![]() I was 15 and in the ninth grade and was not allowed to go out to many places by myself at night. For some reason our favorite song of Ritchie’s was not “La Bamba” or “Donna” but “Hi-Tone.” We just loved that song. The songs that we learned that were not from the folk music genre were popular songs mainly by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. My best friend Roger Palos was Mexican, and he and I were both learning to play guitar and we would sing together a lot. I was from a mixed-race white and Hispanic neighborhood in Claremont, called Arbol Verde. Watch Buddy Holly and the Crickets perform “Peggy Sue” on The Ed Sullivan ShowĬhris Darrow: I saw Ritchie Valens a month before his death, in Pomona (Calif.) at the Rainbow Gardens, an all-wooden building with a low ceiling that was later to burn to the ground. Odd that one of the final releases during his short lifetime was “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” What a premonition! It was one of the saddest days of my youth when we learned of that terrible crash that took his life, and the first time I cried over the loss of a performer. Buddy recalled the “woop-woop” as the plane fell and climbed and fell again. He interviewed Buddy about the national tour they had done together in 1956, during which they flew in a small plane to get to a gig, and encountered severe turbulence. I remember watching Alan Freed’s 5-6 pm Rock and Roll Party TV show on WABD, Channel 5, in New York City. The audience went wild for Buddy, clapping along with his rhythms, and singing along with his parade of hits. They were all dressed in tuxedos, and played with a stand-up bass. Most of the second line performers got only one or two songs each, but Buddy Holly and the Crickets got five, because they were on the charts under both names at the time. The show included Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Lee Andrews and the Hearts, Danny and the Juniors, the Dubs and eight others. So we told them we were going to Hackensack (N.J.) to see a movie, but got on the bus to the Port Authority instead and walked the few blocks to the Paramount, which had a line stretching three times around the block. My friends and I had to lie to our parents, because they were sure we would be mugged. The run broke all attendance records, including the previous best, a Frank Sinatra tour in 1944. Roger Steffens: At Christmas 1957 I went to my first rock and roll show, Alan Freed’s giant Christmas Jubilee of Stars at the Paramount Theater on Times Square. Jethro Tull Shares 3rd Single From New Album, ‘RökFlöte’Īt various times, I asked two dear friends of mine, author/music historian Roger Steffens and the late multi-instrumentalist Chris Darrow, to share their memories of witnessing Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens perform.The Hollies’ Allan Clarke-Behind His Comeback: ‘It’s Different, But It’s Still Me’. ![]()
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