Buddy Holly: Biography (33 page)

A congressional investigating committee, formed the following year, exposed 207 DJs in forty-two states for taking $263,000 in payola. “Clean up this whole mess,” President Eisenhower ordered. The conservative
New York Herald-Tribune
exulted ghoulishly, editorializing that rock ’n’ roll was “so bad that it’s almost a relief to learn they had to be paid to play it.” The record industry began a purge that rivaled Hollywood’s Communist witch hunt in its maniacal search for scapegoats. Label owner George Goldner said he had paid Tom Clay, the first DJ to champion Buddy Holly, “approximately” $100 a month for a year to play records. Now working at Detroit’s WJBK, Clay admitted that DJs were regularly given percentages of songs and even pieces of record companies as inducements to play certain records on the radio. After Clay defended such practices as “the backbone of American business,” he was fired from WJBK. Across the United States, other DJs’ heads began to roll. “If somebody sent you a Cadillac,” Alan Freed was queried, “would you send it back?” His brazen reply sealed his fate. “It would depend on the color,” Freed said. He was blackballed in the music business and died a few years later, according to his biographer John Jackson, “awash in a sea of alcohol and staggering legal fees and facing … federal tax-evasion charges.”

Despite the payola scandal, the recording industry was faring better than ever: record sales went from $189 million in 1950 to $600 million by the end of the decade. Though mass consumption of rock ’n’ roll was solely responsible for this dramatic growth, the founders of the music were rapidly passing from the scene. Little Richard was studying to become a Seventh-Day Adventist minister at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. Elvis, given speed to stay awake on Army maneuvers, was abusing drugs while stationed in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Jerry Lee’s reputation never recovered from the scandal over his child bride. Chuck Berry would eventually serve time in a federal penitentiary in Springfield, Missouri, a victim of fifties prudery and prejudice. Both Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers were close to burnout from the strain of constant touring and the pressure to score hit records.

The Crickets’ albums had never sold well and now even their singles began to slip. The megahit records of the second half of 1958 reflected the adult public’s growing disenchantment with rock ’n’ roll and a resurgent taste for novelty, cha-cha, and “rockaballads,” including Sheb Wooley’s “Purple People Eater,” Perez Prado’s “Patricia,” Domenico Modugno’s “Volaré,” and Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe.” The charts still reflected a fair rock ’n’ roll showing, with No. 1 hits by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, the Elegants, and Tommy Edwards, though it was nothing like the previous year, when every No. 1 hit, with the exception of Perry Como’s “Round and Round” and Debbie Reynolds’s “Tammy,” had been rockers, including four by Elvis as well as the Crickets’ “That’ll Be the Day.” By mid- to late 1958, the American music scene was becoming what Nicholas Schaffner, author of
The British Invasion,
called “a teenage wasteland,” partly due to the adult world’s suppression of the burgeoning youth culture and also because, according to
Rolling Stone
’s Ed Ward, “people kept waiting for the rock-and-roll fad to pass and the bands to come back.”

Neither Buddy’s “It’s So Easy” nor the flip side, “Lonesome Tears,” succeeded in the United States or England in 1958. “It’s So Easy” did reach No. 8 in Australia, where it remained on the chart for nineteen weeks, but there would be no more gold records, at least in Buddy’s lifetime, though in a later cover by Linda Ronstadt “It’s So Easy” would shoot to No. 5. For someone who’d been as obsessed with recognition and fame as Buddy, he accepted his decline as a recording artist with surprising equanimity, perhaps because he was already well into a second career—this one as a record producer and music publisher.

All that was stopping him from constructing his own recording studio in Lubbock was Petty, who refused to release the necessary cash. Nevertheless, Buddy went ahead and had plans drawn up for the studio. It was to occupy one wing of a home he was planning to build for his parents and would include a publishing company, both grouped under the name of Prism Records. Buddy was president, Ray Rush was promotion manager, and Bob Montgomery and Snuff Garrett were also to have some involvement. Petty was named sales manager, in charge of day-to-day operations. Obviously Buddy was finding it hard to break with Petty despite the bitter complaints he was making to Maria Elena. Clovis was no longer Buddy’s artistic home. Lubbock radio station KLLL, where twenty-year-old Waylon Jennings was a DJ, became the new focus of Buddy’s professional life. Until Buddy showed up at KLLL in September 1958, Waylon was “just sitting around listening to my hair grow,” Waylon told
Guitar Player
magazine’s William J. Bush in 1982. Waylon was being modest; his show was “immensely popular” with young listeners, Sky Corbin told
Cash Box
magazine. Sky, KLLL’s high-strung, demanding station manager, had hired Waylon away from KVOW for $75 a week for two shows a day. The station’s format was “hillbilly Top 40.” Its studios were located on the twentieth floor of the Great Plains Life Building, the tallest structure in Lubbock.

