Best Buddy Holly Song

Key-rist, NFA vs. Peggy Sue Got Married vs. I'm Looking For Someone To Love vs. Heartbeat, maybe?

I don't even know half of these. Must research.

Out of the ones I know my favorite is Rave On so that one.

Heartbeat, Words of Love, Not Fade Away, Well All Right - damn, he produced so many classics so quickly. First thought is Words of Love; his vocal delivery is amazing.

That'll Be The Poll: A very credible Buddy Holly poll

everyday, maybe? pretty much have that song in my head everyday, anyway.

Words of Love probably? Every Day close second

Rave On.

― ENBB, Saturday, August 8, 2009 11:31 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

At least I'm consistent.

I totally missed that other poll on my search this morning. Oh well, at least it's a different batch of songs.

has anyone purchased that big buddy holly box set that came out a year or two ago? i want it, but don't have the $$$.

this one
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rtY-2ZOt8fM/Sv3ggVP1yjI/AAAAAAAAHHY/zPSvLodI1cI/s640/,000000.jpg

Today, Wishing.

I'll stay consistent and vote for Well...All Right once again.

I want that box set too, tyler, but it's overpriced. Never seen it on sale either.

I have the bazillion disc Purple Chick thing around here somewhere so it's not a huge priority.

Peggy Sue is probably my favorite vocal performance ever

ha, yeah, i've got that 9 disc purple chick thing too. the official box set just looks purty.

Such a great writer, it's hard to vote for a cover, but Brown Eyed Handsome Man is one of my favourite records ever

"It Doesn't Matter Anymore" is my favorite today

"Crying, Waiting, Hoping" as before

gonna have to be all twee and emo & vote for Everyday

Probably "Look at Me." I went through a period around university where I listened to the two regular-issue Holly albums a lot.

"Peggy Sue" or "Heartbeat" or "Oh Boy" or "Rave On" or "Words of Love" or "Everyday" or "I'm Gonna Love You Too" or ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f62pPag0ph8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okK5w-64-JY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJd567IViTA

Bruce liked Buddy. But then, everyone likes Buddy. Or should.

!!!!!

<3

They're all great but Oh Boy/Badlands is just great. I really love Badlands tho so that might be why.

is it just me or are those Springsteen covers all incredibly awful? jeezus...

haha

lol

\(^o^)/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

well, there's a lack of consensus for ya

my vote for Words of Love didn't register! grr.

Would have turned 75 today. I showed this clip to my class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQiIMuOKIzY

Keep a nice open mind about what the young people go for.

Totally missed this poll. "Words of Love" needs a vote.

That clip made my day, thanks!

amazing, thanks clemenza. 75! insane to think of all the music he could've made.

Except for Johnny Cash, the mid- and late '60s weren't kind to any of the major '50s guys. I have a hard time envisioning what Holly would have been up to in '68. Hosting a network variety show?

Aww, missed this poll. "Words of Love" or "Rave On."

Except for Johnny Cash, the mid- and late '60s weren't kind to any of the major '50s guys.

Elvis had a tremendous late 60s, all those songs he recorded in Memphis.

I think Buddy would have stayed relevant. By 1959 he had already moved to NYC. It's hard to believe he was only 22 when he died.

No votes for You're So Square? Late write-in. :(

Yeah, Buddy was about to get on some next level shit in New York. Would rock and roll as we know it today have been mad different?

don't know! i mean, i can see him going back to the country like jerry lee, too.

I could also see Holly really creating some cool stuff in response to the British Invasion. He seemed to be more forward-thinking than a lot of his contemporaries and I think he could have stayed relevant for years.

See, I read somewhere that he was learning to play flamenco guitar which like, what would he have done with that? Or even just having more of his songs. Damn it...

See, I read somewhere that he was learning to play flamenco guitar

Ha, that's weird. Obviously he was into extending his (guitar) technique, i wonder what he would have done with a Marshall stack.

Elvis did have the late-'60s comeback, yes--for him, I meant before that, all the soundtrack years. I thought about Holly maybe heading to Nashville, but I don't if a "back to the country" scenario makes sense with him, because I'm not sure if he was ever country. I don't really hear that in his two official albums...maybe there are earlier demos I don't know.

have always meant to pick up a good holly collection but have never figured out which one was the best and most comprehensive -- any recommendations?

