Why I am dressing up in 50's clothes and horn-rimmed glasses this Saturday

Today (Wednesday 7th September 2016) would have been singer-songwriter Buddy Holly's 80th Birthday. 

This Saturday, I will be dressing up in appropriate Buddy gear and playing an hour's worth of Buddy & The Crickets material in my local rock'n'roll club - Oscar Bar in Phnom Penh.  It will be a performance created from a deep love and respect for Buddy's music. 

 I noticed recently that Buddy's 80th Birthday was coming up and this sparked my idea of creating a small tribute band. I immediately thought of my colleague Mr Scott Bywater, a known Buddy lover and a big fan of early Beatles recordings. The Beatles not only covered many of Buddy's songs but, as we know from all the biographies and TV documentaries, were directly inspired by the archetype that Buddy & The Crickets put out there for the modern rock'n'roll band. Buddy and his guys were one of the first 'bands' to become mega-famous as three or four guys on stage with instruments, as opposed to one sole star in the spotlight. 

I am lucky to work with one of the very few upright bassists active in Cambodia. Danny Lumen plays with me in the 1950's inspired 'Jumping Jacks'. Naturally, we needed him to ensure that the Buddy Birthday Band was an authentic 50's outfit.

It's hard to countenance now, but Buddy died just a few weeks into 1959. He had already found fame but the profound influence of his music was only just beginning to resonate. Although he only recorded around 15-20 of his own songs, that small repertoire would inspire many generations of rock'n'rollers to come. Buddy was not even close to reaching his 23rd birthday when his plane went down in Clear Lake, Iowa, but he had already etched a number of permanent and perfect messages into the tablets of rock n roll history - among them were 'Peggy Sue', 'That'll Be The Day', 'Words of Love' and 'Not Fade Away'.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Along with luminary peers such as Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Otis Blackwell, Buddy's genius was in creating two-minute masterpieces that succeeded in capturing lightning in a bottle. The chord sequences could be played by any beginner guitarist and the lyrics were straight out of the pages of a teen romance. But these writers found a way to transcend the boundaries of the form - the limitations of the 45 r.p.m. single and the radio-centric, youth-oriented mass-market that favoured immediate sonic impact over lyrical or musical subtleties. Originators like Buddy always found the right place to slip in a surprising chord change, and often wrote lyrics that contained an extra level of intrigue beyond the surface shlock of 'I love you, you love me'.

Listening to the best songs of the 1950's one can hear, to this day, the genius bursting at the seams, energy radiating from the disc - a recording that was made in twenty minutes with clunking equipment can become an eternal flame of music history. The recordings that Buddy made with producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, were equal in power, and similar in style, to the early Sun recordings of Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Like Elvis, Buddy later signed on with a major label and began to develop his style into something more polished and produced - working with highly skilled arrangers and a studio full of the best musicians in the country. But, tragically, we never got to hear what would have happened if Buddy had had the chance to fully grow and mature as an artist, in the golden musical world of the 1960's that he himself had propagated. What would have been his mature style is only hinted at by recordings such as 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' and 'Raining In My Heart'.

I imagine that, had Buddy have lived, his creative genius would have taken on the innovative and world-changing trajectory that the Beatles embarked upon when they quit touring and settled down in the studio to create the perfect albums of their time. But that is just a what-if. As it was, Buddy shook the world with a repertoire of vital songs that will forever 'Rave On'.
JOE WRIGLEY