Review: The Crickets - In Style With The Crickets (1960)

Tracks: 1) More Than I Can Say; 2) Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu; 3) Great Balls Of Fire; 4) Ting-A-Ling; 5) Just This Once; 6) Deborah; 7) Baby My Heart; 8) When You Ask About Love; 9) Time Will Tell; 10) A Sweet Love; 11) I Fought The Law; 12) Love’s Made A Fool Of You; 13*) Someone, Someone; 14*) Don’t Cha Know; 15*) Why Did You Leave?; 16*) Smooth Guy; 17*) So You’re In Love; 18*) Peggy Sue Got Married.

REVIEW

Although any time past 1960 it was probably only the adventurous explorer who even knew that this album exists, In Style With The Crickets is an absolutely seminal record — the quintessential «sail-on-sailor-even-after-your-captain-has-been-washed-away» musical enter­prise. Years before The Doors decided to carry on without Jim Morrison, decades before Thin Lizzy or Alice In Chains would do the same without Phil Lynott or Layne Staley, The Crickets agreed that their own bonds of friendship were too tightly formed to let such a minor incident as the passing of Buddy Holly to shatter them, and that the memory of their late leader would much better be served by continuing to function as an active musical group than by packing it in and going back to the proverbial farm.

There were a couple of problems with that decision, though. With Buddy’s passing, The Crickets essentially consisted of just the rhythm section — Jerry Allison on drums and Joe Mauldin on bass. They certainly could play, and both could even compose a little, but neither of them could sing, play decent guitar (lead guitar at least) or just have enough confidence to act as a front man on stage. The guitar problem was the easiest one to solve, though: throughout Buddy’s early years with the band, his friend Sonny Curtis would often perform the function of a de-facto extra Cricket, and, in fact, according to some sources, Curtis officially joined The Crickets even before Buddy’s demise, some time in late 1958. With plenty of guitar playing skills, a solid ability to compose new songs, and an established musical reputation, Curtis rather nicely filled in the position of ship captain. However, he was not much of a singer, at least not when it came to rock’n’roll, which was still the main genre The Crickets wanted to play in.

After a short search, the role of lead singer went to Henry Earl Sinks, another fellow Texan who had also made his first recordings with Norman Petty back in 1958, performing as «Earl Henry» on a couple of semi-decent, but not particularly imaginative singles (‘Whatcha Gonna Do?’ is a representative example of «Earl Henry»’s approach to rockabilly — sort of like a watered down version of Johnny Burnette). Sinks only lasted with the Crickets until February 1960, when he quit the band over either creative or financial disagreements; just a few months before that, Curtis was drafted into the army, which pretty much left The Crickets back where they were at the moment of Buddy’s death. Unperturbed, Allison and Mauldin carried on, recruiting yet another fellow Texan, David Box, to replace both Curtis and Sinks at the same time — however, since they’d already recorded plenty of new material with those guys, In Style With The Crickets, whose release was for various reasons delayed until late 1960, featured no contributions from Box.

The results of those 1959 sessions were a pretty mixed bag — but, at the very least, interesting. The main problem was obvious and predictable: there was no way, certainly not at such short notice, to replace Buddy Holly with anyone who could have his charisma, let alone talent and vision. Sinks is, technically, a decent singer, closer in tone and timbre to any one of the Everley Brothers than to Buddy, but no matter whether he is in «soft» or «hard» mode, he fails to bring in any serious excitement. He’s just a singer in a rock’n’roll band, just a-wanderin’ on the face of this earth, like so many others; God did not grant him any particular gifts other than a desire to live in the world of art. (Later on, he would have a career as a movie actor that nobody has ever heard about, and after that, as a record producer producing artists that nobody has ever heard about. Talk about tough luck indeed!).

