12 AMERICAN BLUES THEATER WHY BUDDY HOLLY WILL NEVER FADE AWAY On the basis of simply counting heads, rock music surpasses even film as the 20th century's most influential art form. By that reckoning, there is a case for calling Buddy Holly—who died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959—the century's most influential musician. Holly and Elvis Presley are the two seminal figures of 1950s rock and roll, the place where modern rock culture began. Virtually everything we hear on CD or see on film or the concert stage can be traced back to those twin towering icons – Elvis with his drape jacket and swiveling hips and Buddy in big black glasses, brooding over the fretboard of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. But Presley's contribution to original, visceral rock and roll was little more than that of a gorgeous transient; having unleashed the world-shaking new sound, he soon forsook it for slow ballads, schlock movie musicals, and Las Vegas cabarets. Holly, by contrast, was a pioneer and a revolutionary. His was a multidimensional talent which seemed to arrive fully formed in a medium still largely populated by fumbling amateurs. The songs he co-wrote and performed with his backing band the Crickets remain as fresh and potent today as when recorded on primitive equipment in New Mexico half a century ago: “That'll Be The Day”, “Peggy Sue, “Oh, Boy!”, and more. To call someone who died at 22 "the father of rock" is not as fanciful as it seems. As a songwriter, performer, and musician, Holly is the progenitor of virtually every world-class talent to emerge in the Sixties and Seventies. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Bruce Springsteen all freely admit they began to play only after Buddy taught them how. Though normal-sighted as a teenager, Elton John donned spectacles in imitation of the famous Holly horn-rims and ruined his eyesight as a result. Holly's voice is the most imitated, and inimitable, in rock. Hundreds of singers have borrowed its eccentric pronunciation and phrasing. None (except perhaps John Lennon) has exactly caught the curious luster of its tone, its erratic swings from dark to light, from exuberant snarl to tender sigh, nor brought off the "Holly hiccough" which could fracture even the word "well" into eight syllables. By Philip Norman Originally published February 3, 2015 Buddy Holly Buddy Holly and the Crickets performing