Teenage Impersonators: J.D. Salinger, John Lennon, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper

One reason that J. D. Salinger’s writing can seem juvenile is that it contains no adult sexuality, which is not the case with Mailer, Kerouac, and Burroughs. The Teenage Impersonator impersonated only boys. Salinger is Holden Caulfield, but Salinger is not Esmé. “What do you think about Esmé?” Salinger asked. “She’s right on the edge between the innocent wise child and the woman,” Peter Tewksbury said. “And the whole story rests on that moment... a minor chord that builds up to that peak moment before it becomes a major.”

Salinger agreed to allow Tewksbury to make his film on one condition: Salinger would cast Esmé. In March, Congress convened hearings as part of its investigation into the ratings industry. Tewksbury was the first person to testify. Tewksbury charged that ratings could be bought. Salinger admired Tewksbury, and not just for “It’s a Man’s World.” Toward the end of the nineteen-sixties, Tewksbury threw his Emmy out the window of a car and left Hollywood. Source: www.newyorker.com

It probably takes an eccentric to really do Howard Hughes justice, so the enigmatic Warren Beatty is well-suited to the film. Although he’s playing Hughes at a point when he was still in his fifties, Beatty, although often shrouded in darkness or seemingly wearing make-up to soften his features, looks remarkably good for his age and isn’t hard to believe in the role. Poking fun at his own ladies-man image, here Hughes is almost buffoonish with ladies, not that it matters much with his money. Largely playing the role for laughs, Beatty is funny in the role and seems to be having a ball, especially when imitating Hughes’s wayward way of making a point, while occasionally giving us a peek at the very real mental issues the mogul was facing.  Source: www.joblo.com

Men who see themselves as playboys or as having power over women are more likely to have psychological problems than men who conform less to traditionally masculine norms, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “In general, individuals who conformed strongly to masculine norms tended to have poorer mental health and less favorable attitudes toward seeking psychological help, although the results differed depending on specific types of masculine norms,” said lead author Y. Joel Wong, PhD, of Indiana University Bloomington. The study was published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology®. Source: www.apa.org

The Howard Hughes of Rock and Roll: Phil Spector. When, in the mid-1960s, the British Invasion eclipsed him, Spector's fragile self-esteem was shattered. When he tried LSD, he glimpsed his father's suicide. Freaked by the Manson family murders, he withdrew behind electric fences, guard dogs, bodyguards and guns. His career-rescuing collaborations with John Lennon, likewise deserted by his father at a young age, concluded with Spector firing his revolver into the studio ceiling. Increasingly crushed by the weight of his own achievements, he took to the bottle and gradually faded.

Poleaxed by Lennon's murder in 1980, Spector disappeared altogether with a third wife, Rachelle Short, his erstwhile PA. When Mick Brown interviewed Phil Spector for The Telegraph, he seemed consumed by his self-image as Rock's Howard Hughes. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

John Lennon himself withdrew for many years, then tried peeking out again, with the tragic results we know. These questions come to mind in reading David Shields and Shane Salerno’s biography “Salinger” (2013) because, in one of the most bizarre sections of a bizarre book, they themselves raise the issue of murder-by-bad-reading, in connection with the murder of the Beatles’ John Lennon by Mark Chapman, who happened to have hallucinated a motive within “The Catcher in the Rye.” Shields and Salerno insist that Chapman was not just a crazy hallucinant, but in his own misguided way an insightful reader, responding to the “huge amount of psychic violence in the book.” Now, there is a section in “Catcher” in which Holden fantasizes about shooting, but it is exactly a bit of extended irony about the movies' effect on everyone’s imagination. In Salerno’s “acclaimed documentary film” a witness points out that the word “kills” occurs with ominous regularity in the text—failing to acknowledge that this is Holden’s slang for the best things. “She kills me” is what Holden says about his beloved little sister Phoebe. 

A simple theory is flogged: that Salinger was a victim of P.T.S.D., screwed up by a brutal combat experience in the Second World War. It’s a truth that Salinger himself dramatized at beautiful length in his story “For Esmé—with Love And Squalor,” and then left behind. Holden is far too young to be a veteran, and Seymour Glass was in the armed forces, like most of his generation, but never in combat: the proximate cause of his suicide is a bad marriage.

