Buddy Holly: Biography (63 page)

By mid-January 1995 the Snyders still had not found anyone to run the Surf, which leases for $8,000 a month. The family appealed to the public, inviting potential donors to “be a part of Surf Ballroom history” by purchasing a “personalized brick paver.” All those wishing to have their names engraved on bricks underneath the Surf canopy were asked to send $50 to the Snyders at 806 South Ninth Street, Clear Lake, Iowa 50428. For $150 they’d throw in a brass plaque. PR man Jeremy Powers revealed that his Minneapolis firm was trying to publicize the ballroom’s search for a suitable manager. “There are very few rock ’n’ roll landmarks left,” said Powers. “Besides Graceland and Sun Records, the list is short and getting shorter, every time we lose a Fillmore or a Winterland.”

At the last minute the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to sponsor the annual Tribute to Buddy Holly, which was held at the Surf Ballroom on February 2–4, 1995. The faithful Maria Elena attended as usual, appearing with DJ Randy Chesterman at the Friday night sock hop. Niki Sullivan came to Clear Lake but spent more time at his sons’ bar, Sully’s, where, he says in a 1995 interview, “the Regulators from Odessa, Missouri, were playin’ good rock ’n’ roll, and people in their late fifties were standing on tables rockin’.” Sonny Curtis was once again “with the Crickets—Gordon Payne is taking a hiatus,” Sonny says in 1995. At the big Saturday night dance, the Fantastic Convertibles, Bobby Vee and the Ricochettes, the Shirelles, and the Crickets rocked the crowd at the Surf till the early morning hours.

Like Buddy Holly’s music, the old dance hall seems indestructible. It just keeps on coming back, like a beautiful song.

Acknowledgments

My portrait of Buddy Holly is based for the most part on exclusive interviews with the people who knew him best. The four primary sources I must thank first are Maria Elena Holly, Larry Holley, Sonny Curtis, and Niki Sullivan. I was given the high privilege of interviewing, with no strings or conditions attached, the two people closest to Buddy, his wife Maria Elena and his brother Larry. In my interview with Maria Elena, the more probing and intimate my questions became, the deeper she dipped into the well of memory, even when I asked her to share Buddy’s final words to her before he departed on the Winter Dance Party tour. If the second half of this book rings fresh and true as a story of young lovers in Greenwich Village in 1958, I must share the credit with Maria Elena.

Larry Holley was equally willing to explore the past, however painful, even when I asked him to describe his journey to Clear Lake to retrieve Buddy’s body after the plane crash. Larry also spoke at length about Buddy’s teen years, and if the early chapters have immediacy as a portrait of growing up in West Texas in the 1950s, much of the credit goes to Larry. It was also Larry who helped me understand the conflict Buddy felt between his religion and rock ’n’ roll.

I am grateful to my agent, Al Lowman, for giving me the idea for the book and for placing it with the most gifted and sensitive editor any author could hope for: Robert Weil of St. Martin’s Press. My book would have been diminished without Bob Weil’s help. The efficiency and good humor of his assistant Becky Koh has never wavered. I appreciate the energy and enthusiasm of Andrew Graybill, who found many of the illustrations. With patience and skill, Eric J. Weisberg guided me through the legal vetting of the manuscript. Production editor Mara Lurie held the manuscript together through many changes. Copy editor David Cole offered helpful suggestions. Thomas J. McCormack, chairman and CEO of St. Martin’s Press and editorial director of the trade division, delivered the words of encouragement I needed at the outset of this enterprise. Sally Richardson, president and publisher of the trade division, is someone I have admired for many years, going back to our early careers in New York book publishing. Sally Holloway and Mal Peachey of Virgin Publishing Ltd. of England have supported this project from the beginning. Don McLean, composer of the great song “American Pie,” and Elaine Dundy, author of
The Dud Avocado
and
Elvis and Gladys,
were the first persons outside of my U.S. and British publishing houses to read the manuscript, and both were generous in their support.

The most gifted of Buddy Holly’s musical colleagues, Sonny Curtis, who predated the Crickets in Buddy’s life and has been in and out of the Crickets over the years, was a wonderful friend and parent to this book. We spent several days together in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1993 and spoke regularly in 1995, just before the book went to press. Sonny’s eloquent song “The Real Buddy Holly Story” is the only work prior to this book to focus on the duality of Buddy’s life, which was both intensely Dionysian and devoutly Christian.

Niki Sullivan, one of the original Crickets (as well as a third cousin of Buddy’s by marriage), added substantially to our knowledge of Buddy Holly in the course of several interviews. I’m especially grateful to Niki for documenting, for the first time, the Crickets’ initial discovery of New York City in 1957 (prior to the famous “black tour”) and their trip upstate to visit Bob Thiele and Teresa Brewer in their home; none of this has previously been written about. Niki also offered firsthand confirmation of certain sexual revelations about Buddy, Norman and Vi Petty, and Norma Jean Berry that first came to light in the
London Daily Mail
in the summer of 1994.

