I'm sure it's hard, but pick one guys.
I vote for "Rock Around with Ollie Vee".

'lonesome tears' is my pick.

Hmmm, this is hard. I guess I'll say Maybe Baby, my girlfriend's favorite is Everyday.

My vote goes to Rave On, Oh Boy, or Lonesome Tears. I think it was Rave On that was my favorite first though.

I must be selecting very common song but there is something about Peggy Sue Got Married that makes me love that song. But it is very hard to just select one. I love Well Alright also a lot. I am surprised that 2 people selected Lone some Tears!

maybe baby, early in the morning...to name just a few

i also love words of love, well allright, rave on true love ways, not fade away, & peggy sue...there all good, but these are some of my top favs

I have two favorites~ Rave On and Looking For Someone to love

Well high all, this is my first post on this message board. I am a British Buddy tribute act, Great fun !!! From my experience so far songs like Oh Boy, Peggy Sue, Rave On, Everyday and That’ll Be the day are requested a lot but to be honest I could add at least another 10 songs to that list. Add that to all the slow numbers that never fail and you have quiet a list.
A legend by the age of 22, Wow. What a guy with such a pure talent,
The other thing I would like to add is that there are a lot of young people in the UK that are getting into Buddy in a big way. As well as myself there are a few young Buddy tribute acts that have emerged over the past year or so that are very professional . Buddy’s Legend is growing not fading.

My favoured two songs are
1 Raining In My Heart
2 Blue Days Black Nights
With the fact that Buddy was firstly very excited by and secondly Promoting Raining in my heart on that faithful night in Clear Lake. Means that it makes it extra special song to me.

Buddy Holly “ Not Fade Away”
Ian T

quote:

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Originally posted by Ian T:
My favoured two songs are
1 Raining In My Heart
2 Blue Days Black Nights

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Blue Days, Black Nights needs to be added to my faves too. That song is fabulous!

^ cool pic of the man

not fade away has to be my very favorite

It's funny how so many of Buddy's songs can so easily double as casual conversation. "His influence will not fade away" "Rave On" "Oh Boy" "You know, it's so easy to..." "I'll just pretend to" "It's Too Late" "Maybe Baby', well, you get the point. I could go on for days, and this reply could be miles long, because when it comes down to it, pretty much every song fits into some sort of conversation, and not necessarily a love conversation either. The reason I wrote this was the mention of not fade away. It's not my particular favorite, but I find it very ironic that it's so true of his life. Oh boy. Now I'm rambling.

It cool buddy_blue. Despite my name, I tend to ramble as well. I just noticed that you are from Calgary. I have a friend who used to live there. Nice place from what I hear. Anyway, just thought I would share...back to conversation.

As a 28 year old my personal favourite is True Love Ways however Its So Easy is close but miss listening to it as some nice person put it on permanent loan

My favourite is "Think it over"! Isn't it cool: "Think it over in your pretty little head! Are you sure that I am not the one..." I also love "Well all right" and "Heartbeat"
Chris

i would have to say my all time favorite buddy holly song is " rave on "....if i were explaining what rock and roll was to a person that didn't know what rock and roll was....i would play " rave on " for them....

Bruce Springsteen said he heard Rave On and he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. I couldn't of said it better.

Just reading over all of the responses to this incredibly difficult question brought tears to my eyes. I guess I would have to say that Oh Boy! is was my first favorite Buddy Holly song, but I also love True Love Ways for its genuineness (if that's even a word), as well as Heartbeat because of the perfection of his characteristic hiccup. I know I'm leaving out about a thousand songs that have completely changed the way I look at rock and roll music (I'm a relatively new Buddy Holly fan), but I feel that the songs already mentioned do him justice. It's rock and roll's greatest tragedy that his plane didn't make it to Fargo, and I can only imagine how different rock and roll would be (for the better) had he lived just a little longer than his 22 years.

my favorite song by buddy' i guess would be crying waiteing hopeing, its really hard to say for sure cause i love all of mr holly's stuff.wish he had a chance to have made more songs. but the ones he left us are greats as it is. so i guess crying waiteing hopeing would be my favorite.

I almost forgot one of the greatest songs ever written...Peggy Sue Got Married. He was so before his time. I love the way he wrote the song, as if it physically hurt him to the point that he didn't even want to believe what he was saying. It was like, he was begging you to tell him he'd heard wrong. I'm 21, and a lot of former crushes are starting to get married, and I always think of this song anytime I hear about another one of my former potential grooms getting married.

Peggy Sue Got Married was one of the famed Apartement Tapes, and it was meant to be a Christmas gift for Peggy Sue and Jerry Allison. But, due to scheduling, Buddy never got the chance to really finish the song (if he wanted to add percussion to it or anything) and the first times that Peggy Sue heard the song was after Buddy's death, and the whole story of how it was supposed to be a Christmas gift came out.
Personally, I think that Buddy did the song because he loved J.I. as a friend a lot, and doing this song as a present was a good way to show that he was glad that his friend had found someone to love.

got to be listen to me i love the sound and rawness of this song close second has to be maybe baybe

Well I know my favorite lyrics are "Gone" But since I can't find the CD to that I can't really judge it yet. But from what I can...I'll have to say Maybe Baby and Everyday.

