Review: Buddy Holly - That'll Be The Day (1958)
Tracks: 1) You Are My One Desire; 2) Blue Days, Black Nights; 3) Modern Don Juan; 4) Rock Around With Ollie Vee; 5) Ting A Ling; 6) Girl On My Mind; 7) That’ll Be The Day; 8) Love Me; 9) I’m Changing All Those Changes; 10) Don’t Come Back Knockin’; 11) Midnight Shift.
REVIEW
Technically, this LP should have been listed as Buddy’s first: all of the songs here are taken from his first recording sessions for Decca, held at various dates throughout 1956, approximately one year prior to finding success with Brunswick. The story goes that, since Buddy’s first singles with Decca flopped and the label was not quite sure what to make of him, they simply did not renew his contract — but as time went by and he eventually started treading the road to stardom, all these early tunes, including all the flop singles as well as a number of previously unreleased outtakes, were hastily cobbled together for an LP; easily done, since Decca still held the rights to all of them, and a common practice for labels stupid enough to have lost their stars before they became stars.
In retrospect, the Decca decision makes more sense than it made in 1958: for those with an academic interest in Buddy Holly, these earliest recordings should be priceless, but for serious Buddy Holly fans who were growing up together with Buddy, they were most probably disappointing. First of all, Side A is almost entirely devoid of originals. Three of the songs are credited to Don Guess, Buddy’s buddy and original bass fiddle player, and are little more than average doo-wop (ʽGirl On My Mindʼ, with Buddy unconvincingly forcing his vocals to emulate the smooth soulfulness of classic doo-wop crooners) or second-hand rockabilly (ʽModern Don Juanʼ, which Buddy is anything but; the song might have been more successful in the hands of a Carl Perkins). Much gutsier is ʽRock Around With Ollie Veeʼ, credited to Buddy’s original lead guitarist Sonny Curtis — the players get into this one with an almost unexpected ferocity, although flat production and Buddy’s vocal limitations remain inescapable curses in this style.
Following Elvis’ love for classic and recent Atlantic hits, Buddy also tried to follow suit by choosing the Clovers’ ʽTing-A-Lingʼ, one of the most desperate odes to teenage libido of its time; he manages well enough to slip into character, with a suitably hysterical vocal tone, but on the whole, this attempt to transform professionally arranged and produced R&B into crude, spontaneous rockabilly is half-hearted and lacks imagination. It almost seems like a copycat exercise — hey, Elvis did this thing right with ‘Money Honey’, why can’t we do it with another catchy Atlantic vocal band tune? (You can clearly hear the influence of Scotty Moore’s ‘Money Honey’ solo on Sonny Curtis’ soloing in this track: considering that Buddy and his band toured as a support act for Elvis in early 1956, this should not be too surprising). Unfortunately, Buddy Holly is no Elvis when it comes to carrying a classic R&B tune, and Sonny Curtis is no Scotty Moore when it comes to designing a terrific guitar solo and playing it as if it were improvised.
The second half of the album is overshadowed by the title track, which actually is the original recording of ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ — slightly slower, seriously looser, more high-pitched and hysterical, lacking vocal harmonies, and generally showing the important difference between early, «formative» Buddy Holly and the later, more self-assured and perfectionist Buddy Holly. Even the guitar introduction shows that difference: the original one features a simple, shirll, one-note opening line, directly descended from Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Broom’ — the new version has the guitar spirally moving downward through several chords, a well-crafted flourish suggesting an already advanced level of pop craft. But just as important is the realization that it took Buddy a few years to come to terms with his own voice, and settle it into a mild, natural style which let it express itself with more clarity and passion than when it had to be forced into a screechy, let’s-rock-this-house-down pattern just because it was 1956 and all the hip people were doing that stuff.
The other early originals that surround the title track are halfway decent (in particular, the B-side ʽLove Meʼ, which was Buddy’s very first single, and the lyrically clever ʽI’m Changing All Those Changesʼ), but still do not advance far beyond standard rockabilly or sped-up country-western. Too many of them simply sound like sincere, but not highly interesting tributes to Elvis and Carl Perkins from a young boy who has yet to grow himself the balls of either.
Consequently, one would have to be really mean and haughty to blame Decca for not spotting the future genius of ʽPeggy Sueʼ or ʽWords Of Loveʼ in these cautious first moves at trying to construct one’s own artistic identity — also, considering that Buddy got his new contract with the smaller Brunswick label that was legally under Decca anyway, the record industry cannot be said to have treated the rising wannabe star too cruelly. It is, however, ironic and even cruel that That’ll Be The Day would be only the second and very last LP of Buddy Holly material that the artist himself would see released in his lifetime — and while I do not know of his reaction to Decca’s commercial move, I am sure it must have been similar to the average reaction of a successful writer to the sudden publication of his teenage poetry exercises.
At the very least, unlike the stream of rudely doctored and tampered musical sketches that followed Buddy’s demise, these are fully authentic documents that give you Buddy Holly in his rawest and most spontaneous state of mind — things that are held dear by certain types of people, meaning that there are most likely some fans out there who actually prefer the early version of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ to the more complex and polished re-recording, just like there are fans out there who swear by the «wild» Hamburg period of the early Beatles before Brian Epstein and George Martin put them in suits and pacified their musical aesthetics. Problem is, some of them are indeed «born to be wild», but others are rather «born to sweet delight», and this album — a relatively wild one — happened to be released right in the middle of Buddy’s sweetest delight period, which made things confusing back then and continues to make them confusing even in retrospect.
Only Solitaire: Buddy Holly reviews