Immortalized in two of Buddy’s greatest songs, “Peggy Sue” and “Peggy Sue Got Married,” Peggy Sue Rackham told me what went wrong in her marriage to Jerry Allison. Still attractive and beguiling, Peggy Sue fully lives up to the praise Buddy heaped on her in the two rock classics that bear her name.

Buddy made a lot of music in West Texas with Larry Welborn, and I’m thankful to Larry for supplying important facts that no one else could have done.

The irrepressible Tinker Carlen brought to life Buddy’s early years of wild rebellion. Tinker and I spent a memorable evening at the all-night Kettle Restaurant in Lubbock, Texas, after Buddy’s brother Larry suggested I track him down. I managed to do so with the help of the vivacious Arlene Burleson, who went to high school with Buddy, and her friend Jim Fitzgerald.

Although writing a biography is a solitary adventure, the early stages are intensely interpersonal, and no one could have given me a warmer welcome to the subject of Buddy Holly than Buddy’s niece, Sherry Holley, whom I met at the Hi-D-Ho restaurant on University Drive in Lubbock. Sherry is a pretty woman and a gifted singer. Her co-workers at the Hi-D-Ho, Shannon and LeJean Hughes, were also hospitable.

A member of Roy Orbison’s original band, Wink Westerners, Charlie Evans, who helped me in 1989 when I was writing
Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story,
once again came to my aid, picking me up at the Lubbock airport, showing me around the city, and introducing me to local radio personality Jerry Coleman, who knew Buddy and many of the central figures in his life.

Buddy’s high school teachers Lois Keeton and Robert E. Knight contributed rare closeups of Buddy at school.

Charlie Johnson put me in touch with his son, Ken Johnson, one of the preachers who officiated at Buddy Holly’s funeral. Ken filled in heretofore unpublished details about Buddy’s baptism and last rites.

At Tom Lubbock Senior High, I was befriended by Julie Storey, Rickey Woody, and Theresa Martin; and at the South Plains Mall Waldenbooks by Daundria Martinez. Doyle Gammill granted me an interview about Peggy Sue. Standing at Buddy’s grave in the Lubbock City Cemetery, I had a moment of warm communion with a Hungarian man named Frank Holly (no relation to Buddy). At the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, Michael Reeves and Kara Stuller were hospitable and eager to help.

In Clovis, New Mexico, Billy Stull, one of the people closest to Norman Petty for many years, personally showed me through Petty’s two studios, on very short notice, and gave me a crucial interview.

Although he is not a primary source, there is one other person who belongs in this group to whom I owe the most: Bill Griggs, founder and president of the now-defunct Buddy Holly Memorial Society. The back issues of Griggs’s remarkably scholarly magazines
Reminiscing
and
Rockin’ 50s
constitute the main repository of Buddy Holly material. I was able to purchase copies of this incredibly useful collection in Lubbock in 1992. Over the years Griggs and various members of the BHMS interviewed important primary sources, some of them now dead. Herewith my special thanks to interviewers Wayne Jones, Skip Brooks, Bill Malcolm, Bruce Wilcox, Damian Johnstone, Nigel Smith, Larry Corbin, Jack Miller, Lee Jackson, Kevin Terry, Bill Floyd, Jerry MacNeish, Gary McLeod, Hans Goeppinger, Steve Vitek, Dave Skinner, Steve Bonner, Stu Fink, and Margaret NcNie.

Two other Holly fans deserve special mention. Hans Goeppinger of Boone, Iowa, introduced me to Sonny Curtis and arranged our marathon interviews in Minneapolis, Clear Lake, and Mason City. Hans also put me in touch with Jim Weddell, whose interview alters the historical record with regard to when the plane crash that killed Buddy was first discovered. George Blaisdell of Billerica, Massachusetts, generously shared material from his extensive Buddy Holly collection. Just as important were George Blaisdell’s many calls to me in Key West, offering friendship and encouragement when they were sorely needed.

In Clear Lake, Iowa, I met Jerry Allison (whom I’d previously spoken to on the phone), Joe B. Mauldin, Frankie Ford, Bobby Vee, Mike Berry, Joan Allison, Chris Hughes, Bruce and Sue Christensen, Don Larson, Neale Winker, Geoffrey T. Williams, Trevor Lailey, Sharon Black, Cathy Gacek, Yvonne Pearsall, Jerome J. Thiele, Marv Jurek, Pat Jurek, Shelley Allison, Brian Mahoney, and Lisa Latham. Subsequently I spoke with countless others from the area, including Karen Lein, Douglas Hines, Elwin L. Musser, Jeremy Powers, Cindy Florer, and Dale Snyder of the Dean Snyder Construction Company.

