Buddy Holly Story in Rhode Island

By  Brett Warnke

Buddy Holly was more than horn rims and hiccups but these did give him a style all his own.  Born Charles Hardin Holley in west Texas, Buddy showed an early love of music, learning to play the bass, drums, and fiddle as a young man.  By eighteen, Holly stretched upwards of 6’ but weighed a waifish 150 pounds.  With about as much sex appeal as a telegraph pole, Holly was no swaggering Elvis.  But it was the Memphis King who inspired the toothy Texan to refine his quirky sound and gravitate from the dusty sounds of country/western towards emerging rock and roll. 

Holly met his fellow band members “The Crickets” while in high school in Lubbock and with them, between August 1957 and August 1958, charted seven top forty hits.  (The name “The Beatles” is actually a pun and tribute to Holly’s Crickets.)  Buddy’s tale of overnight success would have been captivating enough, but it was a crashing plane that transported the twenty-two year old Holly into legend.

The Courthouse Theatre’s “Buddy:  The Buddy Holly Story” is a biographical tribute.  The story takes the audience from Texas, to New Mexico, to New York (where Holly planned to settle with his Puerto Rican bride) and finally Iowa.  The thin biographical elements of the show stitch together nearly forty songs, most of them Holly’s.  Other musical numbers are from Buddy’s musical comrades Ricardo Valenzuala Reyes (“Ritchie Valens”) and Jiles Richardson (“The Big Bopper”) who also died in the Iowa crash.

The show begins with a clip from Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song whose cryptic lyrics sample from the postwar era’s musical history and whose refrain—“the day the music died”—is supposedly a reference to the deaths of Valens, Richardson, and Holly.  McLean’s clever verse “this’ll be the day that I die,” is certainly a play on one of Holly’s most famous song titles, “That’ll Be the Day.” 

Eric Fontana, a musician in his own right, gives an impressive performance as Buddy.  He matches Holly’s quirkiness as well as his focus and confidence even when declaring cornball lines like, “Music never hurt nobody, never…” He does all this with a naïve but sweet sincerity that Buddy would have undoubtedly echoed.  Perched atop what looks like one of Moses’ tablets, Fontana quickly takes the audience through more than two dozen songs and gives us a hard-working, professional Buddy.  We see the troublesome “juiced up and high” Crickets desperately try to keep up in the recording studio with the manic Holly who, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard (and unlike most of his 1950s contemporaries), wrote his own material.  The reason the songs are so numerous in this show is because most of Holly’s songs are simple riffs, lasting only a couple of minutes. 

After a weak dance number during “Not Fade Away,” the cast’s movements improved, mightily.  With the synchronization of reef fish, the dancers rebounded with memorable dancing, particularly in the final electrifying quarter hour where David Tessier’s Ritchie Valens and Scott Morency’s Bopper are a delight.  (Watch for the kick-maneuver during Johnny B. Goode.)

But the main cast is not the only talented part of this show. Minor performances like Joanna Gonzalez’s song at the Apollo demonstrate real talent.  Also, if you get a chance, keep an eye on the gifted James Lambert and Jack Bailey; with as much fun as these two have dancing, I think they might cry if they stood still.  And if you have any groove left during these waning summer days—not to give away too much—put on your dancing shoes before coming to the Courthouse.  Pulling out old records a few hours before the show and remembering some steps will be well worth your while.

Holly died in 1959, ending as a young talent with so much of his life and talent uncharted and unborn.  Along with the remarkable work Holly did achieve during his short life, something should be remembered that the Courthouse musical left out:  Holly left behind a pregnant widow, Maria Elena, who miscarried weeks after the Iowa crash.  The loss for American music lovers was profound.  What would Holly, always his own man, have been playing just a decade later?