In any case, Salinger’s work emphatically editorializes its moral point, which is about as far from sublimating violence as any writing can be: Phoebe, the Fat Lady, Esmé, innocence, and small domestic epiphanies are good. Violence, the military, cruelty are all bad. That Salinger was wounded by combat is obvious;  Holden’s sweetness and essential helplessness was shared by hundreds of artists of the period (most of whom had never held a rifle). The two writers who meant the most to Salinger, Ring Lardner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, seem left largely out of the book’s discussion. Source: www.newyorker.com

Danger and death became essential ingredients of the rock generation's ethos, infusing young people with a sense of tragedy. The materialistic world of the fifties seemed to snuff out the sensitive, like poet Sylvia Plath, or drive them to nervous breakdowns, like Seymour Glass and Holden Caulfield. Rock and roll was banned on the BBC, but John Lennon listened to it on the privately owned Radio Luxemburg. The Los Angeles Buddy Holly discovered in 1957 was at its height as a supermarket of cockeyed metaphysical urges; a neon sign on La Brea advertised "Car Wash and Mind Control." There were Mildred Pierce-type restaurants with numbered booths and nice apartments on Holloway Drive that could be rented for $227 a month. On the road, Buddy Holly concealed his .22 in his shaving kit. He had acquired his gun when he started collecting the Crickets' performance fees directly from the promoters. The Big Bopper once said that you must always get a 'first count'. –"Buddy Holly: A Biography" (2014)

-Ear Candy Mag: In the book THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED, it was mentioned that the Big Bopper just wanted to stay in the singing business long enough to get money to buy his own radio station…

-Jay Perry Richardson: That's what dad wanted to do, mom says he wanted to buy a station in Denver to start with. For some reason he wanted to move to Denver. And the performing side of it, dad was really a shy kind of guy. When he put on that jacket or got behind a microphone, he was a character. People say, "Boy, your dad must have been a crazy guy". And, he really wasn't. I mean my dad. Now the Big Bopper, yeah he was a nut. That was part of the act.


The Big Bopper was a 'character'. That was not my dad, distinguish the two. My dad was a laid back, intellectual thinking kind of guy trying to move forward in the music business and had all these ideas and knew where he wanted to go. The 'Bopper' was the thing that he created for his radio show. And they just took it into his music. Just so happened the first song that he recorded - "Chantilly Lace" was the flip side of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor". It just so happens that it took off. I believe that my dad just would not believe the way people react to his music today... he was just trying to make a living to support his family. Source: www.earcandy.com

Buddy Holly's honeymoon & Philadelphia's American Bandstand

Buddy Holly and his band, The Crickets, created a template that groups from the Beatles to Nirvana would follow. And it was a Philadelphia radio personality who helped launch Holly's career. In their book Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly, co-authors John Goldrosen and John Beecher credit longtime WDAS disc jockey Georgie Woods with helping "That'll Be the Day" become a hit in the summer of 1957.

Bob Thiele, who was in charge of scouting and artist development for Coral Records, which included Brunswick, confirmed Deutch's account for Goldrosen. "For weeks and weeks, nothing happened. There were no orders," Murray Deutch, of Peer-Southern, which handled Holly's music publishing, told Goldrosen. "All of a sudden, the record started to sell. The sales department called, and they had one order from Philly alone for 20,000 copies."

That led to the Crickets appearing on Philadelphia-based American Bandstand on Aug. 26, 1957, miming to "That'll Be the Day" in one of their first appearances on national television. While the broadcast helped the song top Billboard's singles chart, Crickets drummer Jerry Allison had mixed emotions about the presentation: "We had to act like a vocal group," he recalled, even though he and bassist Joe Mauldin never sang on Holly's recordings.

Holly and the Crickets came to Philadelphia on October 28 to promote their new recordings for Dick Clark on American Bandstand. Allison recalled a tense moment in the dressing room before the show. Someone from Clark's staff asked Holly to return the check he received as a favor for Bandstand's playing his songs. "Buddy stood up for himself and refused," Allison says. "He told him, If Dick doesn't like our songs, tell him not to play them." In early November 1958, Holly, Allison, and Mauldin went their separate ways over differences with manager/producer Norman Petty. 

For his final tour in early 1959, Holly formed a new band that included future country star Waylon Jennings on bass. Jerry Allison was just 19 when he and Holly split, leaving him to wonder what would have happened if they had stayed together. "That might have been the worst mistake I ever made," he says now. Source: www.philly.com

Jerry Allison was, according to Peggy Sue, often angry or depressed. It seems that she never loved him (“Standing at the wedding ceremony. The biggest mistake of my life.”) What do we learn about Buddy Holly? Always kind and understanding, like his parents, but he could erupt when pushed. When his car got blocked by some hoods, he reached for his gun and said, “I’m giving you five seconds to move that fucking car and then I’m going to start shootin’.” We learn that he helped “the Lubbock girl with the bad reputation” when she got pregnant: “Really, I loved her”, Holly reportedly said of her. Except when she went shopping, Maria Elena seems to have been in a permanently bad mood, and simply “shaking her head in disapproval”. Right from the start of the joint honeymoon, she told Holly and Allison to stop playing around, and spent the evening eating alone in her room.

