if it had undergone a mass lobotomy, Lubbock took no official notice of their homecoming, though Buddy was the only famous person the city had ever produced. It didn’t matter so much to Buddy that neither the mayor nor a brass band showed up at his plane, but he was at least looking forward to seeing his folks and hearing their reaction to the extraordinary events of the past few months. As if to prove he was a star, he rented a limo for the drive from the airport to his parents’ humble dwelling. Gazing out the limo window, he saw that nothing had changed in Lubbock, except that the town was dressed up in all its Yuletide bunting. He was disappointed when he arrived home and found no one there, his mother later told Griggs. Dejectedly, he dismissed the limo driver and went inside. When his parents finally returned he complained that the large fee he’d paid for the limo had been completely wasted.

The first thing his mother wanted to know, according to Goldrosen and Beecher, was what he thought about all the “Negroes” on the tour and how he’d managed to get along with them. Buddy replied that he was a Negro, too; he
felt
black, he said. Larry told Buddy that he was beginning to sound like a New Yorker and warned that he should never lose his Texas accent. Buddy promised that he wouldn’t become a Yankee.

Noticing that Buddy looked terrible, Larry commented that the tour must have been an ordeal. Month after month of one-night stands had left Buddy completely depleted; he went to bed and slept for three days. For weeks he was still recovering from the rigors of the road. The fact that his parents hadn’t caught his
Sullivan
appearance could hardly have improved his morale. Mrs. Holley once confessed that she’d seen Buddy on stage three or four times but never on TV.

During the 1957 Christmas holidays the first royalty check, $192,000, arrived from Coral/Brunswick. Though it seemed like an enormous amount, upon investigation the Crickets discovered that it should have been much more, because the $192,000 represented only “That’ll Be the Day” record sales and a fraction of “Peggy Sue” sales. Where, they wondered, were their $50,000 songwriting royalties for “That’ll Be the Day,” which should have been split three ways between Buddy, Petty, and Jerry, and their BMI earnings (fees collected by Broadcast Music Incorporated for each air play of a song on radio and television)? When pressed, Petty said they’d spent it all, but he offered no records to prove his contention. Years later, Hi Pockets Duncan revealed in a radio special on Buddy that Petty had been siphoning 90 percent of their earnings until an attorney entered the picture much later on.

While he was still recovering his strength, Buddy went on a fishing trip to Ballinger, a town in central Texas, 160 miles southeast of Lubbock, with his father and Larry. On the way back, while Buddy was asleep, they decided to stop for coffee. “That’ll Be the Day” was blaring over the roadhouse jukebox. L.O., trying to impress the waitress, said that the song’s composer was asleep in his truck. When she ignored him, L.O. feistily announced that he was going to prove it. He went to the truck and brought Buddy back inside, but the waitress still didn’t believe him.

Success had not, despite the use of the limo, turned Buddy’s head. He tended to view success as an episode rather than as a state of being. After two years in the recording industry, he told his mother, he’d be washed up; popularity was an ephemeral thing that could vanish with the newest fad. But while it lasted he intended to share his good fortune with everyone who’d helped him over the years, beginning with his family; he paid Larry back the $1,000 he owed him. He promised his parents a home, according to DJ Larry Corbin, and gave them a red-and-white Impala. “I really respect a guy like that,” Corbin later told Griggs. He was also good to his friends. He owed money to “just about everybody” in Lubbock and though many of his benefactors had written off their loans as losses, Buddy dropped in and reimbursed them, Corbin added. “I appreciate your carrying me,” Buddy said, and paid them back double.

Inexplicable and baffling as it seems, the Crickets continued to work with Norman Petty. None of them wanted to bother with business dealings, contracts, and the like, but they would pay dearly for such flippancy. Volunteering for more abuse from Petty, they went back to Clovis on December 17. The song they cut that day, “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care,” is, in Waylon Jennings’s estimation, the best example of the Buddy Holly sound, which he attributes to the symbiosis achieved by Buddy on guitar and Jerry on drums.

Niki, the only member of the Crickets who’d never fit in, finally quit, walking out during an emotional scene in Clovis. According to Joe B., Buddy’s attitude was: If Niki wants to go,
let
him. Later Niki returned to Clovis and asked Petty how he was going to collect his royalties now that he was no longer a Cricket. Unbeknownst to the other Crickets, Petty promised that if Niki would give up every other claim, he’d see that Niki received 10 percent of all proceeds from their No. 1 hit “That’ll Be the Day.” Niki agreed but Petty went back on the deal, costing Niki hundreds of thousands of dollars. Later, as a goodwill gesture, the Crickets gave Niki $1,000. In a 1994 interview, Niki said he bore no ill will toward Jerry and Joe B., adding that they “get along perfect.” He told Goldrosen in 1975 that he blamed Petty for the split; Petty could have patched up Niki’s differences with the Crickets and somehow held the act together, Niki felt. It was a manager’s responsibility, he contended, to tell feuding musicians to sleep on their problems and discuss them the next day, when everyone had calmed down. Petty didn’t see it this way at all. He revealed to Goldrosen that Buddy, Jerry, and Joe B. had all told him they wanted Niki out.

“Peggy Sue” soared to No. 3 in America in late December, selling over a million copies, and it was still a hit in the United Kingdom. When “Peggy Sue” reached No. 1 on the popular TV show
Your Hit Parade,
Dick Jacobs, a Decca executive who was also the show’s musical conductor, admitted they didn’t have any rock singers to perform it. Finally Alan Copeland, a
Hit Parade
regular, attempted to imitate Buddy’s hiccups and nasal cooing, and “Peggy Sue” remained on the show for nine weeks.

