Buddy Holly: Biography (39 page)

On the same day, December 3, he recorded “What to Do,” a tune about the end of an affair, when all that’s left is memories. Proms, long walks, and drugstore dates, the song’s simple images, suggest that Buddy was writing from his own experience, his high school romance with Echo McGuire. Though buoyantly tuneful and almost bouncy, Buddy’s delivery is charged with the empathy and compassion so characteristic of the apartment tapes.

He frequently composed in Provi’s apartment, using her piano, Maria Elena later told Goldrosen. As he wrote, he alternated between the piano and guitar, composing at the piano and then playing his Gibson J-200 and singing the song to see if it worked. He wrote the music and lyrics simultaneously. Maria Elena recalled that he would come up with the first version of the lyrics fairly quickly and then spend hours in meticulous revision. Then he would turn to her and ask if the song was any good, invariably adding that he didn’t yet have it exactly right. She would listen attentively, but just as often she’d pursue her own interests around the apartment, which sometimes clashed with his. One day he stormed out, snapping that he’d return shortly. After stalking around Washington Square, he came back home, somewhat calmer. Resuming his work, he called out to her after a few minutes and played what he’d written. He was fortunate to have found a girl who loved his music so much that she was willing to draw on an apparently bottomless well of interest and patience.

On her birthday in December 1958, Maria Elena persuaded Buddy to drink “a couple of glasses of champagne,” she later stated in Goldrosen and Beecher’s
Remembering Buddy.
He became seriously ill. As an ulcer sufferer, he was playing with fire. [Ulcers can be fatal; another famous American entertainer, one from of an earlier era, silent-film star Rudolph Valentino, died in agony from a perforated stomach ulcer at the Polyclinic Hospital in New York in August 1926. He was thirty-one, just nine years older than Buddy Holly at the end of 1958.] According to Maria Elena, Buddy was ill for the entire day following the champagne fiasco. Contrite, she swore that never again would she encourage him to drink.

As the New York winter set in, Buddy kept writing songs, the new tunes spewing out like an eternal fountain. On December 8, he recorded “That Makes It Tough,” a blues number that dissects a broken heart with unflinching honesty. The performance is as impressive as the composition; Buddy’s multi-note variations and subtle inventiveness reflect his continuing development as a singer.

“It’s So Easy,” which Brunswick released on December 9, continued to sit in the stores, shunned by record buyers in the United States and England. The widespread impression that “It’s So Easy” was a huge hit is due to the 1977 Ronstadt album it sparked,
Simple Dreams,
which was an almost instant million seller. But Buddy’s original version was completely overshadowed in December 1958 by the Teddy Bears’ No. 1 smash “To Know Him Is to Love Him” and Ritchie Valens’s No. 2 hit “Donna.” Buddy’s only pass at the
Billboard
chart in December was “Heartbeat,” which held on for four weeks but stalled at No. 82. On England’s
New Musical Express
chart “Heartbeat” bobbed into thirtieth place but vanished after a single week. His customarily discerning and loyal Australian fans ignored “Heartbeat” altogether but redeemed themselves by sending the B-side, “Well All Right,” to No. 24.

Despite declining sales, he continued cutting the magnificent apartment tapes. As Christmas approached, on December 14, he recorded the eloquent “Crying, Waiting, Hoping.” Buddy’s voice gently probes the poignancy of every line, uncovering nuances of truth and emotion that lift the song to universal significance. “Learning the Game,” relentlessly tragic in its view of romance, was the last of the apartment tapes, recorded on December 17. His voice is edged with bittersweet irony as he drives home the truth that romantic love is the cause of most human suffering. There is something deeply comforting, even healing, in the way Buddy defines heartache as the common lot of mankind. The promise of earlier songs like “Listen to Me,” which hinted at the wisdom he was capable of, is fully realized in these December songs—twilight melodies, in a way—in which the interior life is touched and resonates darkly.