Hi Pockets Duncan, Buddy’s earliest mentor, had returned from Amarillo after his fling at running highway clubs and restaurants and now had a daily thirty-minute program on KLLL. Corbin described Hi Pockets in
Cash Box
as a “top C&W DJ in this area” for the past fourteen years. During bull sessions at the Great Plains coffee shop, which was located one floor below KLLL, Hi Pockets “began to pitch Waylon to Buddy,” Waylon’s biographer, R. Serge Denisoff, wrote in 1983. “He reintroduced the two. Waylon had been playing Holly’s records, and Holly was grateful.” By now Waylon was so popular at KLLL that young women were flocking to the station, guitarist Tommy Allsup said, according to Denisoff, “‘to see the swingingest guy around.’” Supporting his wife and children had become “a burden” for Waylon, Denisoff added. “Maxine stayed at their Fifth Street home taking care of the kids, reading movie magazines, and drinking large amounts of Coca-Cola.”

Like Buddy, Waylon would eventually enjoy a racially integrated love life. He would not be afraid to flaunt his preference for black women, Randal Riese wrote in
Nashville Babylon
in 1984. “I’ve been with some pretty foxy little black chicks,” Waylon said, “and the devil had nothing to do with the first time, and the second time, the third time, the fourth time, it was all mine.”

“Buddy liked Waylon,” Hi Pockets said. Buddy advised Waylon on how to improve his image, taking him to his barber and having “his hair cut the way he thought it should be cut,” Hi Pockets added. Since Waylon was always broke and consequently rather seedy looking, Buddy went to a department store with him and had Waylon outfitted with a natty new wardrobe.

Every day, Buddy would arrive at KLLL carrying his guitar and ready to perform, compose music, or simply hang out. Don Bowman, a DJ at the time, described in the video biography,
Waylon: Renegade, Outlaw, Legend,
how they’d write songs, play them in the control room, and make their demos at KLLL. Sonny Curtis, one of the “local pickers” who was drawn to the station, said they must have “got in the way” but the station personnel “never made us feel that way.” KLLL had been on the air under Sky Corbin’s ownership and programming policy since May 1, 1958; in his stable of “personality DJs” were his brother Ray “Slim” Corbin and “Mr. Sunshine,” a well-known West Texas country-gospel DJ. Other regulars at the station included Jerry and Joe B.; Terry Noland, who was recording on Brunswick; the Four Teens, Challenge recording artists; and Sonny Curtis and Niki Sullivan, both now recording on the Dot label. Sky Corbin affectionately referred to them all as “Lubbock boys, and we’re proud of ’em.”

When practicing or recording at KLLL, Buddy, Waylon, and the Corbin brothers liked to work in the back room to keep out of the way. Frequently their jam sessions lasted all night. At the time Buddy was smitten with Ray Charles and played his record “My Bonnie,” singing along with it, until he wore it out, according to Ella Holley, who sometimes joined in and made it a trio. Waylon later told William J. Bush that Buddy adored Ray Charles’s material and was “looking for the guy” who did Charles’s arrangements, which Buddy intended to use “for guitars, or around guitars.”

Waylon often recorded KLLL’s commercials while Buddy sang in the background or pounded on trash cans. KLLL’s practice of broadcasting jingles as station IDs was initiated by Waylon. On September 1, 1958, the station owner came in and told everyone to clear out of the back room so he could cut some commercial jingles. Buddy asked if he could try his hand at a few of the commercials. Accompanying himself on the guitar, he cut a promotional jingle advertising “KL Double L” to the tune of “Everyday” and another to the tune of “Peggy Sue.”

The Great Plains coffee shop became the social center for hip young Lubbock musicians, including Sonny Curtis and Tommy Allsup. “All I got out of the coffee shop was a divorce from the secretary on the sixth floor,” said Don Bowman. “God, I spent a lot of time [there]. I should have spent more time at home.” Waylon later referred to his days at KLLL as “best times of my life,” characterizing them as a “free-for-all, with a lot of personalities on the air.”

