BOOK OF THE DAY: Gerald Dawereviews Not Fade Away: The Life and Music of Buddy HollyBy John Gribbin Icon Books. 208pp. £12.99
ON FEBRUARY 3rd, 1959, "at about 01.00 local time", Buddy Holly died in an plane crash near Mason City airport, along with the pilot and two musicians, Ritchie Valens and the Bopper, JP Richardson. He was only 22-years-old, and had achieved national recognition in North America with his band, The Crickets, before taking Britain by surprise in a tour the year previous to his death, beginning in March at the Trocadero cinema in south London.
At each of his innumerable venues, Holly converted the young to a new kind of music, and from Bob Dylan, to Eric Clapton to Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, Holly's style would convince them that performing like him, guitar in hand, was what they wanted to do.
The young white Baptist from Lubbock, Texas, born in September 1936 as Charles Hardin Holley, came from a hardworking family, struggling as best they could through the economic travails of 1930s America - a racially divided, fraught society within which music - from folk to blues, gospel and jazz - was generally seen as "black" music, and what became known as country and western was "white" - fictional categories upheld by the radio and television outlets and record companies.
But as young Buddy and his schoolmates started to gig about town in the local cinema and hops, it was the liberating figure of Elvis Presley, when in January 1955 he came to town, who would change the scene for good: what was "black"; what was "white": who could tell now?
Holly followed in those footsteps and would play in "black" venues as much as in "white", while his songs - classics such as That'll Be The Day, Peggy Sue, Everyday, It's So Easy, True Love Ways, Raining In My Heart, Rave On - became the bedrock of "rock".
Their sources in the language, manner and lifestyle of his background and upbringing (and others like him) tell a fascinating story of cultural enterprise and poetic conviction at a time when "pop" music was breaking the sound barrier and making its way through to a new young generation.
Playing around the local scene, with the indispensable support of his ex-serviceman brother, Larry, whose tiling business underwrote much of Holly's early rise to pre-eminence, is neatly captured in Gribbin's compact and unfussy book.
It's a shock, nevertheless, to realise that Holly and the Crickets, in all their various manifestations, started in their young teens and in the space of a few years, were riding high in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, performing on television regularly and gigging constantly, as well as learning on the road showmanship. In a letter to his parents from England, Holly remarks: "Everyone commented on how my jokes get bigger laughs than the comedian on the show, Des O'Connor". O'Connor is reported by Gribbin as saying this wasn't surprising since Holly had been using O'Connor's jokes, but delivering them "in a real Southern drawl . . . the audience loved his accent".
The accent was everything, not just the way of talking but his style on stage, the moves, for the boy next door who took off and let it rip, could sing and play and entertain with the best of them.
The Crickets played their last show in London on March 25th, 1958, remarks Gribbin, and as "soon as they were back in the States, they joined an exhausting 44-day tour . . . including Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis". Barely a year later the music died.
Not Fade Away charts how this classic drama of modern times happened, as the young of the time, from Dylan to Morrison, devoted their lives as singer-songwriters to making music, and played their way into the history books.
Gerald Dawe was co-editor, with Maria Johnston, of High Pop, The Irish Times Columns 1970-1976, by Stewart Parker, recently published by Lagan Press.