Best Buddy Holly Song

I quite like some of those overdubs

Same here. The two-cd, 50-track The Buddy Holly Collection from 1993 used the versions with the Fireballs' overdubs, and I think they made the right call. That set is still probably the best Buddy Holly collection you can find in terms of cost (very cheap now), consistency and overall quality. If you want more, you might as well spring for the complete box set.

That seems to have been re-released (with the same tracks) as Buddy Holly Gold, which was the first CD of his I heard.

UME's Gold series is kind of weird because most of those simply repackage previous two-CD compilations, but with different (usually much less) artwork. It looks like a lame money-saving repackaging scheme where they slap the same art template on to every release.

Here's the performance of "Oh Boy!" where Ed Sullivan supposedly ordered Buddy's amp turned down and then called him "Buddy Hollit" when introducing him. Despite that, Buddy's pissed-off, raspy vocal is so satisfying -- his shout just before the solo is very punk rock, as is the (silent) solo itself, which lasts all of about eight seconds but foreshadows Pete Townshend and Johnny Ramone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIOy9WcxU0

My dad had the 20 Golden Greats LP, the one with the "Buddy Holly Lives" cover, and I used to play the hell out of it as a kid. I always felt the overdubbed stuff (which I like) fit in perfectly.

xp That performance is so cool! I had never seen it.

I had the Buddy Holly Gold album and listened to it a lot as a kid, so a lot of his songs are permanently engraved on my brain, but in a sort of context-free way. I really had no sense of what he was like as a performer.

Yeah, love that performance. Makes me miss Holly even more, or rather what he would've been like had he been around longer.

My dad had the 20 Golden Greats LP, the one with the "Buddy Holly Lives" cover, and I used to play the hell out of it as a kid. I always felt the overdubbed stuff (which I like) fit in perfectly.

That's still a great LP. It's been superseded by better-sounding and more extensive collections, but it still holds up as a really great 20-track overview.

Jerry Allison has died per the official social media accounts of the Buddy Holly estate. He was the last surviving member of the Crickets.

("Peggy Sue" was named after his future wife - she passed away in 2018.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qQzuvfvBdE

Never noticed this before, but Allison's playing with the bottom end of his left stick.

https://scottkfish.com/2015/12/29/jerry-allison-keep-everything-relatively-simple/

excerpts from interview with Jerry Allison.

Jerry Allison: Well, I started playing drums in the school band in the fifth gradde. I started studying music and the rudiments an the regular drumming deal, going through, like, band and high school band and all that.

The kind of music I liked was like Little Richard and Fats Domino. So that about wraps it up, I guess. (laughs)

No. Really, I took drum lessons and learned to read music and all that sort of thing. Couldn’t get much rock ‘n roll around Lubbock, Texas. But when it started happening I really enjoyed it and tried to play like Little Richard’s drummer, Earl Palmer. I think I played a lot of that stuff. He’s a good friend of mine. We play together a lot in L.A. when I use to live out there. I use to do a lot of sessions with him out there.

SKF: I was noticing [on Little Richard and Fats Domino records] the bass drum work he [Earl Palmer] did on those records.

JA: Yeah. He did great.

SKF: Little Richard and Earl Palmer were only a few years ahead of you guys. Almost contemporaries.

JA: Yeah.

SKF: They were about three or four years ahead of you?

JA: Maybe not even that much. Maybe just a couple. When we first went on the road we were doing shows with Little Richard. And Earl Palmer wasn’t on the road with him at that time. There was a guy named Cornelius Coleman that played on the road with Fats Domino. We were on the road with them the first tour we dd. Fats Domino’s band. I liked the way he played real well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEh2rAj_9IU

1958 "Real Wild Child" with Jerry Ivan Allison on vocals backed by the Crickets