Review: Buddy Holly - The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)
Tracks: 1) Oh Boy; 2) Not Fade Away; 3) You’ve Got Love; 4) Maybe Baby; 5) It’s Too Late; 6) Tell Me How; 7) That’ll Be The Day; 8) I’m Lookin’ For Someone To Love; 9) An Empty Cup (And A Broken Date); 10) Send Me Some Lovin’; 11) Last Night; 12) Rock Me My Baby.
REVIEW
If you listen to all of the Beatles’ officially released recordings in chronological order, the very first song you are going to hear is ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ, pressed by the Quarrymen in 1958, approximately just one year after the song had appeared on the Brunswick label as the first official single by the Crickets. Naturally, this is no matter of coincidence since, by all accounts, Buddy Holly was the single greatest influence (out of many) on the early Beatles, at least up until the band’s «musical globalization» circa 1965 (and, in fact, for most of their subsequent lives as well, even extending into Paul McCartney’s solo career).
For the rebellious rock’n’rolling mind, this might seem a little bizarre. When Buddy made the world aware of his existence, in mid-1957, «rock and roll» had already been firmly established — Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Elvis, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis were all recognized stars, with an imposing bunch of hit singles under their belts and with their taboo-breaking images firmly entrenched in the popular mind; Buddy was a relative latecomer to this parade of flashy, aggressive personalities. Compared to each of them separately, he did not seem to stand much of a competitive chance. Never a technically great singer like Elvis; never a particularly gifted or fluent instrumental player like Chuck or Jerry Lee; definitely nowhere near an «onstage volcano» in terms of performance — just a normal, quiet Texas kid, happy enough to wear a neatly pressed tuxedo and bowtie, with a proper haircut and with a pair of silly thick glasses that really made him look more like an aspiring Ivy League freshman than a rock’n’roller. In fact, a careless eye could easily pigeonhole him into, if not the «teen idol» category of Ricky Nelson, then at least into the «rock’n’roll for parents» category.
So what exactly did Buddy Holly bring to the table that was not already on it? Perhaps, first and foremost, it was hope — hope for all those thousands of kids who were not blessed with the vocal cords of an Elvis, the natural dynamism of a Jerry Lee Lewis, or the cool looks of a Gene Vincent. It was Buddy who conveyed to them the important message — what matters is not style or technique, what matters is substance. All of Buddy’s major achievements lie in the field of songwriting. Had he mostly stuck to covering other people’s material (like Elvis), he would have remained but a small footnote in the history of popular music, as his first LP proves without a doubt: out of the 12 numbers on Chirping Crickets, the ones that stay with you once it’s over are almost always the ones where Buddy is credited as chief songwriter.
I will not shy away from saying that I almost always prefer other people’s covers of Buddy’s material to the originals. Even that early Quarrymen cover of ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ sounds almost as good as Buddy’s (and would have sounded even better had the lads had access to better studio equipment, not to mention had they decided to record it with George Martin any time in 1963-64). ʽNot Fade Awayʼ would eventually be expropriated, toughened up, and set for early anthemic status by the Stones. And when John Lennon later covered Buddy’s interpretation of ʽSend Me Some Lovin’ on his Rock And Roll album, he raised the bar tenfold in the vocal department, adding explicit emotional torment where Holly only hinted at it.
But none of that mattered back in 1957 — and even though it matters today, it is also a pretext to try and figure out why, in the long run, these early songs have survived and are still listenable today. Sure enough, there is some stuff on this Crickets debut that is not all that listenable. In particular, «The Picks», a New Mexican family vocal outfit, provide a rather corny doo-wop-style backing, spoiling much of the ballad component of the album (ʽLast Nightʼ, etc.) — not that Buddy Holly himself was ever made for doo-wop, of course, but it also has to be kept in mind that, like everything else at the time, The Chirping Crickets was really just a bunch of cool singles surrounded by obligatory filler.
We will disregard the filler, then, and focus all the attention on the classics: ʽThat’ll Be The Dayʼ and ʽNot Fade Awayʼ as the best known; ʽMaybe Babyʼ, ʽTell Me Howʼ, ʽI’m Looking For Someone To Loveʼ as their lesser worthy brethren. First and foremost, this is not «threatening» music: Buddy was not a «rebel», he had a thoroughly «pop» conscience through and through, and the music avoids dark bass lines, distortion, aggression, etc., as much as possible (just look at how niftily the «spooky», «tribal» Bo Diddley beat is transformed into a happy celebration of love and fidelity on ʽNot Fade Awayʼ). At the same time, it is not cheesy pop — it is jangly, guitar-based pop, no strings, pianos, or production slickness attached, something that even the rough’n’tough garage-rock crowds of the early 1960s would find easy to appreciate. Most importantly, it all just sounds natural and realistic. Where Ricky Nelson (whose public image appeared the same year as Buddy) gave the impression of «glossy manufacture» from the start, Buddy simply is as buddy does.
What I really mean to say is that Holly compensates for his technical flaws with evident charisma — present everywhere, not just in his looks (always clean, never glossy), but also in his sweet, shaky, naturally-stuttery vocals, and in his guitar playing, with delicate, memorable phrasing that sometimes mimicks Carl Perkins or Scotty Moore, but just as frequently consists of original lines (unfortunately, «The Picks» too often overshadow them — ʽMaybe Babyʼ could have been so much better without all the waah-waahs and the pa-da-dams). The songwriting ideas might have been replicated and enhanced, but the personality could not: Buddy Holly offers that perfect compromise between the «gruff rocker» and the «teen idol» that is actually much harder to attain than it might look upon first sight.
Actually, Buddy Holly is not so much the epitome of a «teen idol» as he is the epitome of a teen — heck, maybe even pre-teen, since the defining spirit of most of his songs is that of sweet, energetic, totally innocent happiness that we humans usually tend to lose just a few years after lactose tolerance, and only a select few like Buddy happen to retain into their grown-up years. For all the cover tunes he did of other artists, it is impossible to imagine him covering Bo Diddley’s ‘I’m A Man’ — because that kind of man he never was, and never could impersonate. ‘Not Fade Away’, as I have already said, transforms Bo’s tribal dance into a happy romp around the dining room table. ‘That’ll Be The Day’ is a very childish refusal to believe that good things can ever go wrong, borrowing not just its title but also its stubborn nature from John Wayne. ‘Maybe Baby’ and ‘Tell Me How’ distill the idea of romance to its most arithmetic essentials, peeling away all the layers of troubadour and Tin Pan Alley experience.
Yet this minimalism never feels like the product of laziness or lack of talent — it’s more like Buddy just felt the time was right for getting back to the basics and building a new foundation for the future edifice of pop songwriting in the rock’n’roll era. More likely, he did not even realize that — unfortunately, he died way too young for us to know what he himself thought of his songwriting principles — but this is how it feels to at least some of us: on this album, Buddy Holly re-formats pop music for future achievements, much like the Ramones, twenty years later, would re-format rock music to bring it into the modern age. From a purely melodic standpoint, these tunes here are not among his best — the melodies still owe way too much to all the people who had influenced Buddy himself — but from a symbolic standpoint, he would never make a sharper, more career-defining point than he had done with those earliest singles.
Only Solitaire: Buddy Holly review page