BUDDY HOLLY GEMS ARE BURIED TREASURES

Of all the music I have listened to and have got in my CD rack, the one man I always come back to when I`m feelin`like I need uplifting and a rock`n`roll fix is Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly.

In some ways I think it was better that the bespectacled boy from Lubbock, Texas died in a light plane crash on that fateful night on the 3rd February, 1959 in an icy Iowa paddock, as insensitive as it might sound. 

I say that because Holly died while he was still on cloud nine, when he was still innocent, when his music was still as crisp as a fresh piece of lettuce and not a heap of convoluted psychedelic or avant garde tripe like you could have expected from any rocker from the mid 60`s onwards. 

Buddy Holly scored a few big hits in the brief window of time, eighteen months to be exact, when he recorded the vast majority

of his timeless musical output. 

From late 1957 till the end of 1958, Holly tried his hand at anything from rock`n`roll and blues all the way to Sinatra-like swing.

His orchestral recording of `True Love Ways`,`Raining in my Heart' and `Moondreams` displayed complete contempt for all the artistic restrictions the record companies placed on their big stars, it`s hard to believe listening to these three songs that the same guy was responsible for `That`ll Be The Day` and

`Rave On`. 

Holly incredibly had just as many flops as he did hits, it is beyond the pale to think that one of the best song he ever wrote, `It`s So Easy`, with the classic mens barber quartet B-side `Lonesome Tears` was one of the biggest of them all. 

Commercially the single was a complete lemon. By the time `It`s So Easy` was released, which was the latter half of 1958, bible bashers like Ed Sullivan had successfully made rock`n`roll out to be "devils music" and morally degrading. 

This explains why Elvis was already singing ballads by 1958 and why a fistful of rock `n`roll classics by Holly in the same year commercially sank without a popular trace. 

I will talk about the rest of Holly`s 1958 mainstream recordings in more detail at a later time, but the lost treasure of Buddy Holly`s that I have found for you is a very rare 2 CD release ironically called Buddy Holly: Lost Treasures. 

It was released on a very obscure Canadian label called Virtual Records in the late 1990`s, and I believe that the record label is now defunct and no more. 

You might get lucky and track down a copy in some music warehouse in Canada even to this day, but I would not hold my breath that you will find one that way. 

The best thing you could probably do to try and get a copy of Lost Tresaures is to be on the lookout for it on E-BAY. 

The album is a collection of undubbed versions of many Holly classics and some not so well known numbers, as well there are a few outtakes on the album including the unrehearsed chit chat between Buddy and

the other members of his band, The Crickets, in between the takes on various songs. 

This is the only recording where you will ever find a version of Holly`s B-side classic `Not Fade Away` with the backing vocals absent from the last half of the song. 

The way this exemplifies Holly`s downward guitar playing power is nothing short of awesome, why a totally backing vocal-less version of `Not Fade Away` never saw the light of day is anyones guess. 

Lost Treasures also features 6 very raw

and stripped down live versions of 3 songs, `Peggy Sue`, `Oh Boy!` and `That`ll Be The Day`, each song recorded at both the London Palladium and on the Ed Sullivan show when the host of the show, yes that`s Ed Sullivan, famously had Buddy Holly`s amp pulled out mid way through playing `Oh! Boy`.

I saw footage on this forgotten moment in rock history and the look on Holly`s face when he realises he is playing without an amplifier is one of sheer bewilderment and one that is forever etched in the rock of rock`n`roll folklore. 

Holly basically said, `shove it up your clacker Sullivan, I do not need an amp`, and the sheer ferocity of Holly`s strumming after the amp was turned off made up for the loss of electrically assisted studio sound. 

`Peggy Sue` was never my absolute favourite Holly tune, but the live version of it from the Ed Sullivan Show is my favourite tune on the Lost Treasures album. It sounds nothing like the slickly produced studio version that become a hit single in 1957.

On here it`s more of an acoustic blues jam, and it sends a shiver down my spine everytime I hear it. 

Almost like Buddy Holly is in the same room as me. There are sixty five tunes on Lost Treasures in all, I hope you find it one day if you are a Holly fan. I call it lost buried treasure.