The Crickets returned to New York on December 23 to play one of the world’s most exalted venues—the 3,650-seat Paramount Theater in Manhattan, where legendary stars such as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Benny Goodman, Johnnie Ray, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had made entertainment history. The Crickets never replaced Niki; from now on, they would perform as a trio. For a while life in the band was more peaceful, though time would prove the respite to have been nothing but the proverbial calm before the storm. Musically, Niki’s exit had no effect on the band. By Niki’s own admission, Petty hadn’t miked him in the studio as a way of reducing possible mistakes on their one-track recordings. Onstage his principal contribution had been his swivel-hipped, Elvis-inspired theatrics. Why had Buddy kept him around? one might wonder. Niki told Goldrosen that Buddy liked his company, both in the studio and when they finished sessions at two
A.M.
and hit the lonely streets of Clovis, New Mexico.

Christmas 1957 found the Crickets on the rising platform stage of the nation’s No. 1 showplace in the heart of Times Square. Their co-stars on Alan Freed’s 1957 “Holiday of Stars Twelve Days of Christmas Show” were Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Everly Brothers. They had indeed arrived. The
New York Times
estimated that twenty thousand teenagers started forming a line five-deep in Times Square at five-thirty in the morning in bone-chilling fifteen-degree temperature. The line stretched west on 43rd to Eighth Avenue and south to 42nd. The overflow crowd made the Christmas show at the Radio City Music Hall a few blocks north seem like a scout jamboree.

Stage shows at the Paramount were held every two hours, six times daily, between screenings of a grade-B British movie,
It’s Great to Be Young.
While the surging crowd waited outside for the show to begin on opening day, a backstage battle was going on between the stars. Jerry Lee Lewis had launched a last-minute campaign to steal top billing from Fats Domino. The Crickets were fourth-billed, under Domino, Lewis, and the Everlys. “I’m the king of rock ’n’ roll,” Jerry Lee informed Freed, according to Jerry Lee’s wife, Myra. “
I
want to close the show.”

“Yeah,” replied Freed, “says who?”

“I can blow Fats Domino off the stage. Why do I hafta go on before him?”

“Because he’s had six No. 1 hits and you’ve only had two in the Top 10.”

“Yeah, but who’s got the hottest song right this minute?”

“You,” said Fred, who could not deny that Jerry Lee’s “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” was the current No. 3 hit. Nevertheless, Domino’s contract clearly specified,
“Fats on top,”
meaning Fats was entitled to close the show every night. When Buddy got wind of the billing war, he fired a few shots of his own, informing Freed that if anyone was the star of the show, Buddy Holly was, pointing out that “Peggy Sue,” “Oh Boy,” and “Everyday” were all charting simultaneously. The sly Freed knew that the way to Buddy’s heart was money and offered him a raise. At $5,000 per week the Crickets were already the highest-paid act in the show. “I’ll get you more money if you keep quiet and stay put,” Freed told Buddy. The strategy worked. A Depression baby, Buddy always went for the money. With the Paramount’s demanding schedule, there was little opportunity to spend it. Instead, Buddy dreamed of the cars and motorcycles and boats he’d buy one day, if the touring ever stopped.

At curtain time, the orchestra played Chuck Berry’s current hit, “Rock ’n’ Roll Music.” Freed, resplendent in a garish tartan jacket similar to the one popularized by Bill Haley, appeared on the slowly ascending stage. “Hello, New York, and hello all you old friends of WINS,” Freed said, “Great to see all of you out tonight. We’ve got the biggest, the brightest, the hottest rock-’n’-roll show you’ve ever seen. I’m not gonna waste another minute, so if he’s ready, please put your hands together and welcome Terry Noland singing ‘Patty Baby.’”

The audience greeted the Lubbock newcomer politely but saved their cheers for later. They’d come for one reason: to hear current chart champions pitch their Top 40 hits. Paul Anka sang “I Love You, Baby,” followed by Danny and the Juniors, whose “At the Hop” got everyone up and dancing. Buddy and the Crickets then played a frenzied twenty-minute set and were brought back for an encore. The Paramount, built in 1926, had a gigantic balcony, and there were reports that the ceiling, walls, and floor were shaking. The audience’s tumultuous roar “supported Buddy’s contention that he deserved to close Freed’s show,” according to Freed’s biographer John A. Jackson.

When the crowd at last permitted the Crickets to leave the stage, the Everly Brothers appeared, dressed identically right down to their guitar straps. They mellowed everyone out with cool, immaculate mountain harmonies. Then Jerry Lee got everyone excited again, sticking the microphone between his legs, crouching at the piano, and singing “Whole Lot of Shakin’.” When he stripped off his maroon sharkskin jacket, girls in the orchestra section rushed the stage. Police halted the show for ten minutes to restore order. The cops’ overreaction to the incident, which seems innocent enough today, reveals how desperately the establishment feared any threat to the status quo in the 1950s. Rock ’n’ roll had thrown down the gauntlet of sexual freedom and society was running scared.

By the start of Fats Domino’s set, many in the audience had left or were on their way out. After the show, when Fats told Freed he’d never again follow Jerry Lee, Freed immediately changed the bill, making Lewis the headliner. Had Norman Petty been doing his job at this juncture, Buddy would have become the headline attraction, rather than remaining fourth-billed, under Lewis, Domino, and the Everlys.