Maria and Jerry seem to have spent some of the honeymoon as drinking buddies, but she soon turned against him and said to Peggy Sue: “If he thinks he can‘t be replaced, he should think twice”. One of the most bizarre passages is when Maria accuses Norman Petty of looking up her skirt. “Do you want me to ask Norman for money to buy my panties, Buddy?”, Maria urged. At first, Buddy kind of laughed it off and Jerry was chuckling as if Maria had told a joke. But she kept it up and Buddy finally said sternly: “That's enough, Maria Elena!” After the funeral, Maria told Peggy Sue, “I’m going to get the man who killed Buddy”. However, Peggy Sue said that Norman had always paid and the assets were being held up by the promoter, Manny Greenfield. 

What has always set Buddy Holly's persona apart from others in the rock ’n’ roll pantheon is its air of maturity, sympathy and understanding. To successive generations of fans he has seemed less like an idol than a teacher, guide and friend. His songs have become synonyms for a drape-suited, pink-Cadillac belle époque which we have come to regard almost with the same misty-eyed nostalgia as the golden years of Hollywood.  —"Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly" (2014) by Philip Norman

Buddy Holly & The Picks story

"Meet Me at the River, Buddy Holly" (2013) by Bob Lapham is a novel, except the prologue and Chapter 13 titled Buddy Holly and the Picks are true; throughout he book the name of the guy I call Trebor Maple. Trebor Maple is Robert Lapham spelled phonetically backward. That’s me. Bob Lapham, the last surviving member of the pop-R&R trio that was Buddy’s primary vocal backup group on the original Crickets songs, mainly an album considered one of early rock ‘n’ roll’s classics that won the 1958 Billboard best new vocal group award.

Treb lies in the back seat. His eyes close. Immediately he shudders, blinking in the semi-darkness. He is certain he can see Buddy Holly, unsmiling as he stares straight ahead, seemingly oblivious. Treb fends off encroaching sleep, surprised to see the rock ‘n’ roll figure unchanged in his wide-awake vision and wondering if he should initiate conversation. Louise looks back, over the seat. “I’m talking to Buddy,” he whines. “Holly? Be sure to tell him I always liked Elvis better.” Treb concentrates, deciding that if this is a valid vision, he can communicate closer to a spiritual level. He can’t see Buddy’s lips move, but he hears, as plain as the whirring Chevrolet differential just below him. “It doesn’t matter anymore…” Treb replies¨: “You mean, after all these years, you’re gonna answer me in song titles? you rank second only to Elvis in the list of influential rock ‘n’ roll pioneers!”

Treb is really feeling sorry for himself now. The old recording sessions at Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis, New Mexico used to take their toll on him, both physically and mentally. “So, get ready to meet me at the river, Buddy Holly.” “What?” Louise Maple asks. But her husband has fallen into the deepest sleep he’s ever experienced. “Your father is in la-la land,” she tells her daughter, taking a drag on her cigarette. Being a Texas Tech student for four and a half years, with a journalism degree, as well as being well versed in the strange nature of Lubbock, he had got a kick out of remembering the night a teenaged Buddy Holly lost his virginity in the back seat of a car parked on a dirt road that paralleled an irrigation ditch in a South Plains cotton field.

Coral was a subsidiary of Decca Records, which originally had Buddy under contract for a horribly produced country album recorded in Nashville earlier. Decca gave approval to let Buddy try rock ‘n’ roll stuff with Coral, and good riddance, it seemed was their attitude in the Nashville country music end of the label. But not That’ll be the Day, which had been on the Nashville album. As I understood the situation from studio gossip in Clovis, Coral was starting to spread its independent wings. It had latched onto an old abandoned label from the 1920s and ‘30s. Brunswick Records was picking up offbeat releases. Somebody in Coral’s office, upon Norman Petty’s prompting, decided to cover Decca’s That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly on Brunswick, with the newly formed Crickets as the artists, when Decca and the record-buying public got around to figuring out the end play. 

The result was the birth of a rock ‘n’ roll legend with That’ll Be the Day, prompting Brunswick to hastily make plans to put out the Chirping Crickets album, all while Buddy Holly’s separate rock ‘n’ roll solo career was taking off on Coral with Peggy Sue and Everyday. “When Norman re-recorded That’ll Be the Day in his Nor Va Jak Studio in Clovis, he lowered the key for Buddy that Decca had produced. For that little production suggestion, Norman cut himself in on songwriting credit, sharing three ways with Allison and Buddy, where Buddy had written the song that Decca recorded. It must’ve been a nightmare to sort out, money-wise, but in later years royalties from that one song alone, a classic that would be covered by dozens of artists through the decades – notably Linda Rondstadt – provided hundreds of thousands of dollars for the three shareholders.