At last a job offer came through. Irving Feld wanted him for another tour, hardly an inviting prospect. After the Boston riots, rock ’n’ roll package tours had all but disappeared. Dick Clark had dropped out of the business altogether. Among the few packagers left was GAC’s Feld, who was organizing a January-through-February 1959 bus tour of the Midwest. Feld had teamed up with Buddy Howe and Tim Gale of General Artists Corporation to co-sponsor rock stage shows to be emceed by local DJs across America. They signed more than a hundred artists to go on a series of tours over a ten-month period, leaving July and August free. They offered Buddy a deal to headline the first of these tours, which would be known as the “Winter Dance Party.” After having spent most of the past eighteen months on the road, Buddy hated the idea of another tour, especially on a bus in the dead of winter, and rejected the offer. Then he reconsidered. He’d had no other job offers for a while. Decca was not clamoring for another session, since his singles weren’t selling, and his albums still hadn’t caught on. He needed money to support himself and his wife, who was now pregnant. Reluctantly, he accepted Feld’s offer and left for Texas a few days before Christmas to put together a new band. The bittersweet memories of his brief few months in Manhattan would remain frozen in time—as if an entire era of innocence and youth would be preserved during that frenetic autumn of 1958.

At no time was the duality of his situation more underscored than during that Christmas visit. On the one hand, his heart still resided in West Texas. He was happiest when he stood in radio station KLLL’s quarters atop the Great Plains Building, gazing down at the vast tableland of pastures and fields that spread out from the city in all directions. He dreaded his imminent departure for the frigid north. On the other hand, his audience was in the north, his recording studio in New York. The Lord pulled him home, while the power of money and fame drew him north and east. In the end, at least in his lifetime, the Lord would not prevail.

By the end of 1958 Buddy Holly’s life had become all but unlivable. His funds were frozen in New Mexico, largely as a result of having given Norman Petty power of attorney over his business affairs. Bankruptcy had forced him to accept a dangerous bus tour in one of the worst midwestern winters on record. While in Lubbock, he confided to both his mother and brother that he didn’t want to go on the tour. Larry revealed in a 1992 interview that Buddy told him, “It’s sure gettin’ to be a grind. I’m gettin’ tired of having to run constantly and be in the limelight. I can’t lead my life like I want to. I’m gettin’ fed up with it. I’m not fed up with music in general—I like producing and writing songs. But as far as touring and being in front of the public eye constantly, that really gets to be a drag.”

He showed Larry the insane schedule for the “Winter Dance Party,” which packed far too many dates into twenty-four days, with no time off for rest. Zigzagging all over the upper Midwest, the itinerary looked as if it had been planned by a blindfolded idiot throwing darts at a wall map. “Look at this!” Buddy exclaimed, according to Larry. “It’s pathetic, the way they’re pushing me. Every night in a different town.” He called GAC and tried to break the contract, Ella Holley told Griggs in 1981. His mother said he “begged” GAC to release him, but they refused, treating him like an employee. “It was not really an appropriate tour for Buddy, who was already established,” Maria Elena observes in 1993. “It was a tour for people starting out, like Ritchie Valens, who’d just had his first hit, and J.P. [“The Big Bopper” Richardson]. Of course, they needed a headliner and that was Buddy.”

Painful as it was to replace the Crickets, he started trying to assemble a new band to back him on the tour. He told his family he was devastated over Jerry and Joe B.’s defection and how hard it was to start over from scratch. Mrs. Holley later lamented “he didn’t have any group … any Crickets.” Maria Elena disclosed to Goldrosen that he’d attempted to call the Crickets before leaving New York, hoping to line them up for the tour, but the boys had not been at home. They were in Clovis with Petty, though their new relationship was predictably to sour as well. Despite the rosy picture Petty had painted for Jerry and Joe B., the Crickets “had not got any engagements,” according to Goldrosen and Beecher, since breaking up with Buddy three months before. Petty was trying to record them, using a singer named Earl Sinks, who’d opened for Buddy on the 1958 “Summer Dance Party,” and Sonny Curtis, who’d rejoined the Crickets. On their recording of Buddy and Bob’s song “Love’s Made a Fool of You,” Sinks tried to ape the Buddy Holly sound, but his impersonation of Buddy was almost comic. On Vi Petty’s “Someone, Someone,” Sinks stepped out of his role as a Holly clone and emerged as an exciting vocalist. “Someone, Someone” should have been a hit but went nowhere on release.

Buddy tried to sign up Larry Welborn for his new band, but Larry was content to remain in Lubbock, working at KLLL and performing occasionally with the Four Teens. Terry Noland was also contacted, but nothing came of it. For the time being, Buddy suspended his efforts and concentrated on enjoying Christmas with his family. He had borrowed enough money to act like a rich man whether he was one or not, drawing freely on the $2,500 advance from GAC to shower his family with expensive presents, which the financially strapped Holleys appreciated. For years to come, Larry Holley would look back on the 1958 holiday season as a glorious Christmas.