Others, from all over the U.S. and England, who made kind contributions include Don Bins, Nyal C. Peterson, David Garrard Lowe, Franklin E. Fried, Jim Carr, Bill Munroe, Pat Collins, Jeff Seckler, Lenny Kaye, Brian Mahoney, the late Marion Keisker, the late John R. Lee, Barbara J. Sharp, Melissa Sheahan, Johnny May, Albert Copeland, Tony Szikil, Dick Hankoos, Clive Harvey, Keith Martin, and Maxine Paetro. Special thanks to Waylon Jennings and Pete Curtis for graciously giving me rare photographs.

My revelatory interviews with Sam Phillips, Boots Randolph, and Orbie Lee Harris for my biography of Roy Orbison, as well as the two and a half months I worked with Priscilla Presley on
Elvis and Me
in 1985, gave me rare insights into early rock ’n’ roll that have helped me in all that I have written.

This book is also based on written material and on video and audio presentations. At the Mason City Municipal Airport, Jerome J. Thiele, director of aviation, opened the files of the airport commission to me, contributing substantially to my understanding of the events of February 3, 1959. Articles in the
Mason City Globe-Gazette
and the
Clear Lake Mirror-Reporter
were enlightening, especially the expert reportage of Jim Collison, Jeremy Powers, Jeff Tecklenburg, Douglas Hines, and Carol Gales.

Crucial secondary sources included John Goldrosen and John Beecher’s ground-breaking biography
Remembering Buddy;
Larry Holley’s memoir “The Buddy I Knew!”; William J. Bush’s “Buddy Holly: The Legend and the Legacy”; Paul McCartney’s
The Real Buddy Holly Story;
Jonathan Cott, Ed Ward, and David McGee of
Rolling Stone;
Douglas Brooker’s
Reminiscing;
Alan Clark’s publications on Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Eddie Cochran, and the Big Bopper; the radio special “Buddy Holly: The Legend Moves On”; Beverly Mendheim’s
Ritchie Valens;
reportage by Sue Frederick, Jim Hoffman, Mark Steuer, Jack Sheridan, William Kerns, and Larry Lehmer; and interviews by Kurt Loder, Michael Alan Oestreicher, and Pat Kennedy.

Bill Griggs explored the files of the
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
and turned up many riches. Griggs also contributed generously to the CD section of the discography. Mark Williams at the
Avalanche-Journal
was cordial and informative.

Librarians up and down the East Coast, especially in Florida, Georgia, and Virginia, were eager to help. In Key West, I am grateful to Charles Nundy, Cynthia Lawson, and Marianne Duchardt of the Monroe County Public Library. Jay Brandes of the Troy State University Library in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, tracked down more than one rare volume for me. I’m grateful to the staffs of the Tifton-Tift County Library in Tifton, Georgia, and the Handley Library Archives in Winchester, Virginia. St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Key West helped me interpret the funeral of Ritchie Valens.

As a biographer who often writes of musicians, I am indeed fortunate to have in Key West, where I make my home, a splendid record store. Rogues and Records, operated by the knowledgeable and gracious Dana Moore and Marty Stonely, is a veritable British Museum of the recording industry. The recent addition of Mike McGreevy to the staff assures that Rogues and Records will continue to be one of the friendliest and funkiest spots in town.

The love of one’s family is essential during the long and arduous years of writing. My sister Lu Bradbury and brother Bill E. Amburn were generous with their hearts, as always. Joyce Kahlich Amburn and Richard Amburn were especially solicitous, coming to visit me at one point when I was on the road. Bill Manville also tracked me down, driving many miles to bring much-needed fellowship. Cy Egan, to whom this book is dedicated, and his wife, Jean, long ago adopted me as their own, and I am forever in their debt. A veteran newspaperman as well as a stylish writer, Cy devoted many hours to fine-tuning the manuscript and making factual corrections.

Most of this book was written in Key West, where I shared the joys and occasional terrors of daily life with Fred Aanerud, Jerry Doughty, Bill Eccles, Marilyn Johnson, Dennis and Carol Lannon, Alan Keener, Charlie Fallon, Tim Hecht, Pete Peterson, Joanna Jacobson, Rey and Candy Todd, Mike Schuster, Stephanie Hobbs, Annalise and Jane Mannix-Lachner, Wendy Tucker, Dick Epler, Matt Jordan, Dave and Lynn Kaufelt, Michael and Helen Miller, Jimmy Sherman, Pat Doehr, Jon Phillips, Dan and Ellie McConnell, Donnie Callahan, Katie Truax, Frank Cantelmo, and Barbara Ehrenreich.