Featuring
The Stagger
 Lee Files

Blues Connection  
    Pages:

Home

Musician Index

What's New

Bibliography

Boss Talker's Dictionary

About This Site/Dedication

Contact the Author

Copyright © 2002-2004
by James P. Hauser except where otherwise noted.  All rights reserved.

The Blues Connections of

Buddy Holly

Mick Jagger once commented that Buddy Holly was the only truly original white rock 'n' roll musician, and that all the other whites borrowed from black music. Well, that statement is not exactly true because Holly also borrowed from black music. Heck...Jagger knows--as well as Bo Diddley's right and left hands know--that you can't play rock and roll without playing the blues, but the point he was trying to make was that Holly was the most original of all the early white rock 'n' roll stars. He was more original because he was the songwriter for many of his hit records including "That'll Be the Day" and "Not Fade Away", and he relied much less on covering R&B songs than other white rock 'n' roll performers like Elvis and Bill Haley.

In addition to being one of the first great rock songwriters, Buddy pioneered many innovations to rock 'n' roll including the technique of overdubbing and the use of strings to "sweeten" the sound of his ballads. He also popularized the Fender Stratocaster which has become a symbol of rock music. He was even responsible for shaping the basic form of the rock band--his lineup of electric lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, and drums was adopted by the Beatles and most of the other British Invasion groups, and forty years later this lineup still forms the core of today's rock bands.

Holly was a great innovator, but he was sure enough influenced by and borrowed from the blues and other black music. For example, the band lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums that Buddy brought to rock 'n' roll can be traced back to the blues, and (to be more specific) the man primarily behind the concept of the loud, electrified, stripped down band was Muddy Waters, a bluesman who was a favorite of Holly's. As a teenager, Buddy would listen to blues and R&B on the radio. He loved the rhythm and blues group Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and he once performed their song "Work With Me Annie" on a country radio station in his hometown. He also was a big fan of bluesmen like Howlin' Wolf, Lonnie Johnson, and Elmore James. Another influence was black gospel music, with Mahalia Jackson as a favorite.

You can definitely hear the influence of the blues in Buddy's music. He put Bo Diddley's shave-and-a-haircut beat into one of his best songs,"Not Fade Away", and he borrowed the beat from Little Richard's "Lucille" for his song "Maybe Baby". He also recorded cover versions of R&B tunes such as Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" and Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll". More rhythm and blues songs that were recorded by Buddy Holly are listed below, arranged alphabetically by the name of the bluesman who wrote, originally recorded, or popularized the song.

Roy Brown (also recorded by Wynonie Harris): Good Rockin' Tonight

Bill Doggett: Honky Tonk

Fats Domino: Blue Monday, Valley of Tears

Clarence "Frogman" Henry: Ain't Got No Home

Little Richard: Ready Teddy, Rip It Up, Slippin' and Slidin'

Mickey and Sylvia: Love Is Strange, Ummm Oh Yeah (also known as "Dearest")

The Coasters: Smokey Joe's Cafe

Chuck Willis: It's Too Late

Notes

Breaking Down the Walls

Back in the days when America's young people were caught up in the sound and spirit of a new kind of music called rock 'n' roll, Chuck Berry told Carl Perkins that rock 'n' roll musicians just might be doing as much to break down the barriers between blacks and whites as the country's leaders in Washington. What Berry was referring to was that their music was bringing black and white kids together. Little Richard has pointed out that when he did shows in places where segregation was in force, the audience--which would be separated into black and white sections--would get up out of their seats, move around, and mix together. If the white kids were up in the balcony, they would literally climb over the balcony's railing and drop down to the lower level to where the black kids were. Of course, this didn't go over well with the segregationists, and much of the backlash against rock 'n' roll--whether it came from the educators, the politicians, the preachers, or the police--was built on nothing but racism and the fear drummed up by the racists.

Buddy Holly is an excellent example of how rock'n'roll was a force against racism during that time. He grew up in Lubbock, Texas, a city where segregation was an absolute way of life. His father was prejudiced against blacks, and--as he grew up in a racist environment--Buddy also learned to be a racist. But his love for the rhythm and blues music that was played by great black artists like Hank Ballard is what changed his bigoted way of thinking. He would regularly enter Lubbock's ghetto to hear the local black musicians play the blues, and he would even ask them for guitar playing tips. After he became a star and his mother asked him what he thought of all the black musicians he was on tour with, Buddy told her that he felt like he was black too. Buddy shot craps in the back of the tour bus with Chuck Berry, and he became friends with Little Richard. He once even shocked his parents by bringing Little Richard home for dinner. Rock'n'roll opened Buddy's eyes to the evils of racism and it opened the eyes of a lot of other young people too. It helped to break down some of the walls between blacks and whites. Chuck Berry was right when he told Carl Perkins that rock'n'roll was breaking down racial barriers, and Carl--who, as a child working in the fields of his sharecropping parents, had learned about the blues from a black sharecropper named John Westbrook--knew exactly how right Chuck was.

Buddy Holly's main source of exposure to the blues was radio. His hometown of Lubbock, Texas did not have radio stations that played this type of music, but he was still able to listen to the blues on the radio. It was possible because AM radio waves from far away locations could be picked up all during the night hours. In the evenings, Buddy and his friends would spend time in a car listening to disc jockeys from Louisiana spinning their favorite rhythm and blues records.

Index

The AKA Blues Connection
Ramblin' to where the Southern cross the Dog!