Take a Walk on the Dark Side

by R. Gary Patterson

  The most surprising test of fate occurred when Ritchie Valens kept asking Tommy Allsup for his seat. Finally, Allsup produced a half-dollar and told Ritchie to “call it.” Valens called “heads” and watched intently as Allsup flipped the coin into the air. As the coin came tumbling down, Ritchie smiled as he saw that he had made the correct call. According to Alan Freed, Valens claimed this was the first time he had ever won at anything.

  Allsup notified Buddy that Valens would take his seat on the plane. Tommy then gave his wallet to Buddy to pick up a registered letter that was waiting for him at the band’s next stop. Shortly after the crash, for a few anxious hours, investigators believed that there were five victims in the wreckage and looked frantically for the missing body that had to be hidden somewhere in the frozen cornfield. Luckily, Allsup had called home informing his parents about the tragedy just minutes before the call came to notify Tommy’s mother and father that their son’s name was given as one of the victims of the accident. Tommy Allsup was given a second chance. To commemorate his good fortune he opened his own saloon when he returned to Austin, Texas. He called the bar the Head’s Up Saloon. This would remind him in the future how a simple coin toss had saved his life.

  A few days before the fatal crash, Buddy had called up fellow rocker and friend Eddie Cochran. Holly was afraid that he had lost his creative touch and that he would never again have a song at the top of the charts. Cochran assured him that he was still the top star in the rock galaxy and that it was only a matter of time before Buddy again topped the pop charts. Cochran was scheduled to be with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on the Winter Dance Party tour. He and Ritchie Valens had just finished the film Go, Johnny, Go! but Eddie had a performance scheduled for early February on The Ed Sullivan Show and Buddy reminded him that the show would be much more important for his career that slowly freezing to death in the reconditioned school buses plodding wearily through the midwestern winter. When Cochran heard of the crash and death of his friends he was shaken. He was supposed to have been there too. Had he cheated death?

  At his next scheduled recording session Cochran had planned to record “Three Stars,” a tribute written by DJ Tommy Dee of KFXM in San Bernardino, California, to honor Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. Dee had written the song the day after the accident and Cochran recorded his version of “Three Stars” on February 5, 1959, just two days after the ominous crash. The original purpose was to split the song’s royalties among the families of the three fallen stars.

  The song contains three verses of spoken narrative, and Eddie describes each of his departed friends with heartfelt emotion. For Ritchie Valens, Cochran sang, “Everyone calls me a kid, but you were only seventeen.” He describes the Big Bopper as wearing a big Stetson hat and added, “Don’t forget those wonderful words ‘you know what I like.’” Cochran’s voice was completely wracked with emotion as he mentioned Buddy Holly. “Well you’re singing for God now in his chorus in the sky, Buddy Holly, I’ll always remember you with tears in my eyes.” The session proved to be so moving for Cochran that he entered into the control room and told his producer that if that song was ever released he would never cut another record. The record remained unreleased until 1964 when Liberty Records issued the single four years after Cochran’s own tragic death.

  In early 1960, Eddie Cochran left for England to perform a series of tour dates with Gene Vincent. The English crowds loved Eddie. One teenager in particular, George Harrison, followed Cochran from city to city acutely studying where Eddie placed his fingers as he played the guitar. A few days before her twentieth birthday, Sharon Sheeley came to England to join Eddie on tour.

  Sharon was a hit songwriter herself and was the youngest songwriter ever to score a number one hit with “Poor Little Fool,” a song she had penned for teen idol Ricky Nelson. Sheeley had fallen in love at first sight with Eddie Cochran when Phil Everly introduced her to the singer. She imagined him as a blond Elvis and loved to watch him perform. Sheeley also had a tragic link to Ritchie Valens. She had met Ritchie through Eddie, and Valens recorded Sharon’s “Hurry Up” as a cut for his Del-Fi album.

  When Sharon arrived in England, she found Eddie to be severely depressed. He was taking tranquilizers to deal with clinical depression. He was convinced that he had cheated death by avoiding the Winter Dance Party and now he would be destined to die a violent death just like Buddy. On one occasion, he asked Sharon to buy as many of Buddy’s records as she could find. He would then sit in his room playing the songs over and over again. When Sheeley asked, “Doesn’t it upset you hearing Buddy this way?” Eddie answered her in a faraway voice with, “Oh, no, ’cause I’ll be seeing him soon.”8 Eddie mentioned that he had a new guitar lick he wanted to show Buddy.

