Buddy Holly: Biography (34 page)

Just before the Clovis session, Buddy called Curtis in New York to hire him to come to Clovis. “That’ll be five hundred dollars and plane fare,” Curtis said.

“Ain’t that a little high?” Buddy asked.

“You’re making yours all the time and I gotta make mine,” Curtis replied. “You send the money up to New York.”

“No,” Buddy argued, “if I was to send you five hundred dollars and the plane crashed, I’d lose my money and my sax player.”

“Mr. Holly, just send the money and don’t talk like that.”

He paid Curtis a total of $600, determined to capture a sound for his new record that would be startlingly different from anything Holly fans had heard before. Larry Welborn, who saw Buddy in Lubbock at this time, subsequently told Goldrosen that Buddy was finding the effort to be unique with every record increasingly difficult.

The session was truly “an event,” Sonny Curtis later reported. Most of Buddy’s friends crowded into the Clovis studio, including Sonny, Bob Montgomery, Jerry Allison, George Atwood, Tommy Allsup, Bo Turner, Waylon Jennings, and Waylon’s brother Tommy.

“Reminiscing” is the story of a jilted lover licking his wounds, but the bluesy lyric is far from melancholy; the song’s effect is sensual in a funky, groovy way. Curtis’s nimble, eloquent saxophone provides a witty and deft counterpoint to Buddy’s swirly, hiccuping vocal. Though he didn’t play on the session, Waylon was in the studio, “just marveling a whole lot,” he recalled in
Guitar Player,
as Buddy and Curtis took rock ’n’ roll into an exciting new dimension.

King Curtis, whose real name was Curtis Ousley, eventually became Atlantic’s full-time sax man, arranger, and in-house bandleader, working with Aretha Franklin and Cissy Houston, before recording his own albums,
Live at the Fillmore West
and
Blues at Montreux.
His untimely death in 1971 shocked colleagues throughout the recording industry. A vagrant stabbed him to death in front of the building he owned at West Ninety-sixth Street in New York, ending a brilliant solo career. At his funeral, Aretha Franklin sang “Never Grow Old.” Eulogizing Curtis as “an integral conveyor of the Atlantic sound,” Jerry Wexler said Curtis “loved to eat, shoot dice, record, ride his bike, and make shrewd record deals.”

At the same time Buddy recorded with Curtis that day in 1958, he officially began his career as an independent record producer, having finalized an agreement with Brunswick Records to produce a specific number of masters each year. Waylon’s “Jole Blon” was his maiden effort. Buddy had intended to cut Harry Choates’s Cajun standard himself, but he gave it to Waylon because he was motivated by a desire “to see his friends make it,” Sonny Curtis observed in the video
Waylon.
In a 1993 interview Sonny added that he felt “privileged” to be at the session. Waylon said in his authorized video biography that “Jole Blon” was “Buddy’s idea” and added that Buddy “thought it might be a pop hit.” The original French lyrics describe “Jolie blonde,” a fickle heartbreaker who has spurned the singer and run off with another man, wrecking all hope of happiness. Though Waylon was “scared,” he remembered the session as “a lot of fun.”

Singing the song in Cajun may not have been the wisest decision for Waylon’s recording debut. Neither Buddy nor Waylon understood Cajun dialect and had had to play the Choates record over and over, painstakingly transcribing the words. Although Waylon’s backwoods sound on the record is authentically rustic, there is little sign of the major star that Waylon would one day become. “I wasn’t near ready to start recording then,” Waylon later told Serge Denisoff. Trade reviews were tepid, one critic noting that the singer “acquits himself to listenable effect.… It has a chance,” and another referring to “Jole Blon’s” “interesting, infectious issue … lots of rock snap and could show up.” But the record was not a commercial success when it finally came out the following year. Buddy’s instinct about Cajun’s potential, however, placed him at the forefront of the late fifties “country Cajun” trend. Singer-fiddler Doug Kershaw and his brother Rusty scored a huge hit with “Louisiana Man,” which combined rockabilly and Cajun influences to produce a classic of southwest Louisiana swamp life.

Waylon later described what Buddy Holly was like as a record producer: “An upper, happy all the time, really matched his music … a lot of energy.” To William J. Bush he added that Buddy “laughed a lot,” but always stressed that an artist should never “compromise about your music: Do what you feel. Seemed like he was trying to tell me everything he could in a short period of time.” Buddy advised him to “leave while you’re ahead,” Waylon remembered. If a singer retires while he’s still on top, Buddy explained, critics will overrate him, but if he hangs around until he starts repeating himself, they’ll base their judgment on his final performances and dismiss his entire career as insignificant.