Norman’s soon-dominant cutting himself in for credit as songwriter was born with That’ll Be the Day, I believe. But it sure didn’t end there. Also, he had already formed his own publishing stable, working through Southern Music Publishing in Nashville. So if you came to Clovis to peddle a song, chances are Petty would agree, if he could publish it and record it through Nor Va Jak. And if he could get it recorded, well it seemed only fair to him that he be cut in for songwriting credit. That’s where the real money in music recording came. Royalties for air play made a lot of non-performing songwriters very rich. This started in the Big Band era, but the practice really got sophisticated when rock ‘n’ roll became a producer’s and publisher’s paradise.” True Love Ways proved to be perhaps the best ballad the Picks ever did with Holly.

Listening to Trebor Maple tell about his and co-Picks Bill and John Pickering's contribution to the Holly legend during the summer and fall of 1957.--- The early world of rock ‘n’ roll had been littered with hastily forgottens; those performers who had hit quickly, then took express trips to permanent obscurity. Nino and the Ebb Tides (Franny Franny), Patience and Prudence (Tonight You Belong to Me), Rosie and the Originals (Angel Baby), John D. Loudermilk (Language of Love), and Paul and Paula (Hey Paula). Even Kenneth Copeland had enjoyed a stand-alone teeny-bopper hit in the fifties, but a huge following as a TV evangelist years later kept him far from becoming obscure. 

Buddy was better off, but only temporarily. That’ll Be the Day, written by him, was strictly a Crickets hit. Two months later, on a companion label thanks to a bit of managerial chicanery by their manager-producer, Norman Petty, Peggy Sue (the greatest rock'n'roll anthem) introduced the world to Buddy Holly, a world that quickly figured out the same guy was featured vocalist on both records. The Crickets seemingly were a vocal group that sang and played with Buddy. However, with one exception involving Niki Sullivan, they were not singers. Two big hits in a period of three or so months, and no place to go. Buddy, Allison, young 17-year-old standup bass player Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitar Niki Sullivan were quickly on the road, doing one-nighters.

Petty and his wife, Vi, had all but abandoned their modest regional enterprise of playing for dances in Lubbock, Amarillo, and elsewhere along the Texas-New Mexico border. Clovis, that large stucco two-story building next to the studio housed an apartment where Norman and Vi lived upstairs. Never far out of sight was Norma Jean Berry. She’d slip in and out of the studio. I got the idea early on that Norma Jean was a glorified housekeeper. But she never did any housework that I could see. Norman was a very secretive guy. Intermittent rumour had it that Vi Petty and Norma Jean carried on a lesbian relationship; that Norma Jean and Petty had once had an affair; even that the three participated in troilistic sexual acts. The truth appears to have been that all three, for different reasons, were virtually sexless, and that Norma Jean clung to the Pettys as her surrogate family.

The Crickets had helped Norman install speakers at one end of the garage, and microphones at the other, to make the echo effect that was remarkable, especially for a home-made fixture. Phil Spector later told an interviewer that his “Wall of Sound” was inspired by Norman Petty’s Clovis sound. Particularly what the “Crickets” (actually the Picks, both as arrangers and vocalists) did on Holly songs such as Oh Boy! It's March, 1957: Petty usually worked best at night, in the wee hours, when huge trucks or a train were less likely to rumble by and be picked up on tape in the not-completely-soundproof studio. The Pickerings would go out and have hamburgers with Buddy and the Crickets together in early morning hours, after an all-night session. 

Holly’s bridge between obscurity and certain stardom (Peggy Sue) was in the planning stages. And eventually, rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame status. Buddy and the Crickets, deservedly so. But not the Picks. Treb, John and Bill’s lone claim to recognized achievement was being named to the little-known Rockabilly Hall of Fame in the 1990s. At any rate, Oh Boy! took off when released in October. It anchored The Chirping Crickets album that emerged then too, with the Picks backgrounding on nine of the 12 songs. Included were the ultimately charted singles Maybe Baby and Tell Me How. Treb told Brad that his favorite among the throw-away songs was An Empty Cup and a Broken Date, a real weeper, written by Roy Orbison. Orbison, tiring of Sun Records’ facilities, was beginning to experiment with the Clovis sound.

On a hot day in August, 1957, in the tiny six-by-eight foot control room at Norman’s studio, we were prepared to listen to a playback of the final tape version of Oh Boy!, which Buddy and the band hadn’t heard yet. The Crickets were dressed almost identically, in faded blue jeans and white T shirts, and wearing penny loafers. Buddy was wearing the same attire, except for natural-leather moccasins on his feet. Chances were, he had made them himself. The sudden stars seemed unaffected by their rise to fame. They were a bashful sort, according to John Pickering’s assessment. They have been called "the true gentlemen of the rock 'n' roll" or "the good boys of rock 'n' roll".