  Following one performance, Cochran visited a fortune-teller to determine just how long he had before he would meet an untimely death. This preoccupation continued throughout the English tour, with Eddie awakening from a troubled sleep one night screaming out “My God! I’m going to die and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it!”

  On Easter Sunday, April 17, 1960, Eddie Cochran, Sharon Sheeley, and Gene Vincent were headed to London’s Heathrow Airport for a return flight to California. Eddie had scheduled a new series of UK performances but wanted to return home for a short visit before continuing the tour. On the way to the airport, the chauffeur-driven Ford Consul suffered a blown tire, putting the car into a frenzied spin like a hellish Tilt-A-Whirl reeling completely out of control until it smashed into a light post, bringing the car to a complete and violent stop. Cochran was thrown from the car, as was Sharon Sheeley. Sheeley suffered a broken neck and a broken back. Gene Vincent reinjured his leg that had previously been maimed in a motorcycle accident. Vincent would carry the limp with him for the rest of his life.

  When Sheeley regained consciousness, she asked, “Where is Eddie?” Vincent, trying to reassure her, replied, “He is in the car having a cigarette.” Sharon knew something had to be seriously wrong. If Eddie wasn’t seriously hurt he would be with her. He would be there to comfort her. He wouldn’t leave her alone to bleed to death by the side of the road. When the ambulance arrived they found Cochran’s orange Gretsch guitar lying next to him in the pasture. The guitar had been hurled from the wreckage but miraculously didn’t receive a single scratch.

  All three passengers where rushed by ambulance to St. Martin’s Hospital in Bath. Ironically, the Crickets were in England finishing up an Everly Brothers tour. Immediately Sonny Curtis, who had rejoined the Crickets, and Jerry Allison rushed to the hospital to see Eddie. Joe B. Mauldin, fearing that there would be too many visitors in the way, decided to wait until the next day to see Cochran. Sadly, the next day Eddie Cochran would die from massive head injuries. In an eerie coincidence, Ritchie Valens’s mother was the first to call Sharon Sheeley’s parents notifying them of the accident in what must have been a tragic sense of rock and roll déjà vu. Ritchie’s mother and the Sheeleys knew each other through Ritchie’s recording of Sheeley’s “Hurry Up.”

  In another sense of bitter irony, the last single released by Eddie Cochran was entitled “Three Steps to Heaven,” and the Crickets served on the recording as his backup band. Eddie also proved to be prophetic when he told Buddy that another of Holly’s compositions would soon top the charts. Holly’s last single was aptly entitled “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” Though the song was released shortly before his death, it exploded onto the charts following the news of his death and reached number one in Great Britain. Buddy was making yet another point in rock and roll history, and that was that a dead rock star was very good business and a fortune could be made in the sale of rights and royalties.

  When the Crickets returned to the United States they would find that they would be involved in a series of other rock and roll tragedies. For whatever reason, bad luck seemed to follow anyone associated with the band. The first victim of the Holly curse was singer Ronnie Smith. Smith, a fellow Texan, had perf
ormed with drummer Carl Bunch and Tommy Allsup in Ronnie Smith and the Poor Boys. In February 1959, he was hired to replace Buddy Holly for the remainder of the Winter Dance Party tour. He fronted the band now composed of Jennings, Bunch, and Allsup. When the tour ended the band continued to record as the Jitters due to an injunction concerning the rights to the name the Crickets. In 1962, Smith was committed to a Texas state hospital for drug abuse. On October 25, 1962, a despondent Ronnie Smith hanged himself in the bathroom of the state hospital.

  The original Crickets, Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, and Sonny Curtis, continued as a group and brought in seventeen-year-old David Box to replace Buddy Holly. Box was born and raised in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and joined the Crickets in 1960. His first two recordings with the Crickets were “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Don’tcha Know.” Neither song was successful on the charts and in a few years Box left the Crickets to follow a solo career. David Box proved to be a regional success with one single, “Summer Girl,” doing well in the local Texas markets.

