Buddy Holly's untimely demise left a lot of people wondering what might have been, and so it is for Buddy fans; the size of his legacy is all out of proportion to the volume of music he actually recorded, snd that's probably more true of Buddy than any other rock star. Still, that sense of unfulfilled expectation is, like it or not, part of the story now. The few solid books, movies, and CDs we have available attempt to fill in the gaps of that story and make it as complete as possible.
Still the best single-disc compilation of Buddy's big hits, both with the Crickets and solo. Yes, 1996's "Greatest Hits" benefits slightly from advances in digital sound, but there's only so much that can be done with the masters anyway, and this has the better selection, covering everything from "Rock Around With Ollie Vee" to "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (though not in chronological order). And when they say master tapes, they mean it -- listen to the intro of "True Love Ways."More »
Since Buddy's output was relatively small, one would think that MCA wouldhave rushed to get a "Complete Buddy Holly" out there on CD, gathering all the known releases and demos into one package. There was a collection like that on vinyl in the Seventies, but a thorough digital-era retrospective of Buddy's career had to wait till 2008 and Hip-O's authoritative exhumation. All the released tracks are here, but there are a number of demos and rarities that don't quite stand up to the best of his released work. Get this only if you're a Holly obsessive.More »The only solo album Buddy ever released during his lifetime, and therefore of interest to any true rock and roll fan. Most of the hits here are already collected on compilations, but there are originals you can't get anywhere else like "Look At Me," "Listen To Me," and "Little Baby," and, even better, covers of other srtists' songs ("Ready Teddy," "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care," "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues"). A solid debut that unfortunately became his swan song.More »There was never much difference between the songs credited to Buddy and the ones credited to the Crickets, but this album (the only Crickets album with Buddy) shows the interplay of these Texas musicians better than any other. There's only one classic original here you won't find on many comps -- "I'm Looking For Someone To Love" -- but there are a number of solid tracks, and some interesting covers (including Little Richard's "Send Me Some Lovin'" and Chuck Willis' "It's Too Late").More »Purists are still screaming about the liberties taken with Buddy Holly's life -- and, worse, his personality -- in this 1978 film. But Gary Busey's performance has to be seen to be believed; to many people, it's as if Buddy came back to life, especially in the many stage scenes (where Gary and his actors sang and played all the instruments themselves). Indeed, Busey was nominated for Best Actor, but you won't be thinking about any of that when you see it. The illusion is that complete.Buy from Amazon »Still the best of the Buddy documentaries and a rebuke to the story told in the (in)famous movie. Holly's most famous fan, Paul McCartney, produced and hosted this film himself, and it pulls no punches: traveling to Lubbock, interviewing Crickets and other Holly associates, and showing vintage clips of Buddy doing his thing (including all of the live Holly footage currently known to man). The movie was like having Buddy reborn, but the documentary does the same thing without dramatic license.More »Writer Philip Norman tends to go on about his English homeland a lot when writing his famous rock biographies, yet he's nothing if not meticulously attuned to detail. This book will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Holly, and perhaps more than most casual fans will want to know. No, there are no scandals here (what revelations there are, true to Holly's legend, are positive), but there is, finally, a complete portrait of one of rock's most tragically incomplete lives.More »Buddy Holly's death, sadly, still tends to overshadow his life, so a book about the infamous plane crash immortalized by Don McLean's "American Pie" as "the day the music died" is probably in order. Author Larry Lehmer spends a great deal of time analyzing every detail of what was, ultimately, a somewhat common occurrence, but if you need those (sometimes grisly) factoids, they're all here. (Not to be confused with the VH1 "Behind The Music" book of the same name.)More »Sheet music, especially on the internet, is hard to trust sometimes. This Hal Leonard paperback, however, contains absolutely accurate and detailed transcriptions of Holly's biggest hits for guitar. The first place to go if you want to learn Buddy's classics yourself, and not a bad place to visit if you need to brush up on some of the more slippery details.More »The compilers of this tribute CD wisely brought in several country-rock icons to essay Holly's greatest work (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Mavericks, Mary Chapin Carpenter) as well as some roots-rock heroes (Dave Edmunds, Joe Ely, Los Lobos). But the original Crickets are here, too, doing "Not Fade Away," and touring member Waylon Jennings shows up to perform "Learning The Game." Strangest of all is a collaboration between the Hollies and Buddy's own vocal on "Peggy Sue Got Married."More »
