I HAD $5 left, that summer day in 1962, and only a few minutes to decide how to spend it. My dad had given me a . . .
. . . heifer to finance room and board for an eight-week summer program at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. I had been plucked from Garrison High School by the National Science Foundation and deposited in Aggieland, along with a bunch of other young nerds, to learn some science and help America catch up with the Russians.
The heifer brought $120 at the Patton Auction Barn in Nacogdoches. Now the money was all gone, except for that last precious fiver. And there in a record store in College Station, Texas, I faced the first important investment decision of my life: Whether to purchase "The Buddy Holly Story," Coral Records, CRL 57279.
A waste of money, it was. We had a fine AM radio. It would play all the music I ever needed to hear, free (not to mention gratis). Besides -- and this was the really hard problem -- all I could do is take it home in the cellophane wrapper, set it on the shelf, and admire it. Our rural home lacked anything resembling a phonograph player.
So naturally, with hours remaining before my parents arrived to take me home, I bought the record and packed it away in my suitcase so I wouldn't have to explain it to my chauffeurs.
The reasoning for my purchase was elegant. I really liked Buddy Holly music, but the old boy was dead, three years and counting. This was probably the last Holly album that would ever be pressed. If I missed it, the chance would never come again. I'd go through life depending on the kindness of strange disk jockeys to satisfy my need to hear "Peggy Sue," "That'll Be the Day," and "Oh Boy!"
What prompts this excursion into nostalgia is the release of "Rave On" (Fantasy), a new collection of Buddy Holly covers by Paul McCartney ("It's So Easy") and a bunch of nobodies and barely somebodies, at least to my experience. Naturally I'll buy it too. Maybe some of the cuts will be good.
The last cover album I bought -- "notfadeaway {remembering boddy holly}" -- had some definite keepers. My fave was "Think It Over" by the Tractors, but others were good too. The line-up was certainly more authentically Hollyesque -- the Hollies, the Crickets, Joe Ely, Waylon Jennings, and others who might reasonably be expected to have heard or played with Buddy back in the day.
So what is it about Buddy Holly that triggered the pleasure center in the bowl full of mush that served as my brain back in aught-sixty-two?
Beats me. Lucky for us, a review in the Wall Street Journal speculates on a related question: What is it about Buddy Holly that inspires musicians today to keep recording his catalogue?
His songs still reflect the runaway emotions of youth in bloom; his lyrics glow with pure innocence. Holly expresses this perspective directly: "Words of love whisper [read you whisper] soft and true. Darling, I love you"; "Well, you are the one that makes me glad and you are the one that makes me sad"; 'Where you're concerned my heart has learned it's so easy to fall in love."
. . . .
Holly's songs have the kind of simple structural integrity that allows them to be reinterpreted in countless ways. . . .
. . . .
"The thing about Holly," said [Justin Townes Earle] by phone recently, "is the same thing Woody Guthrie has, Tom Petty has, Bruce Springsteen has -- simple songs that people can relate to. There's something about him that just clutches the heart. A lot of music is fixed in the distance, but Buddy's is right there."
Had he lived, Holly would have turned 75 this September. It's useless to project what he might have become had he lived: Would he have undermined his own legacy as Presley did? Or continued to do good work as Roy Orbison did, and to enjoy an audience spanning generations? By age 22, Holly had already created an enduring body of work -- enough to have filled a much longer life. With "Rave On," we're reminded that quality tops longevity in the arts and that extraordinary and earnest songs, no matter how simple, have an extended life of their own.
(Jim Fusilli, "A Voice for Youth's Exuberant Optimism," Wall Street Journal (wsj.com), June 28, 2011)
For a less generous review in the very same newspaper, see Marc Meyers, "A New Take on an Early Rock Icon," Wall Street Journal (wsj.com), June 24, 2011):
. . . fastest-fading founding father [of rock] . . . looked like a high-strung accountant . . . only a handful of his songs linger . . . perky rockabilly muse whose pogo-stick voice, marshmallow melodies and twangy guitar are the essence of the genre . . . lanky and nerdy . . . clingy melodies and lyrics that were remarkably free of sexual innuendo . . . .
I can't remember how John D. and Edna Hancock reacted to my investment in a Holly album -- which is sitting on the table behind my desk, even as we speak. But my mother nearly spit when I came home with the optometrist with my first pair of glasses -- a pair of Holly-style horn-rims, naturally.
John Lennon did the same thing, apparently.
And what science did I learn at A&M?
That when you irradiate bean seeds, they produce stunted bean plants. That hothouses really are hot. That a good way to cool off after watering your professor's stunted bean plants in a hothouse is to stop by the dairy science laboratory and buy a five-cent ice-cream cone. And that the other nerds were a lot smarter than I.
A heifer, by the way, is a what a female calf grows up to be, just before she starts dating.
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