  On October 23, 1964, David Box hired a Cessna Skyhawk 172 to fly to a show in Harris County, Texas. He, drummer Bill Daniels, who was also the pilot, and guitarist Buddy Groves left immediately after the show to fly back to their homes in Houston. Shortly after takeoff, the Cessna nosedived into the ground, killing all three passengers in yet another case of terrifying rock-and-roll déjà vu. Sadly, Box was scheduled to be in Nashville, Tennessee, to cut his next single on October 24. He was upbeat about his career and it appeared that he was poised to make a name for himself on the national stage. Box’s parents met with Buddy Holly’s parents a few days after the crash. Buddy’s father remarked, “People will tell you the pain eventually goes away, but I can tell you now that it never does.”9 Besides his perishing in a plane crash, there was one more similarity to Buddy Holly. David Box was twenty-two years of age when he died—the exact same age as Buddy Holly at the time of his own untimely death.

  Fate continued to play its dark hand when Bobby Fuller and the Bobby Fuller Four emerged from Texas in the early 1960s. Fuller admired Holly’s work and had modeled his sound after that of Buddy and the Crickets. Buddy’s parents had received a demo from Fuller and sent the tape to Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico. Petty had worked as Buddy’s producer and had gained songwriting credits for a number of Buddy Holly’s songs.

  At the time of Buddy’s death, he and Petty had dissolved their business ties, but there were many accounts of Norman Petty hiding vast sums of Holly’s money. Some of Buddy’s friends go as far as accusing Petty of being responsible for Buddy’s death. If Norman Petty had paid Buddy the money he owed him, then Buddy would not have been forced to go on the Winter Dance Party tour. Petty produced two tracks for Bobby Fuller, “Gently My Love” and “My Heart Jumped.” Both tracks were regional successes, but national attention did not come easy for the Bobby Fuller Four.

  Fuller attempted to make his sound more up to date by writing songs about surfing and drag racing. If the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean could sell records by this set formula, then surely there would be some success in it for Fuller as well. All he needed was a hit song that would allow him to break into the pop charts. In 1963, Fuller moved his band to Hollywood, where Bob Keane of Del-Fi Records signed the band immediately after personally witnessing an intense performance in a local club.

  In 1965, Crickets guitarist Sonny Curtis provided Fuller with the song that would change Bobby’s luck and fortune, “I Fought the Law.” The Crickets had tried a recording of the same song earlier but their performance was nothing compared to the fiery treatment that Bobby Fuller put on vinyl. The Hollyesque rocker conjured forth images of prime Buddy Holly in all his glory.

  By returning to his roots, the rock of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, Fuller at last had his hit song, and “I Fought the Law” made its way into the top ten. But his career was about to come crashing down around him in what has become one of rock’s greatest unsolved mysteries. The tragic comparisons to Holly continued throughout his short-lived career. It took a song by the Crickets to break Fuller to the national stage. The last song Bobby Fuller recorded was “Love’s Made a Fool of You,” which ironically was written by Buddy Holly. Other haunting similarities to Holly included Fuller being contacted by Norman Petty to return to Clovis and continue his career under Petty’s guidance, much in the same way as Buddy had been contacted by Petty to return and work out their differences. Bob Keane had also been Ritchie Valens’s manager, and this helped form a connection to that terrible night in early February. Bobby Fuller, like Holly, had just broken with his backing band and was putting together a solo career. Another striking comparison was that Bobby Fuller would also die at the age of twenty-two—just like Buddy.

  At 1:00 A.M., in the early morning hours of July 18, 1966, Fuller received a phone call at his Hollywood apartment that he shared with his mother. He left after receiving the call and told his mother that he would be right back. He had just purchased a new Corvette but on this night he drove his mother’s white Olds-mobile.

