MUSIC: Local talent lines up to create a tribute to the legendary Buddy Holly

Feb 22 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

EACH time record shop owner David Crosby went to a concert at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, he had but one thought on his mind: “I could never stop thinking that Buddy Holly played here,” he says.

Crosby had been a Holly fan from childhood, and has remained one all his life.

“It was first hearing his recording Peggy Sue that did it,” he reports. “I thought it was tremendous. Then on the B-side there was Oh Boy which was completely different, one a nice ballad the other an up-tempo rocker.”

At New Brighton railway station one day, he saw a poster for a concert at the Philharmonic Hall and he could hardly believe his eyes. His hero Buddy Holly was appearing there, in Liverpool, with The Crickets.

Unfortunately, Crosby was still at school, a mere 12-year-old, and his mother would not let him travel from Wallasey to the concert.

“It wasn’t really the thing in those days for a 12-year-old to go to a concert alone. So I missed it.”

That concert was on March 20, 1958 – in fact two concerts on the same night – and has long been remembered by pop fans of the era. Along with Buddy Holly and the Crickets there were Gary Miller, the now unknown Tanner Sisters, and a singer who remains a star in a different field, Des O’Connor.

Now, 50 years on, there is to be another Buddy Holly concert at the same venue – this time with Holly’s songs sung by some of Liverpool’s finest bands and musicians. And Crosby has organised it.

Retired from the record business, Crosby has managed to put together a line-up which he thinks outshines even the recent Number Ones concert at the Liverpool Arena.

Acts range from China Crisis, Liverpool Express, The Undertakers, Eton Road and The Quarrymen to The Merseybeats, Karl Terry, Pete Wylie, Ian McNabb and Gaz and the Groovers.

More unusually, there will be contributions from Merseyside African Drums, Merseyside Police Band and West Kirby Light Opera.

It has been a long haul for Crosby to get the show together.

“I wanted to book the hall for the exact 50th anniversary date March 20, 2008, and I first wrote to the hall some years ago, even offering to leave a deposit, but nothing really happened. I didn’t want to tell anyone what I had in mind in case someone pinched the idea.

“Then it was announced that Liverpool had won the Capital of Culture bid and that changed things. I had to wait until it was known what the orchestra was doing and finally last year, my booking of the hall was accepted.

“That gave me something else to think about – what was I going to put on?

“I thought of inviting Bobby Vee but that would have been just another concert and it had to be something special.

“So I thought about inviting well-known local acts to perform, each one doing two or three numbers each.”

First on board was Mike Byrne, who had a Merseybeat band Juke Box Eddies but now renamed Juke Box Buddys. Billy Kingsley and Liverpool Express quickly followed, along with Pete Wylie.

“More and more artists joined in and the list just grew and grew.” At the last count, 30 acts have been booked to do the concert.

“It’s all done on a vocal agreement,” says Crosby.

“But because of the numbers involved, each act will now do only one number. Otherwise, it would go on for hours and hours!”

There was also the problem of financing such a large number of acts.

“The only way round it was to make it a charity concert, so it will be in aid of cancer research – my father died of the disease.”

More importantly, all the acts are big Buddy Holly fans.

There is no denying it. Buddy Holly has had tremendous influence on rock and roll and pop performers, right to the present day.

All the Beatles were huge fans, Paul McCartney even buying the publishing rights of Holly’s music, and for some time organising an annual Holly Day. Numerous rock stars have admitted that they owe Holly a huge debt.

The Holly legend – as it has become – was born from Holly’s early death, aged 22, in a plane crash in 1959, less than a year after his Liverpool concerts.

Holly and fellow performers The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens had taken seats on a light aircraft to take them between gigs on their Winter Dance Party tour.

The aircraft crashed near Mason City on February 3, 1959, just minutes after take-off, killing all three pop stars and the pilot Roger Peterson. The following month, Holly’s single, ironically titled It Doesn’t Matter Anymore, hit the American charts.

For millions of fans then and since, it did, of course, matter.

David Crosby was a newspaper delivery boy at the time and still recalls the shock of seeing the news of the crash on the front of the Daily Mirror.

“It was difficult to believe. In those days, pop stars were young and we thought they would live for ever. Of course, since then, with drink and drugs, many stars have died young but in the 1950s it seemed impossible.”

In fact, the news of Holly’s death was carried by very few newspapers that day. “The reports that were carried also concentrated on The Big Bopper, as he had a record in the charts at that time.”

But while Holly was gone, the fans still venerated his music and no-one more so than Crosby.

“The thing about Buddy Holly was that he could play any sort of music, rhythm and blues, country, ballads, anything. In that way, he was the forerunner of The Beatles.”

It is also one reason why he was able to get such a disparate line-up in his tribute concert.

As a member of West Kirby Light Operatic – he took a leading role in their show Seussical the Musical, at the Liverpool Empire – Crosby got them on board to perform. They will be singing a specially arranged version of Raining in My Heart.

The Merseysippi Jazz Band – a band which actually predates Holly himself – will be performing Mail Man, Bring No More Blues. Most of the great Holly numbers will be heard on the night.

And no Buddy Holly look and soundalike? “I thought about that, but I wanted this to be a show by local acts and I could not find a local Buddy,” says Crosby. “But we will see.”

* BUDDY Holly 50th Anniversary Concert is on March 20, Philharmonic Hall.