A John Wayne western gave rock and roll one of its sharpest threats. On September 23, 1957, 'That'll Be the Day' by The Crickets hit the top of the American 'Best Sellers in Stores' chart, a record built from a single line of dialogue repeated by a movie cowboy. Buddy Holly, born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas, had walked out of The Searchers with his brother Larry, Jerry Allison, and Sonny Curtis, and the phrase from Wayne's character stuck. Within weeks the song was a transatlantic smash, and the polite young Texan with glasses was suddenly a chart-topping force.
From Lubbock to the stage
The climb had begun far from any recording studio. Holly was the youngest of four children, picking up piano lessons at age 11 and quitting nine months later. A classmate playing guitar and singing on a school bus shifted his attention, and his parents found an acoustic guitar at a local pawn shop. His older brother Travis taught him the instrument. By 1952 he and Jack Neal were competing on local television as 'Buddy and Jack', and when Neal left, Bob Montgomery stepped in to form 'Buddy and Bob'.
Lubbock's radio dials carried blues and rhythm-and-blues through the night, and Holly absorbed it alongside the country sounds of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, and Bill Monroe. In 1955 he opened for Elvis Presley three times in Lubbock, watching a style shift from country to rock and roll in real time. That October he opened for Bill Haley and His Comets, and Nashville scout Eddie Crandall was in the room. Crandall helped secure a contract with Decca Records, where a clerical slip turned Holley into Holly.
Frustration at Decca Records
Decca paired him with producer Owen Bradley, but the sessions left Holly frustrated by a lack of creative control. When the label declined to renew his contract in January 1957, he drove to Clovis, New Mexico, to work with producer Norman Petty. Petty recorded demos of 'That'll Be the Day' in his studio and became the group's manager, sending the tape to Brunswick Records. Contract restrictions from the Decca era forced a workaround: the single would appear under a band name, not Holly's own.
Drummer Jerry Allison suggested The Crickets, and Brunswick, a Decca subsidiary, released the record. Petty reasoned that disc jockeys would be more willing to play records issued under separate names, so Crickets material went to Brunswick while Holly's solo recordings landed on Coral Records. In August 1957, The Crickets became the first white group to play the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The audience warmed only after the band launched into Bo Diddley's signature riff.
A transatlantic smash
By November the single had spent three weeks at number one on the UK singles chart. 'Peggy Sue' followed, reaching number three on the Billboard pop chart, and the album The 'Chirping' Crickets arrived that November, climbing to number five in Britain. That December, The Crickets performed both songs on The Ed Sullivan Show. Holly's sound had crystallized: two guitars, bass, and drums, a lineup configuration he would be credited with standardizing for rock bands.
The marriage to Maria Elena Santiago in 1958 came fast. Holly met her in New York and proposed on their first date. Norman Petty tried to talk him out of it, worried about the image. Holly had other plans too, wanting to collaborate with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson. By early 1959 he had assembled a new touring lineup including Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch.
Legacy after the tragedy
On February 3, 1959, the plane carrying Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper crashed in Iowa. The event became known as 'The Day the Music Died'. Holly's influence would outrun the wreckage: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton all drew from his songwriting and stage presence. In 1986 he was among the first musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Rolling Stone placed him 13th on its list of the 100 greatest artists in 2010.
The song that started the run remained a fixture long after the charts moved on. 'That'll Be the Day' carried the bounce of a Texas teenager who had studied Hank Williams and late-night blues broadcasts, then turned a cowboy's catchphrase into a threat nobody could shake. In 2026, the recording is 69 years old, and the opening guitar figure still lands like a dare. John Wayne never knew he'd written a rock and roll hook.
Holly was 22 when the plane went down. The catalog he left behind was small but dense: 'That'll Be the Day', 'Peggy Sue', the Apollo breakthrough, the Sullivan appearances. Each piece fits into a timeline that runs from a pawn-shop acoustic guitar in Lubbock to a studio in Clovis where Norman Petty pressed record on a demo that would change the sound of American pop radio.