Buddy listened intently until the all the “dum-de-dum-dum—oh boys” had faded. Then he beamed. “You guys did it!” he exclaimed, going to each of the Picks and shaking their hands. To Buddy, Maple had been the bumbling, stumbling and often off-key foulup of the several sessions they had worked together. Now, Holly was ecstatic and animated. “You guys were really great!” Holly said. “We got ourselves another hit!” Later in the year, Holly would confide to an interviewer that he liked Oh Boy! more than his signature song, That’ll Be the Day. “That’s as good as anything Pat Boone ever did,” John Pickering offered, after Oh Boy! had been played again. “Pat BOONE!?” Buddy shot back. “Man, Pat Boone ought to be standing in the background, doing doo-wahs!” John pretended to take offense. “Thanks a LOT, Buddy.” The rest of the room erupted into laughter. All except Holly. He was concerned that his remark, intended to put down Boone, had been misinterpreted by the Picks. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. Buddy would be the first self-deprecating rock-star. 

From that time on, around the studio the Picks were dubbed The Doo-Wah Boys. Soon after Oh Boy! was released, Buddy and the Crickets were booked on The Ed Sullivan Show. American audiences who saw Buddy and the Crickets never seemed to mind that half the songs they sang didn’t sound like the record i.e. didn’t have vocal background. It wouldn’t be until their tour of England that fans began demanding to know what was going on here. They found out, thanks to John Beecher. So to this day, the Picks are virtually unknown in America, in reference to Holly. But England’s more loyal fans are quite familiar with them. Then, disappointment riddled the Picks’ euphoria. They came to the studio a week or so prior to “the big shew,” and Norman had a telegram from Sullivan to show them. “Don’t bring the other boys unless they belong to the union,” Sullivan said. “We’re making money, but we can’t afford that. Not yet,” penny-pinching Petty told the Picks with a frown. It would cost about five-hundred dollars apiece, he claimed. None of the Picks could afford it either. Buddy was disappointed as much as they, Treb said. Norman retained control of all money coming in. 

We knew Norman was lying. But the darker sides to his personality began turning the Camelot in Clovis into failure, shortly after that storied summer of 1957. Buddy got married to Maria Elena, against the wishes of Norman, who had assumed near-parental attitudes with the Crickets. He had an even tighter hold on their money. After Buddy’s marriage, he and the Crickets began drifting apart. Allison and Mauldin tried different sidemen, and returned to Clovis. Meanwhile, Buddy was in the process of severing ties with Norman and was recording in New York. His actions, it was reported, led Petty to angrily tell one of the Crickets, “Let him try! I’ll starve him out!” Buddy was threatening legal action to get to what he claimed was considerable money owed him.  

Both Pickerings got to know Maria Elena fairly well, particularly John (who, at the request of Buddy’s family, sang two Baptist hymns during Buddy’s funeral). Treb said he didn’t meet Buddy’s widow until they had lunch together in 1999. “We told each other stories about Norman Petty,”  Treb said. “She loved it.” Buddy was on the low-paying Winter Dance Party tour because he was broke, with tens of thousands of dollars belonging to him lying unattainable in a Clovis bank. “Buddy’s in his room,” Mrs. Holley told Treb. “The last time I saw him, Buddy wore a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. He had black motorcycle boots over tailored Levis. He was slowly combing his coal-black hair. He looked at me. He wasn’t wearing his horned-rim glasses at the moment.”

“I had one more meeting with Petty, almost thirty years later. That was in a Lubbock hospital, a month before Norman died it 1984. Bill Pickering was living with his mother in Lubbock, and the first Buddy Holly & the Picks compilation album was about to be pressed. I did comment about all the many people Norman’s money-hungry ways had hurt; perhaps even killed, in Buddy’s case. How many dreams he had not respected enough to give a fair shake.”

Tommy Allsup: Buddy Holly was very likable. Very confident. He was more reserved off stage than people would think. He was truly a creative genius, not just as a songwriter or performer, but in the way he approached making records and doing the music business. ("The Flip of a Coin", 2010)

Untamed Youth: Buddy Holly & Eddie Cochran

Buddy Holly was terribly shy; he tended to complicate his alienation because of his extreme shyness, his self-consciousness about his 'homely' looks.  He never seemed at ease with the lime light of the show business scene. Buddy not only knew rock 'n' roll would last, he also understood it had to evolve over time. Buddy was our superior from a musical theory aspect.

