The following is a video I enjoy a great deal; it is of Buddy Holly
and the Crickets, from December 1, 1957, performing "That'll Be the Day"
on The Ed Sullivan Show. The song had been released as a 45 record in the spring of 1957, and it became a number-one hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mDGcxbAusg
Buddy Holly was a tremendously talented (and, of course, extremely influential) singer, guitarist, and songwriter.
In addition to Mr. Holly, I particularly enjoy the style of the Crickets' drummer, Jerry Allison, as seen in the
above video. There is ease, strength, and dexterity in Mr. Allison's
playing. His drumming swings.
Mr. Allison died on August 22nd, in Tennessee. He was 82.
As the music chronicler Joel Whitburn notes, in The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits: 1955 to the Present (Billboard Books, 1989), Mr. Holly and the Crickets were signed to two Decca Records subsidiary labels: Brunswick and Coral. The contracts specified that the Brunswick recordings (such as "That'll
Be the Day") would be credited to The Crickets. The Coral releases, such
as "Peggy Sue," would be credited to Mr. Holly.
(The group's first album, which was released the week before the above 1957 appearance on Ed Sullivan's program, was a Brunswick record, and its title, therefore--The 'Chirping' Crickets--referred solely to the ensemble.)
Mr. Allison was one of the writers of "Peggy Sue," released in September of 1957; the song was named for
Mr. Allison's then-girlfriend (they were later married, for a number of years). The group's producer, Norman Petty--an important figure in the success of Mr. Holly and the Crickets--also received a writing credit for "Peggy Sue"--and though Mr. Holly was not originally named, on the record label, as a co-writer of the song, his writing credit was added in later pressings. Mr. Allison and Mr. Holly also co-wrote "That'll Be the Day," for which Mr. Petty also received a writing credit.
Below is a video of Mr. Holly and the Crickets performing "Peggy Sue," from the same 1957 Ed Sullivan telecast, above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qQzuvfvBdE
In The New York Times
obituary of Mr. Allison, below, mention is made of the widely-known influence
that Buddy Holly and the Crickets had on The Beatles; the Beatles were great admirers of Mr. Holly, and his group. The Times obituary includes the following, from an interview Mr. Allison gave to the Associated Press in 2013:
“Paul McCartney did tell me," Mr. Allison said, "that if there hadn’t been the Crickets,
there never would have been the Beatles."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/arts/music/jerry-allison-dead.html
The
Beatles released a notable (and lovely) version of another Buddy Holly
song, written by Mr. Holly, "Words of Love." It appeared in the U.S. in 1965, on the "Beatles
VI" album--six years after Holly's 1959 death, at age 22.
John
Lennon also recorded "Peggy Sue" for his post-Beatles 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll.
The Beatles' name, indeed, was inspired by Mr. Holly and the Crickets--though there are differing versions of the particulars of the story. Beatles biographer Philip Norman, in his 1981 book Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, wrote that in 1960 The Beatles, at the time using the name Johnny and the Moondogs (after the group's leader, Mr. Lennon), were seeking a name-change--looking, Mr. Norman wrote, for "something spry and catchy, like Buddy Holly's Crickets." Norman wrote that Stu Sutcliffe, the group's then-bassist (who was also a painter), "half-jokingly, wrote down 'beetles' in his sketchbook, such a silly idea that the others said, why not? John, unable to leave any word alone, changed it to 'beat-les,' as a pun on beat."
For a time, the group went by "The Silver Beatles"--but then settled on the simpler name which would ultimately become known across the world.