  When Fuller didn’t return to the apartment by the next morning, his now worried mother asked the band’s road manager to look for the car. At approximately 5:00 P.M. the car mysteriously appeared in the driveway. When she went to the car to check on her son she found his body lying across the seat. He had been badly beaten. Blood was caked on his shirt and there was a small pool of blood on the floor. His hair was matted and his body and clothes were soaked in gasoline. Gasoline was also found in his stomach. Bob Keane said that when he arrived on the scene he witnessed a police office take a gasoline can from the backseat of the Oldsmobile and throw it meaninglessly into a Dumpster. Incredibly, said Keane, no foul play was suspected. The car was not dusted for fingerprints nor was it impounded. Bob Keane was told that it was just another rocker who had OD’d. Bobby Fuller’s death was listed as a suicide by the Hollywood police department.

  Of course, as with Buddy Holly’s death, many rumors have circulated about the death of Bobby Fuller. The predominant theory had Fuller as a victim of a gangland slaying. It seemed that Bobby had a romantic interest in a young lady who was also dating a major underworld figure. For this youthful indiscretion Bobby Fuller was said to have paid with his life, and his last recorded song hauntingly stated the double irony that indeed “Love’s Made a Fool of You.”

  Throughout the years following Bobby Fuller’s death, other artists have fallen victim to the so-called Buddy Holly Curse. In 1977, Hollywood finally brought the life and career of Buddy Holly to the motion picture screen. The film was entitled The Buddy Holly Story and starred a thirty-three-year-old Gary Busey as Buddy Holly, but it contained a great many distortions. First there was no mention at all of Norman Petty, nor of the original Crickets Jerry Allison and Joe B. Mauldin. In the movie Buddy’s parents discouraged his desire to play rock and roll; however, in reality, nothing could have been further from the truth. Buddy’s parents wholeheartedly endorsed his love of music and encouraged him to follow his dreams.

  Other inaccuracies suggested that Buddy could read and write music charts, that his recordings took place in New York instead of Clovis, New Mexico, and that on the Winter Dance Party Buddy was backed by an orchestra. Sadly, the roles of Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup were left out of the film as well. In another surprise Gary Busey did his own singing in the film and refused to lip sync to the early Holly recordings. A sound-track album was released following the film’s debut. The sound-track didn’t sell well but Holly’s original recordings gained new sales as a new audience discovered the West Texas rocker from Lubbock. But Busey’s performance was captivating and the actor was nominated for an Oscar.

  The film, however, was not exempt from the Holly tragedy. Gary Busey was almost fatally injured in a motorcycle accident following the completion of the film, and Robert Gittler, who wrote the screenplay, committed suicide shortly before the film’s theatrical release.

  Buddy Holly was still extremely popular in England in
the late 1970s. In this case it would only seem natural that if a curse existed it would also find more victims across the Atlantic. The death of T. Rex founder Marc Bolan contained another Holly similarity. Bolan died in a terrible car crash on September 16, 1977. As investigators searched through the rubble, they noticed a peculiar pin. Its message was “Everyday is a Holly day.”10 Unfortunately Bolan, like Holly, achieved the bulk of his success posthumously.

  Malicious fate struck a second time and claimed rock and roll’s original madman, Keith Moon. Moon, the Who’s drummer, had attended the London premiere of The Buddy Holly Story with Paul and Linda McCartney on the night of September 6, 1978. As he and his companion, Annette Walter-Lax, returned to Harry Nilsson’s flat in Mayfair, Keith took a handful of sleeping pills along with a sedative called Heminevrin. The sedative had been prescribed for Moon for his bouts with alcoholism and mania.

  When he awoke early the next morning at 7:30 A.M., he fixed himself something to eat, drank some champagne, and took a few more Heminevrin. In a few short hours Keith Moon was dead. He was pronounced dead on September 7, 1978. The strange Holly connection was that September 7 was Buddy Holly’s birthday. Earlier that year, on February 3, 1978, the nineteenth anniversary of Holly’s tragic death, the city of Lubbock, Texas, condemned for demolition Buddy Holly’s birth-place. Many of Holly’s die-hard fans demanded that the house be bought, restored, and made into a Buddy Holly museum. Buddy’s mother, however, objected to the plan to restore the early family home and without her support the campaign to save the house was forgotten. What is strange is that the house was never demolished. The house was bought and moved from the foundation. I suppose the ultimate Holly mystery is where the Holly home is now, with its peculiar playing-card window shutters? The mystery continues.