Buddy Holly's Song Catalog from the Songwriters Hall of Fame: AM I EVER GONNA FIND IT, BABY WON'T YOU COME OUT TONIGHT, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, BLUE DAYS AND BLACK NIGHTS, CHANGING ALL THOSE CHANGES, COME BACK BABY; CRYING, WAITING, HOPING; DON’T COME KNOCKIN’, DOWN THE LINE, EVERYDAY, FOOL'S PARADISE, GIRL ON MY MIND, GONE, HEARTBEAT, HOLLY HOP, I GUESS I WAS JUST A FOOL, I’M GONNA LOVE YOU TOO, I’M GONNA SET MY FOOT DOWN, I’M LOOKIN’ FOR SOMEONE TO LOVE, IT'S NOT MY FAULT, IT’S SO EASY, IT'S TOO LATE, LEARNING THE GAME, LISTEN TO ME, LITTLE BABY, LONELY LITTLE LOVER LOST, LONESOME TEARS, LOOK AT ME, LOVE ME, LOVE’S MADE A FOOL OF YOU, MAYBE BABY, MODERN DON JUAN, MY BABY’S COMIN’ HOME, NOT FADE AWAY, OH BOY!, PEGGY SUE, PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, RAVE ON!, REMINISCING, ROCK AROUND WITH OLLIE VEE, ROCK A BYE ROCK, SEND ME SOME LOVIN', SEPTEMBER HEARTS, TAKE YOUR TIME, TELL ME HOW, THAT MAKES IT TOUGH, THAT’LL BE THE DAY, THAT’S WHAT THEY SAY, THINK IT OVER, TING-A-LING, TRUE LOVE WAYS, WELL ALL RIGHT, WHAT TO DO, WISHING, WORDS OF LOVE, and YOU’RE THE ONE.

At a big New Year’s party, Eddie Cochran invited everyone. Don Everly brought a girl with him and they got into a big argument. The girl locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out. Eddie watched Don’s dilemma and said, “You don’t have the right technique, Don. I’ll handle this.” Eddie knocked on the door... “Who is it?” “Buddy Holly.” She opened the door, there Eddie stood, beer in hand, laughing. She slammed the door shut again. At about this time, Buddy arrived at the party. He noticed Don and Eddie standing by the bathroom door. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Oh, this girl, she’s mad at Don and locked herself in the bathroom. Hey, Buddy, if anyone can talk her out of there, I’d bet you can,” Eddie suggested. “I’ll give it try,” Buddy knocked on the door... “Who is it?” “It’s Buddy, Buddy Holly.” When she opened the door this time she had armed herself with a hairbrush. Whoosh-bang! Poor Buddy, he didn’t know what hit him. Before she realized who stood there, she crowned him right on top of the head. Eddie stood by howling of laughter.

Later, back in Hollywood I had a date to go to the movies with Eddie. The August early evening air, stifling hot. What we Californians refer to as ‘earthquake weather.’ “Sharon, sit down, I want to talk to you,” Eddie said. His suite had two sofas across from each other. I sat on one, and he stretched out on his stomach, his chin propped on his hand, his mocassin’d feet dangling. He stared at me without mercy for a few moments. “Sharon, are you in love with me?” he asked in a very quiet voice. I could hardly bear it. I struggled to get a few words out, “Why...what makes you think that? Just because everytime you turn around I’m there? How rude! I— I don’t think that you have the right to ask me such an embarrassing question!” “Well... let me tell you... You’d damn sure better be because I’m in love with you.” A Hollywood screenwriter could not have written a better movie scene.

My heart thumped, then stopped, and I heard bells ringing in my ears. He got off his sofa and sat down close beside me. He put his arms around me and gave me a big luscious kiss. “I love you very much,” he said with passion. “When did you know?” “The first time I ever saw you.” “And you let me chase you around for two whole years? Why on Earth didn’t you tell me?” “Do you love Ricky Nelson?” Eddie asked. “No, of course not.” Ricky Nelson at the peak of his career idolized Eddie. “Do you love Don Everly?” “No!” I started to wonder where he was going with this. “Do you love me?” “Oh, yes!” 

“You see, Kid Cochran’s not so dumb. I had to make damn sure.” Eddie gave me his ring and ID bracelet to seal our engagement although he preferred to keep it a secret for now. Sure he dated Connie Stevens, Julie London and the likes. I mean, with that kind of competition, how could I stand a chance with him? He never dated any of them more than a few times. His mother later told me that I was his first, and the only girl he ever loved. My competition as it turned out was not other women, it was music, his guitar... —"Summertime Blues: A True Rock 'n' Roll Adventure with Eddie Cochran" (2010) by Sharon Sheeley

According to Eddie Cochran's nephew Bobby Cochran: "there was definitely a mutual attraction between Eddie and Mamie van Doren and some hint of hanky panky between them." In 1986, Mamie van Doren told fanzine Kicks the film "Untamed Youth" (1957) was one of her favorite films: "Eddie Cochran appeared in the film and we rehearsed the songs at my place in Hollywood Hills. Buddy Holly accompanied him sometimes. Buddy Holly was completely crazy, Eddie was charming... Eddie was more handsome than Elvis, terribly sexy and cool."