Throughout September 1958, as Buddy worked with Waylon, the Clovis studio was rife with intrigue. Behind Buddy’s back Petty was busily trying to turn Buddy’s friends against him. Maria Elena was luring Buddy to New York, Petty said. Vi and Norma Jean made snide remarks about Maria Elena’s accent, trying to destroy her influence with Buddy any way they could. Petty attempted to spook the Crickets into thinking that they’d be exploited and robbed by unscrupulous New York record executives if they let Buddy convince them to move east; Joe B. says Petty “hyped” them on the idea that even very successful bands ended up broke if they permitted the New York offices to control their affairs.

The Crickets accompanied Buddy when he went to New York on September 23 for an Alan Freed TV show. Once again, Buddy met with Lou Giordano, the young singer he was considering signing for Prism Records. Louis Patsy Giordano (pronounced in four distinct syllables), born June 23, 1929, in Brooklyn, was the fifth of ten children born to Italian immigrant parents, Filomina and Dominick Giordano, Sr. Known to family and friends as Louie, he grew up listening to Vic Damone and Frank Sinatra, developing a smooth crooner’s style. His credits were almost nonexistent: a few radio programs, some USO shows, and a gig or two with someone named Joe Coniglio at the G.I. Pipesmokers Club on Avenue S in Brooklyn. One day at Joe Villa’s house Buddy played a new song he’d written, “Stay Close to Me,” and gave it to Giordano, offering to produce his first record. Phil Everly rounded up some more material to fill out the session, and at Beltone on September 30, 1958, Phil gave Lou a new tune he’d just completed, “Don’t Cha Know,” for the flip side of “Stay Close to Me.”

When the record was released some months later, it received good if not exceptional trade notices.
Cash Box
gave Giordano a “B-plus” on both sides, praising the “larks” singing behind him on “Don’t Cha Know” for their “effective … vocal bits.” The “larks” were Buddy, Phil, and Joe Villa, warbling in soprano tones. They’d do “anything to make music,” Phil later remarked to interviewer Margaret McNie.
Cash Box
’s critic termed Giordano’s performance “first-rate teen ballad work.” Though Giordano attracted a loyal following—a fan club was established in New York by a girl named Karen Oretti—no sales pattern developed for the recording. His soft, mellow voice was alluringly erotic but must have seemed relatively tepid in comparison with the power hitters of the time—Connie Francis with “Who’s Sorry Now” and Frankie Avalon with “Venus.”

While in New York, Buddy drank too much at a party with the Everly Brothers and Eddie Cochran in Cochran’s suite at the Park Sheraton Hotel, a few blocks below Grand Central Station on Park Avenue. Phil later described the Park Sheraton to Kurt Loder as the “hot hotel” favored by the first generation of rockers. It had never taken much alcohol to get Buddy high; according to Phil, he “was having a drink, and he asked me to make sure he got home that night, and I did.” Everly denied that they were “a bunch of drunks” but added that occasionally they’d “tie one on.”

Despite Everly’s disclaimer, Buddy’s inability to navigate on his own indicates he was blacking out, which Alcoholics Anonymous identifies as the sign of a drinking problem. Don and Phil were also headed for trouble with substance abuse. Ritalin got Don “strung out,” he told Loder, describing his life on drugs as a “disaster.” Like Buddy, the Everly Brothers were drained from battling a greedy and domineering manager. When Don and Phil finally broke free from Wesley Rose’s stranglehold and demanded more autonomy in the matter of song selection, Rose cut them off from Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, their source of hit material. Phil said that the people who were exploiting them for money drove them too hard. They they deserved a “long rest,” Phil added, but they were kept so busy performing that they never got around to taking it.

If blond, blue-eyed Phil Everly was the boy every girl wanted to take home and make happy, dark-haired, gray-eyed Don was the sort you’d “be afraid to take home—he was, well, all male,” according to the Everlys’ biographer Consuelo Dodge. Don was described by Kurt Loder as “rootless, restless, mercurial,” a gourmand with a weakness for Beaujolais and gorgeous girls. He and Buddy grew close in late 1958 in New York, frequently dropping into Manny’s Music Store, sometimes with their wives. If the girls became impatient, the boys told them to go shopping and buy anything they wanted. Clerk Henry Goldrich later said that Buddy and Don remained at Manny’s for four hours on one occasion, playing “every guitar I had in stock.”

