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Dance, popular

Diddley, Bo

Domino, Fats

Lewis, Jerry Lee

Music

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Sullivan, Ed

Top 40 radio

Valens, Ritchie

The 1950s in America

Buddy Holly

by Arthur D. Hlavaty

Identification Singer-songwriter who recorded under his own name and with the Crickets

Holly’s “Tex-Mex” sound—Western, with just a hint of a Latin beat—had a major influence on later music, and after his untimely death in 1959, Holly became legendary in roll-and-roll history.

Charles Hardin Holley (the “e” was dropped by mistake in his first record contract) was influenced musically by Bob Wills’s “Western Swing.” With three friends, Holly started the Crickets, whose first single, “That’ll Be the Day,” was released in 1957 and was an immediate hit. It was followed by “Oh, Boy!” Holly then released “Peggy Sue” under his own name, with “Every Day” on the flip side.

In March, 1958, the Crickets successfully toured Great Britain, one of the first American rock groups to do so. In the summer of that year, Holly met Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist, and they married two weeks later. In 1959, Holly went on a tour of the Midwest with J. P. Richardson (who performed as the Big Bopper ) and singer Ritchie Valens. On February 3, their small chartered plane crashed, killing all three performers. Coral Records, his label, rushed to release Holly’s last record, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

Impact

Holly was in the public eye for less than two years, but his music influenced many other performers, and his life inspired songs and a movie. He performed with a nervous intensity, even when the lyrics(like those of “Peggy Sue”) would seem to require calm or sorrow; the adolescent sexual fervor of “Oh, Boy!” is all but overpowering. Like Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, he was far from the standards of male attractiveness for the time, but he helped redefine them.

Holly’s Tex-Mex sound influenced other musicians, from the Drifters to the Beatles and Freddy Fender. The 1978 movie The Buddy Holly Story included a certain amount of Hollywood imagination. Holly’s plane crash is the central image of Don McLean’s musical history song, “American Pie.”

Further Reading

1 

Goldrosen, John. Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly. Rev. ed. New York: DaCapo Press, 2001. Many illustrations, photos, news clippings, and charts accompany this good biography.

2 

Lehmer, Larry. The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. This detailed view of Holly’s final tour includes biographical material on the performers.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Hlavaty, Arthur D. "Buddy Holly." The 1950s in America, edited by John C. Super, Salem Press, 2005. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1950_358.
APA 7th
Hlavaty, A. D. (2005). Buddy Holly. In J. C. Super (Ed.), The 1950s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Hlavaty, Arthur D. "Buddy Holly." Edited by John C. Super. The 1950s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2005. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.