The temperature on December 25 reached a high of forty-nine, dropping to twenty-three toward evening. The
Avalanche-Journal
carried a picture of carolers on the front page with the headline
CHRISTMAS ARRIVES QUIETLY OVER AREA.
Another story told of Miss Yvonne Skinner, twenty-one, Lubbock’s “Maid of Cotton,” who was preparing for her trip to Memphis to compete in the 1959 National Maid of Cotton contest. Though Buddy Holly’s visit was by far the most newsworthy event to occur in Lubbock that Christmas, the paper made no mention of him. Throughout his career, his hometown paper, either through reportorial oversight or in deference to its Bible Belt readership, ignored him, despite hit records and a triumphant world tour.

The weather turned warmer on December 28—62 degrees—which was perfect for the fishing trip Buddy hosted for his father, brothers, and cousin Sam. He took them all to a sporting-goods store and had them completely outfitted at his expense. “We had some good times,” Larry reminisced. “It just didn’t last long enough.” Back in Lubbock, Buddy called on old friends, sang his latest songs for them, and encouraged any beginners who sought him out.

Larry was with him one day when they visited someone who lived on the outskirts of town, near the Lubbock city limits. Buddy suddenly picked up his guitar and announced he was going to perform his next song, which he called his personal favorite. It was “Raining in My Heart,” one of the numbers from the Pythian Temple string session. Larry agreed it was the best thing Buddy had ever done. Much later, when Larry heard the recording, with its luscious symphonic quality, he still liked it, he revealed in a 1992 interview, but he always preferred the simpler version he’d heard Buddy sing in Lubbock. Buddy’s voice had never been more tender or appealing than in this Felice and Boudleaux Bryant ballad, which tells of a lover’s brave, vain efforts to hide his broken heart. Above all, the recording evokes the sweetness of the singer: Buddy Holly’s power to evoke our love is uncanny.

One afternoon Buddy and Larry sat in the family car talking about God. Buddy once again asked how he could simultaneously serve the Lord and be a rock star. He rehashed the discussions he and Little Richard had about God. Larry was not easy on Buddy, reminding him that God wouldn’t “play second fiddle in anybody’s life.”

Ken Johnson, who had gone to school with Buddy, was now associate pastor of Tabernacle Baptist. According to Johnson, Buddy did not feel good about having drifted from regular church attendance. Though Buddy’s religion had condemned his very livelihood, he was ineluctably drawn back to Tabernacle Baptist Church; the roots of fundamentalist dogma in his life were as deep as they were tenacious. Brother Ben D. Johnson was still thundering venomous denunciations of rock ’n’ roll, according to Terry Noland, who later told Griggs that Ben Johnson would stand in the pulpit and inform the rockers in his congregation that they were “going to hell.”

Nevertheless, Ben Johnson was willing to accept sizable donations from rock-star Buddy Holly, though they came through his associate, Ken Johnson, who looked up from his desk one day during the Christmas season and saw Buddy in the doorway. “He came in and brought us a very generous offering to give to the church and to help in the building fund,” Johnson reveals in a 1993 interview. “He said, ‘I’ve got to get out of this. I want to get into a business that is much more acceptable in being able to work for the Lord. As soon as I can make enough money to get into my own business, that’s my plan.’ That was the direction of his whole thinking. He knew the Lord as his Savior. People are not aware of that because only the secular aspect of his life has been popularized. But Buddy was very knowledgeable of his need of the Lord and the need of spiritual guidance in his life. He was conscientiously seeking the right direction for his life, though a lot of people did not know that inwardly Buddy was that dedicated.”

On that same visit to Lubbock, Buddy’s father found him to be in a carefree, happy-go-lucky frame of mind, like someone who really “had it made,” said L.O. For a lark, Buddy did a no-fee remote broadcast for KLLL from the Morris Fruit and Vegetable Store. As usual, Lubbock wasn’t clamoring for a Buddy Holly concert, and Buddy didn’t encourage it. He told his father he’d never be able to stand it if he flopped in his hometown. Nonetheless, when Slim Corbin introduced the subject of a major Lubbock concert, Buddy authorized him to set it up for the following summer. It was planned as a big Buddy Holly homecoming concert.