1959 - could you really be a Buddy Holly fan in short trousers, a zip-up cardi, and school shoes?
Article by Robert Furnell
February 3rd, 1959 was a Tuesday. It is the date of Buddy Holly's death. Lots of British people over 60 refer to that iconic date, saying what they were doing when they heard - you know, "the day the music died".
Well, most of them are actually wrong, bless them! They certainly didn't read about it in the papers until February 4th. The plane carrying Buddy Holly crashed just after 1.00am, American time, which translates as 7.00am our time. It was snowing very hard in Clear Lake, Iowa, and despite searches, the plane was not found until about 9.30am, 3.30pm our time. The police would have needed to identify the bodies, inform next of kin, etc, before official information was released. Everything would have been slowed down by the snow. And the BBC news team would have been going crazy trying to find pictures of the three victims. I suspect the broadcast didn't go out until the 4th. So, although the event took place on the 3rd, it was the 4th that was significant in people's lives - when they heard. And not only that, the music certainly did not die. This fading rock 'n' roll star's recordings gathered far more interest and attention after his death than before. Like painters.
Well, I remember that fateful Wednesday, the 4th February, 1959, when I first learned of the deaths of three pop stars I had never heard of! I was ten, and I used to come home to lunch (or dinner as it was called then - school "dinners", "dinner" money, "dinner" ladies. Whoever heard of a lunch lady?). My Dad used to come home to dinner, too, and he always brought the Daily Mirror. He used to throw it in my direction when he came in, because I used to like to read the Andy Capp cartoon each day. Perhaps it was the pictures, or the emotive headlines - I don't know - but I wanted to know who Buddy Holly was. But Mum and Dad didn't know. And typical of parents at that time, they didn't bother to find out for me. After all, it was only pop music. We, as children, were still expected to conform to the "seen and not heard" category devised by the Victorians and honoured by time through successive, grateful generations of parents. To be fair, most parents were good. Mine were. But they weren't tuned in to the "developing child/emerging adult" in those days. Despite the fact I was playing 78s on our gramophone a lot, listening to the radio, loving Lonnie Donegan and Tommy Steele, drawing guitars, even making cardboard guitars, they still dutifully bought me a train-set for Christmas! Aspiring musicianship, in those days, was accorded the same level of seriousness as women wanting a career and equal pay!
So over two years passed before the Buddy Holly interest arose again. My Grandmother had noticed I liked music. She - OK - like this: every Sunday, my Dad took me to see my Gran and Grandad. Now Gran had a - wait for it - a radiogram ! She was 60-something, lived in a council house, but owned a top-of-the-range radio/record player. She liked American Rock n Roll, and regularly bought records. It was fantastic. I mean, my Dad was a chief cashier with his own house, but all we had was a "78" gramophone. Dad was doing all the social stuff with his M and D, but I was glued to this....... radiogram! Two-Way Family Favourites! Mainly British families and their soldier sons/husbands, stationed in Germany, requesting records for each other: Elvis, Connie Francis, Vera Lynn, etc.
So good old Gran, during the Autumn of 1961, was persuading my Dad to get a record player for Christmas. It was during that Autumn that I saw Bobby Vee and the Crickets (Buddy Holly's band) perform on "Thank Your Lucky Stars". They sang a song called "Someday", and I loved it. So I put the "Bobby Vee Meets The Crickets" album at the top of my Christmas list. The record player and the Bobby Vee LP were there Christmas day. Wonderful. Now, the interesting bit is that it attracted the interest of my Uncle Roy, who was only seven years older than me.
My Uncle Roy was nineteen at the time. He wore "Gene Vincent" leathers, rode a Triumph Bonneville, and, so I found out, was a great fan of Buddy Holly. He worked for a Dutch firm called Stella, and owned a battery-powered, transistor, upright, open-reel tape-recorder that played three-inch tapes. That is important because my family didn't have a record player, and he had made a tape recording of Buddy Holly's hits. So, after Christmas, he kindly lent me the tape and player. I loved the music instantly. I played it everyday, with no pun intended. "That'll Be The Day" and "Rave On" were my favourites, but I liked all the songs.
During '61 and '62, Gran and I were swapping records every Sunday! I lent her Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Bobby Vee, and she lent me Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. She tried to get me to listen to Pat Boone, but he wasn't to my taste. My Mum and Dad were just bemused by the whole business, not being pop music fans.
There's this old question: why do children and their grandparents get on so well. And the answer is that they share a common enemy: the parents! Research so far places the original source of that remark with Sam Levenson (1911 - 1980), an American writer and TV personality.
Thousands of early teens were discovering modern pop music, and rock n roll, at this time. It was the very start of a separate, under-16 "youth culture". There were still no fashions, as yet, for the young teen, but manufacturers were getting ready. It was very difficult to state that you liked the Beatles, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly when you stood there dressed in short trousers, a zip-up cardi (called a jerkin, of all things!), and school shoes.