So Buddy played steel guitar. If anyone has any further details about this I would be glad to hear about it.
I remember when Buddy died. I was at school at the time. I had no record player, but as soon as I could I saved up for one and the first record I bought was "The Buddy Holly Story", which was rushed out very quickly after his death.
Of course, I loved all the rockabilly singers at the time: Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, et al; but Buddy Holly was always my favourite.
Unique amongst pop stars, more of his material has been released since his death than when he was alive. Indeed, the majority of his work was not for publication. He made hours of demos for his own use, and, with the lack of available material, backings were added to this for future releases. In fact, in some cases there are several versions of the same Buddy Holly track available, but with different backing. It's not commonly known that the Crickets didn't do the vocals on most of his recordings. That was added by the Pickering Brothers while the Crickets were off touring. In fact, in their haste to get recordings out, some of the numbers were released with no vocal backings, and the versions with the vocals were only released fifty years later.
I've often thought that a backing of steel guitar would have suited his numbers better than the vocal group. Fortunately, the plain recordings of Buddy singing with just an acoustic guitar, with no other backings, are available, and I've long thought of orchestrating these myself and adding better arrangements. I wouldn't be able to publish them, of course, as they would impinge on copyrights.
As an aside, my assistant in my last job before I retired used to hang out with Buddy and his friends in Lubbock as a schoolgirl, went to the same school, and actually dated him. After retirement she returned from San Francisco to Lubbock, where she felt like she always belonged, so there must be something about Lubbock.
