When the “Music” Died & The Brits Took Over

Buddy Holly Center large-scale replica of Holly's iconic glasses

Buddy Holly Center large-scale replica of Holly’s iconic glasses

“And while Lenin read a book on Marx, A quartet practiced in the park, And we sang dirges in the dark, The day the music died.”

Don McLean’s hit song, “American Pie,” references the 1959 plane crash that took the lives of rock ‘n’ roll star and Lubbock-native, Buddy Holly, as well as Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson and Pilot Roger Peterson.

 

Last week marked the anniversaries of Holly’s death and the “British Invasion.”

Despite the freezing temperatures and snow residue, the Buddy Holly Center located at 1801 Crickets Ave. celebrated the crash’s 55th anniversary last Monday by hosting free admittance to all of the museum’s features, including the recently added Allison home.

Buddy Holly mural on a building off of 19th St.

Buddy Holly mural on a building off of 19th St.

The home is the childhood residence of Jerry I. Allison, who was Holly’s best friend and served as the drummer in Holly’s band “The Crickets.” The center’s curator, Jacqueline Bober, said the house was moved from its location on 6th Street, near the Walmart Supercenter in North Overton, after it was discovered during the area’s 2003 redevelopment.

McDougal Properties, developers of the North Overton area, donated the house to the city, Bober said. The house was renovated through private and business funding.

The dwelling is known to be the location where Holly and Allison co-wrote Buddy Holly and The Crickets’ first hit song, “That’ll Be the Day.” Bober said Holly’s family and friends had a gathering at the Allison residence following Holly’s funeral.

Holly’s boyhood home used to reside in the same area, Bober said, but no one knows for sure what happened to the house Holly was born in. There are several rumors of the house’s fate, she said, such as not it being able to survive the selling and moving process. Other rumors say the house either burnt down or a buyer moved it to a pig farm in the country.

According to the Buddy Holly Center’s website, Holly’s family  moved to Lubbock in 1925 in search of better job opportunities provided by the cotton industry and the recently-opened Texas Technological College, which would later become known as Texas Tech University.

Statue of Buddy Holly across the street from the museum

Statue of Buddy Holly across the street from the museum

Buddy Holly and The Cricket’s 1958 music tour in England inspired musicians such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Keith Richards who would  take the stage after him and lead the “British Invasion” of the 1960s, the website claims. In fact, the website said, the Rolling Stones’ first hit was Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

A display in the Buddy Holly Center said the Beatles modeled their name after The Crickets, keeping with the era’s trend of naming your band after an insect. Bober said The Crickets briefly considered naming themselves The Beatles while looking through an insect encyclopedia. They chose to be called The Crickets, she said, because the name was symbolic in that they made their own music just like crickets do.

“Paul McCartney would later recall watching Buddy Holly perform on “Sunday Night at The London Palladium” television program just to see which chords Holly used and where he placed his guitar capo,” the website said.

Five years and six days after Holly’s ill-fated plane crash, the official British takeover culminated when a new, Holly-inspired band from the U.K. appeared on a popular CBS program called The Ed Sullivan Show, according to a Texas Tech University news release.

“A record-setting 73 million people watched and welcomed what we now call The British Invasion,” the news release said.

Photo by: its all about Rock on Flicker

Photo by: its all about Rock on Flicker

According the news release, the nationwide broadcast of the Beatle’s “All My Loving” performance forever changed America.

“The Beatles phenomenon is really unique in that The Beatles more or less synopsized American pop music and synthesized it into a really potent and commercial form,” History of Rock ‘n’ Roll Instructor Roger Landes said.

CBS competed with NBC’s Winter Olympics snow coverage on Sunday by celebrating the 50th anniversary of “The Night That Changed America”.

According to the special’s website, the Grammy’s salute to the Beatles occurred at the exact same date, day and time as the original event.

Updated: Feb. 12, 2014

About Alicia Keene

Graduate Executive Director
Alicia Keene is a dual master's student from Austin, Texas studying mass communication and business. One day, she hopes to work for a prominent news publication in a major city as either a reporter or producer.