Buddy Holly & Elvis Presley (Rock & Roll Memories and Goose Bumps)

A luncheon will be held Nov. 17 at Wellbridge of Romeo, 375 S. Main St. Lunch will begin at 1 p.m., followed by live Elvis and Buddy Holly-themed music from 2 to 3 p.m. The cost is $6 for residents or $7 for nonresidents. Register by Nov. 10. For more information, contact the Romeo Washington Bruce Parks & Recreation Department at 586-752-6543.  Source: www.sourcenewspapers.com

For Elvis fans looking to find a new place to dwell, a home which once belonged to The King could be the ideal investment. The Beverly Hills home he lived in between 1967 and 1973 has gone on the market for $30million - twice as much as it sold for just two years ago. Elvis lived in the plush home at 1174 Hillcrest Road in Beverly Hills, LA, with wife Priscilla and their daughter Lisa-Marie.

The 5,400 sq/ft property has retained much of its the out ward stone decor from when Elvis lived there as well as the swimming pool and front gates where he would meet adoring fans. It was previously sold in 2014 for $15 million and is now on the market for $30 million. The King paid $400,000 for the home in the 1960s. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Buddy Holly's home was 4-H, a corner apartment at the Brevoort, 11 Fifth Avenue [at 9th Street]. The 2-bedroom unit with a wrap-around terrace rented for $900 per month. Married life with María Elena and Greenwich Village set Buddy Holly aflame. According to his widow, he loved listening to jazz at the Village Vanguard and poetry at local coffeehouses. He also wanted to write movie scores. Source: infamousnewyorkrealestate.blogspot.com

Maria Elena Holly: "Elvis called when Buddy died, and I spoke to him on the phone. I remember that. He called to say how sorry he was. Buddy was able to meet Elvis because he went to Lubbock. The story goes... he told me that Elvis did not have drums at that time. When he started, he didn’t have a drummer. And Buddy said, “You know Elvis, you need a drummer in your band.” It was one of Buddy’s touches."

Harrell Rudolph (an old school friend of Buddy Holly from his time at Lubbock High School): "In autumn 1954, Elvis Presley came to town as the star attraction at the Lubbock County Fair. At this time, Presley was not yet a national phenomenon. As is well known, Buddy and his band was the opening act. The next school day, we were interested to know what Buddy thought of Presley, did he talk to him, etc. I was surprised that to me he seemed a bit negative if not scornful of Elvis. He certainly was not in awe of him. From that day forward, we began to press Buddy to do an “Elvis imitation” at the Spring Round-up."

Buddy Holly felt the only way his dreams would become reality was to break from Norman Petty and move to New York. Buddy wanted to compose and perform music that was not of the rock and roll genre. Living at The Brevoort, Apt 4H, 11 Fifth Ave. Buddy would set up a small area for his Ampex reel to reel recorder where he could try out new song ideas. Buddy recorded six new compositions in December 1958 and in January 1959. 

Jean Daniels (Lubbock High School - Class of 1955): "My family moved from Los Angeles to Lubbock during April 1952, and I was enrolled in the 9th grade at JT Hutchinson Junior High School. This was not the most comfortable day in my life. I didn’t know a soul and I was a pretty shy guy. I wandered into a nearby drugstore and found a seat at the soda fountain. A dark haired fellow with horn-rimmed glasses sat down next to me and introduced himself. He knew I was the new guy in school and welcomed me to Lubbock and JT Hutchinson. I am happy that Buddy Holly was my first friend and school mate in Lubbock. But that’s the way Buddy was, just a very nice, quiet, unassuming friendly guy. We remained good friends through out high school.

Despite the multiple names listed as songwriters on his tunes, most sources report that Buddy Holly's songs were, indeed, his. The other credits were mostly added as business arrangements.  The industry had tried to manipulate his career, his bandmates had betrayed him, his manager had robbed him... He had tousled dark hair and those horn rims. His complexion was amazingly white and the expression inscrutable yet knowing. One of Buddy's favorite things to eat was tomato soup. His favorite architect was Frank Lloyd Wright.

Michael Shelley (D.J. at WFMU Radio Station, New York): What was Buddy Holly really like?

Sonny Curtis: He wasn’t anything like he was portrayed in "The Buddy Holly Story". Gary Busey’s portrayal of Buddy was more like Chuck Berry than Buddy. He also depicted Buddy as a sloppy dresser and an unsophisticated rube. Buddy was neither. Another thing I didn’t like from that movie it's that Buddy sometimes could be a smart alec, but he was always a gentleman.  

Norman Petty: I found Buddy to be respectful and responsible. And even though I did not necessarily understand rock and roll, I liked it, although Vi did not, and above all, I appreciated Holly's talent. I didn't know if I was going to be able to understand what he was trying to do and I was criticised for not really understanding, but I think that we pretty well respected each other's capabilities. Buddy was the type of musician that never repeated an error. He was an excellent musician.