Hi Pockets later recalled how he had just finished broadcasting one day and was walking across the parking lot to his car when Buddy and Maria Elena drove down the street in Buddy’s “big old Lincoln” and pulled over. After Buddy introduced them, Maria Elena told Hi Pockets that Buddy had often spoken of him but she couldn’t remember exactly what role Hi Pockets played in Buddy’s past. Buddy turned to her and said, “Let me put it this way. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have you,” Hi Pockets later told Griggs. Unchanged since the days when he’d discovered Buddy, Hi Pockets was still promoting young singers, and Waylon was his latest enthusiasm. Hi Pockets booked both Buddy and Waylon to appear in a concert he was staging for the golden anniversary of the town of Spur, Texas, located sixty miles east of Lubbock. Waylon sat in that night as Ray Price’s bass guitar player, marking the first time Waylon attempted to play the bass. The Crickets, Sonny Curtis, and June Carter also appeared in what was probably the liveliest hoedown ever to hit tiny Spur, population 1,690.

Waylon later told William J. Bush that Buddy’s father admired Waylon’s singing and urged Buddy to take Waylon seriously as a potential recording star. “His dad said to Buddy, ‘I want you to listen to this boy,’” Waylon recalled, “and Buddy did.” Buddy told Waylon about Prism Records and offered him a job as a regular staff musician. Other West Texas instrumentalists Buddy intended to hire for his proposed recording studio were guitarists Tommy Allsup and George Atwood, but his interest in Waylon went beyond using him as a sideman. Maria Elena revealed in a 1993 interview that Buddy finally told Waylon that he was willing to produce Waylon’s first record.

“When Waylon Jennings wanted to get involved with rock ’n’ roll Buddy said, ‘No, not rock ’n’ roll. You’re country,’” Maria Elena remembered. “Waylon kept insisting, ‘I want to be a rock ’n’ roller.’ Buddy said, ‘No, no, no. I’ll tell you what. We’ll record you with this song first, which has a beat to it,’ which was ‘Jole Blon,’ a Cajun song. ‘If you don’t feel comfortable then there’s always time for you to change and do rock ’n’ roll, but you’ll find out I’m right.’”

Maria Elena agreed that Waylon was talented. In fact, his singing thrilled her so much, Waylon later told William J. Bush, that it gave her “goose bumples.” Added Maria Elena in 1993, “Buddy knew always that Waylon would be a country [singer]. Buddy was really a very, very astute person.” Waylon told Bush in 1982 that Buddy was a major influence on him both as a human being and as a singer (“he was
smart,
man”). As Buddy began to produce Waylon’s first record, he decided to go to southern Louisiana, some seven hundred miles to the southeast, just across the Sabine River from Texas, to study Cajun music and culture. Unfortunately, Petty wouldn’t provide the financing for the trip, so Buddy selected the Cajun warhorse, “Jole Blon [Pretty Blonde],” a French folk song that had been a hit record for Harry Choates in 1946. Buddy planned to record Waylon at the next Clovis session. According to Bob Montgomery, Waylon was the first artist Buddy signed.

The session was scheduled for September 10, 1958. On September 7, Buddy celebrated his twenty-second birthday. He traded his orchid-colored Lincoln for a Cadillac at the Alderson dealership on Nineteenth Street in Lubbock. Larry referred to the color of the new car as “pink” but Buddy called it “taupe.” Though Buddy had previously owned a used Caddie, the one Larry had ended up paying for, this was his first new Cadillac, a 1958 60 Special Sedan. In the fifties and sixties, long before the Mercedes craze hit the United States, the Cadillac was the ultimate American status symbol. On September 10, Buddy drove the Cadillac to Clovis to record Waylon’s “Jole Blon” as well as his own new single, “Reminiscing,” with saxophonist King Curtis, who wrote the song. Though KLLL’s equipment sufficed for jams and personal tapes, Buddy still needed Clovis and Norman Petty for demos of the highest professional quality.

Fellow Texans, Buddy and R&B tenor saxophonist King Curtis had met at an Alan Freed show in New York.
Rolling Stone
critic David McGee later wrote that “King Curtis helped define the spirit of early rock-’n’-roll/R&B with his honking, stuttering tenor-saxophone solos.” Another
Rolling Stone
writer, Ed Ward, added that Curtis’s “distinctive, almost hillbilly-tinged sax line” sparked the Coasters record, “Yakety Yak,” the “teenage classic of social commentary … that would set parents and school authorities against rock and roll.” Years later, in his memoirs,
Rhythm and the Blues,
Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler lavished praise on King Curtis’s “lickety-split barnyard tenor sax” and the “riotous tone” it set for “Yakety Yak,” which became the No. 1 R&B record of 1958.