Though Buddy was tired of touring, Petty had frozen his money and he had no choice but to go back on the road. No matter how he tried, he could not get away from the domination of managers who did not have his best interests at heart. Patsy Cline, another innovative artist of the late fifties, was suffering the same kind of abuse. Early in her career, her recordings were restricted to songs controlled by her producer. Later, like Buddy, she had a string of hits but was always strapped for money. Such exploitation was typical of this era, before agents took control of their stars.

Together with the Crickets, Buddy signed up for a General Artists Corporation all-star tour of the Northeast and Canada in the fall of 1958, headlining a bill that included Bobby Darin, Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Avalon, and Clyde McPhatter. In certain cities they’d be joined by Eddie Cochran, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ritchie Valens, and Frankie Lymon. The tour party rehearsed at two
P.M.
on October 2 at the Nola Studios in Manhattan. As the star, Buddy had sufficient clout to demand and get a backup vocal group. He chose the Roses, who were flown up from Texas. He was also able to secure private dressing rooms, one for the Crickets and another for the Roses. Others on the bill “had to go to the gym and change,” Bob Linville, one of the Roses, later told Bill Griggs. Tommy Allsup came along as Buddy’s lead guitarist. The final and most controversial addition to Buddy’s entourage was his wife.

Immediately they faced the issue of whether to live openly as man and wife on the road or conceal their marriage in deference to Buddy’s fans, as Petty wished. In a 1993 interview Maria Elena recalled, “I did not say that I was married to him when I was on tour. I always said that I was the secretary of the group. Buddy really did not care for that and said, ‘No! You’re my wife. I’m going to say that you’re my wife. I don’t care what everybody says.’ I felt like, I don’t want people to start hounding me or him about our marriage or him being married or whatever. It was mostly me, not him.”

Buddy had always traveled with the Crickets, but now, with his wife along, that was clearly out of the question. While the Crickets and the Roses followed behind them in a DeSoto station wagon, pulling all their equipment in a trailer, Buddy and his wife enjoyed the luxury of the Cadillac. The arrangement displeased the Crickets. Years later Joe B. told Goldrosen that he felt Buddy was acting like a “bigshot star” but admitted the real issue was his jealousy of Maria Elena. He felt that Buddy wasn’t his “brother,” as in the past. Obviously the difference in Buddy’s marital status required growth and adjustment all around, but the Crickets balked at the prospect of change. Hurt, confused, and demoralized, they hit the bottle, sometimes drinking during working hours, which Buddy, a consummate professional, found obnoxious.

As the tour crossed the blazing October landscapes of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Maria Elena decided that show business was “not glamorous at all. I can vouch for that,” she said in 1993. “I did a lot of washing: underwear and shirts. You have to set everything up yourself and pick it up yourself, and go and collect your money sometimes under very strange circumstances.” When asked whether Buddy carried a gun, she replied, “Yeah. You had to at that time.” Did he use it? “While I was with him usually I would do the collecting,” she said. “I didn’t fool around. I said, ‘Okay, pay me
now.
’”

Maria Elena’s bravery was clearly an asset. The directness and spontaneity that went with it sometimes led to drama, such as the incident at the Canadian border as they reentered the United States following engagements in Ontario and Quebec. The Roses’ Bob Linville later told Griggs that when a customs official asked if they had anything to declare and whether they were American citizens, Maria Elena said, “No. I am from San Juan, Puerto Rico.” The guard immediately asked to see her papers. According to Linville, she didn’t have any with her. Other guards appeared. They were detained, and all of them were questioned. Buddy was “irritated with Maria Elena” and “chastised her for that,” Linville added. As soon as the guards realized they were professional entertainers in Canada on legitimate business, they waved them on.

Relations between Buddy and the Crickets were strained. Jerry complained that the only time the Crickets saw Buddy was when they were onstage performing. In the old days they’d hung out together after work; now Buddy unwound with his wife. Buddy pointed out that Jerry and Joe B. were drinking too much. Jerry later disclosed in
Remembering Buddy
that occasionally he and Joe got loaded before noon and remained inebriated throughout the day. After a show one night, Buddy called a meeting and read the riot act, telling them that he objected to their boozing “all the time.” The Crickets blamed everything on circumstances, refusing to correct, or even to acknowledge, their own character flaws. They lost all interest in performing. According to Jerry, they started “shucking it.” Buddy threatened to fire them if they persisted in goofing off. Anyone who expected to be in his band, he warned, had better demonstrate more enthusiasm and interest in performing music. At last Jerry and Joe B. realized Buddy was right and promised to “tighten up a little bit,” Jerry later told Goldrosen.