1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 12. The Crickets – The “Chirping” Crickets (1957)
One wonders what Buddy Holly would have done had he not met an untimely end. Is part of his legend simply that he died young? Perhaps, but there’s talent on display here (not to take away from the other members of the Crickets). Already I’ve expressed how some musicians can make things seem a lot simpler than they are (in fact, on the very first album in this list, talking about Sinatra’s singing style). The Crickets’ songs are deceptively simple – spare and lean, but actually quite cleverly done if you listen to them closely, in terms of the little flourishes.
I’m guessing this is here partly due to Holly’s legacy and partly because it’s a formative album in the “rockabilly” style, with the hard twangy guitars and staccato beats. Although it bears similarities to Elvis’ work, it’s also noticeably its own thing. There are some do-wop backing vocals, which according to Professor W. Ikipedia, the Crickets were forced to add by the studio and didn’t really like them. Probably the most purely rockabilly track is the last one on the album – Rock Me My Baby.
The album fits in a lot of the familiar tracks – That'll Be The Day, Maybe Baby, Oh Boy!, Not Fade Away, but lacks Peggy Sue and the music box Every Day, which must have purely existed as singles. It’s interesting that this is billed as The Crickets, with Buddy just being part of the line-up rather than the star billing.
Holly influenced a number of later artists, both musically and stylistically. From Mick Jagger (who would provide the definitive cover of Not Fade Away), to Lennon and McCartney, to Elvis Costello and Elton John who affected Holly style glasses, to Bob Dylan and many others.
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