I think this was considered the best to date when it came out in the mid-'80s--not sure if something better came along since.

http://img.discogs.com/d76Wzozyn0vNEhCq_N96S-YjizY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-2158796-1267184876.jpeg.jpg

I'd highly recommend the two albums he did while alive--one with the Crickets, one on his own--although you'd miss a few songs from the posthumous LP

I think the 3-disc/60 track "Memorial Collection" is the the most comprehensive, non-Public Domain collection that's easily available. It's kind of an annoying set though in that it could easily have been a 2-disc not by cutting anything, but simply by utilizing disc space better. I turned it into two CDRs for the car, and still had room to add some Holly covers to end of disc 2.

There's a guy down here with a vinyl warehouse open for once a month sales. He's got a couple copies of that late '70s complete recordings vinyl box that Marcus wrote about in Stranded. I kind of pine for one despite knowing they're probably hella expensive (one of 'em is still sealed).

That entry was where I learned the word "draconian."

The best single-disc collection: The Definitive Buddy Holly.

https://www.discogs.com/Buddy-Holly-The-Definitive-Collection/release/1383882

That's a nice enough set, but it slights his worthwhile pre-fame stuff, and completely shorts the posthumous stuff.

RIP Tommy Allsup: http://lubbockonline.com/entertainment/2017-01-11/tommy-allsup-guitarist-who-toured-buddy-holly-dies

I just heard Slippin' and Slidin' for the first time yesterday and I can't stop listening to it. Just so astonishingly good and weird and cool.

Yeah, that's a good one - another gem uncovered from those home demos that were among his last recordings. Given how young he was (22!), his good physical and mental health, and the quality of his final recordings, Holly's death ranks way up there as one of the most incalculable losses in rock.

Yeah, incalculable is the word for it. These demos really bring home to me how much range he had, and how much potential to keep developing as an artist. He's 22, he has this huge oeuvre of perfect pop songs already behind him, and yet there's so much of his incredible talent that he's only starting to explore. Who knows where he would have gone, given the time?

btw I can't believe "Oh Boy" didn't get any votes at all in this poll. And yet I can't argue with any of the winners.

“True Love Ways” is def a sentimental favorite, when I was little I used to sit in front of the hi-fi system & listen to it. It’s like a lullaby.

not that it’s my number one but it’s def a favorite

i think “Everyday” is my fave? maybe?

There's some discussion on the YT Slippin and Slidin video concerning whether or not it's psychedelic. Apparently Jason Pierce has said it's the most psychedelic song ever.

The riff is all major chords which I think contributes to the proto-psych quality.

There's a similar part in 'Arnold Layne'

Kinda day-glow

Not sure which version of "Slippin and Slidin" everyone is listening to on YouTube. I can only find two versions. One has a '60s rock band backing overdubbed on it. The other is an acoustic demo.

I will admit the overdubbed version is a clever mash-up that does sound psychedelic.

I've been listening to the two slow versions that are on the Down the Line: Rarities compilation that's on Spotify. One is dubbed and the other not, so probably the same thing you're seeing on Youtube.

I assumed the dubbed version was based on a different demo from the one that's included in the compilation? It has some weird wordless vocal stuff at the end that isn't in the undubbed version. I like them both.

They're interesting, though would not dislodge the Little Richard original recording in my mind as the definitive interpretation.

Buddy Holly's most psychedelic moment is the use of "True Love Ways" in the Never Say No to Panda series of cheese commercials.

Some interesting wikipedia details on the overdubs:

Besides their own recordings, the Fireballs were studio musicians for other recording artist projects... Norman Petty had been Buddy Holly's main recording producer; after Holly's death, he obtained the rights to Holly's early rehearsal and home demo recordings. From May 1962 until August 1968, Petty had the Fireballs overdub the Holly material, making them the band he never knew he had, though the band had met Holly at Petty's studio in 1957. The overdubs were originally released on four albums of "new" Holly material throughout the 1960s with four of the efforts, released as singles, charting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fireballs

I quite like some of those overdubs

Same here. The two-cd, 50-track The Buddy Holly Collection from 1993 used the versions with the Fireballs' overdubs, and I think they made the right call. That set is still probably the best Buddy Holly collection you can find in terms of cost (very cheap now), consistency and overall quality. If you want more, you might as well spring for the complete box set.

That seems to have been re-released (with the same tracks) as Buddy Holly Gold, which was the first CD of his I heard.

UME's Gold series is kind of weird because most of those simply repackage previous two-CD compilations, but with different (usually much less) artwork. It looks like a lame money-saving repackaging scheme where they slap the same art template on to every release.