Sonny Curtis: I’m not a fan of Norman Petty. He told me once that I was wishy-washy and (paraphrasing) a person of low character. He said that I would wind up in this business with (his words) “a big goose egg.” When you are young, broke, doubting yourself anyway, and struggling to figure it all out, those are words that can break your heart. I’d love to meet him face to face and say, “Man, the way you treated me was not cool.”

Gary & Ramona Tollett: Gary's cousin, June Clark, who was Don Lanier's sister, wanted to help Gary become a recording artist like her brother. (The Rhythm Orchids had the first West Texas hit and million-seller from Norman Petty's studio in Party Doll.) She introduced us to Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison. Buddy was very shy. He was an extremely talented young man. We soon got together at June Clark's house and rehearsed numbers for Gary. Later on, Buddy suggested that we sing back up for him on some recordings that he had scheduled to do at Norman Petty's in Clovis, NM.

Jerry Allison: Buddy Holly affected me the same way than Elvis, he gave me goose bumps. I don’t think Buddy would have followed Elvis into the casinos scene. Buddy liked writing songs and he was into producing, I’m sure he would still have been amazing.

Jerry Allison never really got over the loss of Buddy in the Bonanza air-crash flying between Mason City, Iowa, and Fargo, North Dakota. Ironically, the promoter of the next event had been trying to get it cancelled due to the weather, not knowing that the three singers had already chartered a plane. Allison did "really regret that it worked out the way it did." ―"The Crickets: Six Decades of Rock ‘n’ Roll Memories" (2016) by Gary Clevenger & Tony Warran

R.I.P. Leonard Cohen (Parasite of Heaven)

Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned nearly 50 years, died at the age of 82. Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet.

Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns and Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year. Cohen visited New York in 1966 to investigate the city's robust folk-rock scene. He met folk singer Judy Collins, who later that year included two of his songs, including the early hit "Suzanne," on her album In My Life. His New York milieu included Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, and, most importantly, the haunting German singer Nico, whose despondent delivery he may have emulated on his exquisite 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

Cohen's relationship with Suzanne Elrod during most of the Seventies resulted in two children, the photographer Lorca Cohen and Adam Cohen, who leads the group Low Millions. Cohen was well known for his wandering ways, and his most stable relationships were with backing singers Laura Branigan, Sharon Robinson, Anjani Thomas, and, most notably, Jennifer Warnes, who he wrote with and produced. After indulging in a variety of international styles on Recent Songs (1979), Cohen accorded Warnes full co-vocal credit on 1984's Various Positions.

Various Positions included "Hallelujah," a meditation on love, sex and music that would become Cohen's best-known composition thanks to Jeff Buckley's incandescent 1994 reinterpretation. Its greatness wasn't recognized by Cohen's label, however. By way of informing him that Columbia Records would not be releasing Various Positions, label head Walter Yetnikoff reportedly told Cohen, "Look, Leonard; we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good." Cohen returned to the label in 1988 with I'm Your Man, an album of sly humor and social commentary that launched the synths-and-gravitas style he continued on The Future (1992).

The final act of Cohen's career began in 2005, when Lorca Cohen began to suspect her father's longtime manager, Kelley Lynch, of embezzling funds from his retirement account. In fact, Lynch had robbed Cohen of more than $5 million. To replenish the fund, Cohen undertook an epic world tour during which he would perform 387 shows from 2008 to 2013. He continued to record as well, releasing Old Ideas (2012) and Popular Problems, which hit U.S. shops a day after his eightieth birthday. When the Grand Tour ended in December 2013, Cohen largely vanished from the public eye.

In October 2016, he released You Want It Darker, produced by his son Adam. Severe back issues made it difficult for Cohen to leave his home, so Adam placed a microphone on his dining room table and recorded him on a laptop. The album was met with rave reviews, though a New Yorker article timed to its release revealed that he was in very poor health. "I am ready to die," he said. "I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me." "I’ve always been into self-dramatization," Cohen said last month. "I intend to live forever.” Source: www.rollingstone.com

Perhaps his most memorable song from Canadian poet/songwriter & performer Leonard Cohen. Cohen specified, notably in a BBC interview, that the song was about encountering Suzanne Verdal, the then wife of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, in a Montreal setting. Indeed, many lines describe different elements of the city, including its river (the Saint Lawrence) and a little chapel near the harbour, called Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (literally Our Lady of Good Help), which sits on the side of the harbour that faces the rising sun in the morning, as it is described in the song.

Suzanne Verdal was interviewed by CBC News's The National in 2006 about the song. Verdal claims that she and Cohen never had sexual relations, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest. Cohen himself stated in a 1994 BBC interview that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it. In any case, its lyrics first appeared as the poem "Suzanne Takes You Down" in Cohen's 1966 book of poetry Parasites of Heaven (1966).