Armed with this rather morose replacement for Buddy, The Crickets make another mistake by cramming the album full of covers of songs that are just too good for them to be able to do anything of interest. ‘Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu?’ Covered as close as possible to Huey Smith’s original arrangement, its jokey New Orleanian flavor is only hinted at in this version — no improvement whatsoever. ‘Great Balls Of Fire’? The collective talents of Sinks and guest player Dudley Brooks on the piano do not amount to a tenth part of the excitement generated by Jerry Lee Lewis on any of the studio or live versions of the song ever captured on tape. ‘Ting-A-Ling’? At least in this case they try to put their own spin on this old R&B classic from The Clovers... by setting the vocal melody to the instrumental melody of ‘That’ll Be The Day’, including the immortal intro riff and an almost note-for-note recreation of the original guitar solo. Maybe Sonny just wanted, so very badly, to record his own version of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ that he agreed to settle for such an odd compromise; in the end, though, all it does is provide some fuel for the discussion that all pop songs are really one, when you learn to disregard minor insignificant nuances in chord structure. (Ironically, the song that is closer in melody to the original ‘Ting-A-Ling’ on here is ‘Time Will Tell’, credited to Louisiana-born R&B songwriter Paul Gayten).

However, in spite of all these massively underwhelming covers, In Style With The Crickets still leaves plenty of space for good songwriting. Most of Curtis’ and Allison’s contributions here fall either under the easily predictable category of «Buddy Holly could have written this» or the slightly more surprising, but ultimately still predictable category of «The Everly Brothers could have written this». For instance, ‘Just This Once’ is a fast-rollickin’ pop-rock number that is very much up Buddy’s alley; but immediately following it is ‘Deborah’, a ballad whose guitar melody, lead vocals, and approach to vocal harmonies owe much more to Phil and Don than to Buddy. ‘When You Ask About Love’, released as a single (later to be covered by the rockabilly revival band Matchbox in 1980, whose version was lovingly described as «pukeabilly» in Record Mirror), is mid-tempo Buddy Holly; ‘Baby My Heart’ is loud and proud Everly Brothers-style rock’n’roll with more group harmonies. Interestingly, although we rarely ever remember ‘Baby My Heart’, its intro riff will be recognizable as the classic riff of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ ‘Shakin’ All Over’ — they most likely nicked it from this song, given that it was released as a B-side in the UK in April 1960, whereas ‘Shakin’ All Over’ came out in June of the same year; just another reminder of how fickle the concept of «original songwriting» really is.

But while the only historical function of ‘Baby My Heart’ might have been to provide external inspiration for a much more enduring classic, its A-side has deservedly received far more accolades. ‘More Than I Can Say’, driven by Dudley Brooks’ gentle piano riff rather than guitar (the chord sequence here eerily sounds like a shortened preview of the famous piano melody of Leiber’s – and possibly Stoller’s – ‘Spanish Harlem’, which could have very well been influenced by this song), is a Curtis original that is melodically equidistant from both Buddy and the Everlys, and is rather a natural precursor to the gentle folk-pop sound of The Searchers. Sonny himself takes the lead on the song, showing himself in possession of a far more expressive and charismatic voice than Sinks — just not at all suitable for singing a Buddy-style rocker, but for this kind of material it is absolutely perfect. The result is empathetic sentiment without either pathos or saccharine, reserved but deeply sincere, and far better than the subsequent hit covers by Bobby Vee and especially Leo Sayer (who completely bypasses the «deep sincerity through restraint» principle and ends up horribly oversinging it). Do not accept inferior substitutes — the original version of the song as sung by Sonny Curtis is the real deal masterpiece.

Perhaps it should be added that it is also a masterpiece of positioning — being the opening number on the album, its lyrics ("I miss you every single day / Why must my life be filled with sorrow / Miss you more than I can say") are difficult to construe as anything other than a tender lament for the band’s dearly departed friend and leader. Of course, when we get to the bridge section with the "do you mean to make me cry, am I just another guy?" bit, that impression gets a little shattered (unless we’re talking about a homoerotic connection between Buddy and Sonny, which is never totally out of the question), but the power of first impression is never to be underestimated. The only downside of this beautiful opening is that it provides us with a false hope — the rest of the album never truly lives up to it, and when a gorgeous original com­position welcoming you to the LP is immediately followed by two completely pointless rock’n’roll covers, that feeling of heavy disappointment is hardly to be underestimated, either.

