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Quick Facts
- NAME: Buddy Holly
- OCCUPATION: Singer
- BIRTH DATE: September 07, 1936
- DEATH DATE: February 03, 1959
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Lubbock, Texas
- PLACE OF DEATH: Clear Lake, Iowa
- Originally: Charles Hardin Holley
Best Known For
Buddy Holly was a singer/songwriter whose records, conveying a sense of the wide-open spaces of West Texas and unstoppable joie de vivre, remain vital today.
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Play NowBuddy Holly. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 03:39, May 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186.
Buddy Holly. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186 [Accessed 20 May 2013].
"Buddy Holly." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 20 2013, 03:39 http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186.
"Buddy Holly," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186 [accessed May 20, 2013].
"Buddy Holly," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186 (accessed May 20, 2013).
Buddy Holly [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186.
Buddy Holly, http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186 (last visited May 20, 2013).
Buddy Holly. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/buddy-holly-9342186. Accessed May 20, 2013.
Synopsis
Born on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, Buddy Holly was an American singer/songwriter who produced some of the most distinctive and influential work in rock music. Already well versed in several music styles, he was a seasoned performer by age 16. With hits such as 'Peggy Sue' and 'That'll Be the Day,' Buddy Holly was a rising star when a tragic plane crash struck him down in 1959 at age 22.
Early Life
Singer. Born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. As the fourth and youngest child in his family, Holly was nicknamed "Buddy" by his mother, who felt that his given name was too big for her little boy. "Holly," the altered form of his last name, would later result from a misspelling in his first recording contract.
Buddy Holly learned to play piano and fiddle at an early age, while his older brothers taught him the basics of guitar. A 1949 home recording of "My Two-Timin' Woman" showcases Holly's skilled, if prepubescent, singing voice. Holly's mother and father, a tailor by trade, both proved to be very supportive of their son's burgeoning musical talents, generating song ideas and even penning a letter to the editor of Lubbock's newspaper in defense of rock 'n' roll-loving teenagers lambasted in a conservative editorial. Despite his parents' support, Holly couldn't have become a founding father of rock 'n' roll without engaging in some degree of rebellion. Once a preacher at the local Tabernacle Baptist Church asked him, "What would you do if you had $10?" The young rocker reportedly muttered, "If I had $10, I wouldn't be here." Holly had clearly set his sights on something other than growing up to join his brothers in their tiling business.
After high school, Holly formed a band and played country and western songs regularly on a Lubbock radio station. He frequently opened for more prominent national acts that toured through town. Bandmate Sonny Curtis viewed Holly's opening for Elvis Presley in 1955 as a crucial turning point for the singer. "When Elvis came along," Curtis recalls, "Buddy fell in love with Elvis and we began to change. The next day we became Elvis clones." Although the bespectacled, bow-tied youth lacked Elvis's incendiary sex appeal, Holly's conversion from country to rock 'n' roll did not go unnoticed. A record company talent scout soon caught his act at a skating rink and signed him to a contract.
In early 1956, Holly and his band began recording demos and singles in Nashville under the name Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes, but the group's lineup was later revised and dubbed The Crickets. Holly wrote and recorded his breakthrough hit, "That'll Be the Day," with The Crickets in 1957. The song's title and refrain are a reference to a line uttered by John Wayne in the 1956 film The Searchers. Between August 1957 and August 1958, Holly and the Crickets charted seven different Top 40 singles. Coincidentally, "That'll Be the Day" topped the U.S. chart exactly 500 days before Holly's untimely death.
Solo Career and Untimely Death
In October 1958, Holly split from The Crickets and moved to Greenwich Village in New York City.
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