Here's the performance of "Oh Boy!" where Ed Sullivan supposedly ordered Buddy's amp turned down and then called him "Buddy Hollit" when introducing him. Despite that, Buddy's pissed-off, raspy vocal is so satisfying -- his shout just before the solo is very punk rock, as is the (silent) solo itself, which lasts all of about eight seconds but foreshadows Pete Townshend and Johnny Ramone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIOy9WcxU0

My dad had the 20 Golden Greats LP, the one with the "Buddy Holly Lives" cover, and I used to play the hell out of it as a kid. I always felt the overdubbed stuff (which I like) fit in perfectly.

xp That performance is so cool! I had never seen it.

I had the Buddy Holly Gold album and listened to it a lot as a kid, so a lot of his songs are permanently engraved on my brain, but in a sort of context-free way. I really had no sense of what he was like as a performer.

Yeah, love that performance. Makes me miss Holly even more, or rather what he would've been like had he been around longer.

My dad had the 20 Golden Greats LP, the one with the "Buddy Holly Lives" cover, and I used to play the hell out of it as a kid. I always felt the overdubbed stuff (which I like) fit in perfectly.

That's still a great LP. It's been superseded by better-sounding and more extensive collections, but it still holds up as a really great 20-track overview.

Jerry Allison has died per the official social media accounts of the Buddy Holly estate. He was the last surviving member of the Crickets.

("Peggy Sue" was named after his future wife - she passed away in 2018.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qQzuvfvBdE

Never noticed this before, but Allison's playing with the bottom end of his left stick.

https://scottkfish.com/2015/12/29/jerry-allison-keep-everything-relatively-simple/

excerpts from interview with Jerry Allison.

Jerry Allison: Well, I started playing drums in the school band in the fifth gradde. I started studying music and the rudiments an the regular drumming deal, going through, like, band and high school band and all that.

The kind of music I liked was like Little Richard and Fats Domino. So that about wraps it up, I guess. (laughs)

No. Really, I took drum lessons and learned to read music and all that sort of thing. Couldn’t get much rock ‘n roll around Lubbock, Texas. But when it started happening I really enjoyed it and tried to play like Little Richard’s drummer, Earl Palmer. I think I played a lot of that stuff. He’s a good friend of mine. We play together a lot in L.A. when I use to live out there. I use to do a lot of sessions with him out there.

SKF: I was noticing [on Little Richard and Fats Domino records] the bass drum work he [Earl Palmer] did on those records.

JA: Yeah. He did great.

SKF: Little Richard and Earl Palmer were only a few years ahead of you guys. Almost contemporaries.

JA: Yeah.

SKF: They were about three or four years ahead of you?

JA: Maybe not even that much. Maybe just a couple. When we first went on the road we were doing shows with Little Richard. And Earl Palmer wasn’t on the road with him at that time. There was a guy named Cornelius Coleman that played on the road with Fats Domino. We were on the road with them the first tour we dd. Fats Domino’s band. I liked the way he played real well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEh2rAj_9IU

1958 "Real Wild Child" with Jerry Ivan Allison on vocals backed by the Crickets

66 years ago today.

The best.

A long, long time ago.

no votes for "Words of Love" is CRAZY

His older brother lived well into his 90s; it's not impossible that Buddy could have still been around to get a lifetime award at the Grammies or show up in a McCartney video, or whatever.

...to Don McLean's joy/dismay.

I could definitely see Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney paying their respects at the Kennedy Center. Maybe becoming friends with Lennon as they hang out as two outsiders who later relocated to New York City.

Also, would've voted for "Not Fade Away" but had I known the results beforehand, I would've voted for "Words of Love" because zero votes is just wrong.

Rave On, followed by Maybe Baby, followed by Think It Over

I can’t remember what I voted for and there are so many good ones, but if I have to pull a personal favorite out of my hat I’ll go with “Heartbeat.”

I'll add special mention to "Well...All Right," which is another favorite. It seemed to open up whole new territory that Holly probably would've explored further had he lived longer and continued to write songs. It feels like the first stirrings of righteous anger in a young man who suddenly feels the need to push back. It may have been about a relationship, but something about it feels like a bridge between that and so much more - it may even suggest that the distance between the personal and the political may not actually exist when you feel passionate about rejecting some kind of wrong.

Also really weird to see one of Paul Anka's songs get the second most votes in a Buddy Holly poll. (It's not a bad hit, but still...)

Hey, when he fuckin' moves, he slices like a fuckin' hammer...

I see I mentioned "Oh Boy" upthread, but other no-vote songs I really like are "It's So Easy" and "Midnight Shift."

Turns out there are dozens of cover of “Raining in My Heart” and most of them are pretty good, including this posthumous duet with Gregory Porter. Who knew? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnl69BtKnbw