Still, there is at least one more indisputable classic awaiting us later on: the original version of ‘I Fought The Law’, a song much better known through the hit version of Bobby Fuller in 1966 and then, of course, The Clash’s cover more than a decade after Fuller’s. Why Fuller’s version was such a big hit and The Crickets’ was not can only be ascribed to extra-musical factors — the band released it as a B-side to the much less distinctive ‘A Sweet Love’, getting no airplay, while Fuller had it as an A-side (not to mention the sharp rise of public interest in the song after Fuller’s probable suicide several months after the song’s release). Essentially, the two versions are very similar, except that Bobby throws on a little musical reference to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ in his cover, and the production values are, of course, a little higher for 1965 than they were for 1959 — also, it may be conceded that the song’s unusually acute level of social conscience is fairly atypical of Sonny "Love Is All Around" Curtis’ general style and would connect much better with such a rockabilly rebel as the late Bobby Fuller. But we shouldn’t pretend that The Crickets themselves do not do the song justice — and, for that matter, if you want 100% anger and rebelliousness, The Clash blow both versions away anyway.

I came across a couple of interviews with Sonny where sensation-hungry journalists keep bugging him about whatever it caused him to write such a glorious outlaw anthem — and, as you can guess, he mostly just shrugs and says something about writing it on the spot, in about twenty minutes, as a country pastiche, never ascribing it any particular significance. Musically, it’s really not that much, just another stereotypical Buddy-like pop-rocker; and it does not really sound all that much like a rebellious anthem (not even in the Bobby Fuller version, even if Bobby may already have sensed the potential), but then again, neither does a heck of a lot of the whole «outlaw country» thing. It’s just a catchy song with a great lyrical hookline, efficiently hammered into your head through endless repetition. Could have actually made a great prison work song if the tempo were slowed down just a bit — no sane prisoner would ever dare to "break rocks in the hot sun" at such a suicidal speed.

By this time, you probably get the general idea that In Style With The Crickets is a really, really mixed bag, combining utter throwaways with flashes of genius — which makes it into quite a curious historical artifact, even if the best songs from it have long since been hijacked by other artists. Fortunately, the album remains in print, and one of the later CD releases even offers it bundled with a bunch of bonus tracks from 1960 — several singles and outtakes that already feature David Box on guitar and vocals, replacing both Curtis and Sinks at the same time. They are rather poorly produced, and feature little of interest other than the «completed» version of Buddy’s unreleased ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ and the original version of the folk-rocker ‘Don’t Cha Know’, later also covered by The Searchers in an aesthetically similar, but technically superior-sounding version. Overall, Box has a more lilting and flexible voice than Sinks, but is a less interesting guitar player than Curtis, so it’s not really clear how much of an improvement he really was.

In any case, the bonus tracks are nice to have, but not essential — although, to be fair, the only truly essential track on the album itself is ‘More Than I Can Say’, which, for some reason, nobody could ever do more justice than its own creator. The best thing I can say about the rest is that they are rarely embarrassing to listen to (with a couple of the more obvious mis­matches in style like ‘Great Balls Of Fire’). They simply present very little progress, with the band more concerned about «preserving» the spirit of Buddy (and, to a lesser extent, the Everly Brothers) than trying to take risky guesses about where that spirit might have wanted to head, had Buddy never mounted that plane. Which is, in itself, not a crime as long as there is some legitimacy behind it (with Allison, Mauldin, and Curtis all aboard, there’s plenty) and as long as it is mostly done in good taste and style — and on that count at least, the album’s title certainly doesn’t lie.

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