I would have to say that Peggy Sue. Was such a great song. One that so many people could relate and embrace. But i think that had to do with the musical geniuse Buddy Holly. He was def. way before his time, or just the "one" that was the beginning.

Although Peggy Sue isn't my most favorite song, I do love Peggy Sue got Married, and I love the story behind Peggy Sue. J.I. wanted to make up with her, so he bargained with Buddy to a)change the tempo of the song and b) change the name from Cindy Lou to Peggy Sue (isn't that freaky how close the two names are? fate) Buddy said he would do it J.I.'s way if J.I. could play paradiddles all the way through the song, and that they would get the song in one take. When J.I. messed up the first time, there was a threat to change the name back, but they got it in the second take. The funny thing is that J.I.'s playing was so loud, they had to move him out into the lobby and recorded him via the intercom. I can't remember who said it, but someone said, about J.I's playing, "He had the fastest hands you ever saw, faster than even (some name of a famous drummer I can't remember either.)

My all-time favorite Holly song is "True Love Ways." The song destroys me every time I hear it (mostly because of Maria Elena's miscarriage). A man barely old enough to drink wrote that gem. Rock/pop history would have been much richer had this genius lived.

After that, I guess my fave would be "Rock Around With Ollie Vee." It is just the earliest rock track that I know of...This was the song that Buddy and company got canned for playing at the local roller-rink.

Just to digress for a moment, Elvis has his OWN channel on Sirius satellite radio. All the King, 24 hours a day. Had Holly lived...I know you all feel what I'm talking about...

Anyway, another favorite song I am gonna mention is "It Doesn't Matter Anymore."

So, thank all of you for being here...Thank God that Buddy was able to grace us with his presence at all, and if anyone wants to plan a get-together and play some awesome tunes, let me know. I can travel, and I sound just like the great man. It is actually kinda creepy.

I love Take Your Time and Raining in My Heart. I love that subtle irony that is so characteristic of his songs; makes them very hard to ever forget.

Also, I love True Love Ways too; want it played at my wedding.

I think there was something so electric and timeless in Buddy's music, it was something that most lame 1950s producers (such as Norman Petty) could never improve upon. In fact, I think slick production techniques basically buried and ruined a great deal of Buddy's best stuff. That's why I gravitate to Buddy's more "rockabilly" style garage sets, the demo tapes, etc. I swear, his early, raw material sounds a million times better than the best of the New York sessions.

Anyway... I vote for the Sonny Curtis song, "Rock Around with Ollie Vee"... The rocking version, not the Boots Randolph version... That song is magic.

Don't ever listen to Only the Love Songs album then. The cover is beautiful, with a silhouette of Buddy and his guitar, but the Picks ruin the contents of the album. To You're the One, quite possibly the least untouched recording of all the Apartement Tapes, they have added drums, background vocals, a electirc guitar, and violins. In this version, Buddy's acoustic is non-existent, and the syncopation of the handclaps is lost, as they are only heard sporatically.

As I recall, "You're the One" was recorded when Buddy paid a surprise visit to Waylon Jennings at a Lubbock radio station. That's Waylon trying to clap in time with Buddy's driving rhythm, but Buddy loses him. I've never heard any other version, and I never heard it included in Buddy's tapes from the Dakota Apartments.

Slim Corbain and Waylon Jennings are the ones who are clapping in the background, and although the two start out together, I'm not sure if it's intentional or accidental that the clapping becomes syncopated. Maybe it's not included in the Apartement Tapes, I always thought that it was, just cause it was recorded in the time that the Apartement Tapes were recorded.

quote:

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Originally posted by buddy_blue:
Don't ever listen to Only the Love Songs album then...the Picks ruin the contents of the album.

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This reminds me of something that happened about 8 years ago, when I was down in Houston, Texas, visiting my mother (who is now in her mid-70s). She started telling me about what was new at her church---a couple of elderly folks in the congregation had died, there were a few new members, and so forth. Most interesting was that one of the new church members had some association with Buddy Holly, she said.

My ears shot straight up. She said this fellow claimed to have "backed up" Buddy Holly on several songs, and the top of my head almost came off. "WHO is he, mom?" I begged, but she couldn't recall his name right off the bat---I was thinking a member of The Roses or The Fireballs, you know. Well, she was thoughtful enough to mention me to this guy ("My son is quite a Buddy Holly fan"), and he was gracious enough to sign an autograph for her, written on a paper napkin at the church lunch. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Then she presented me with the paper napkin, neatly folded, and said that it had been in her purse for a few weeks. My head was spinning. I unfolded the napkin and gaped---the blue ink had bled all across the napkin, making the guy's signature totally illegible, but near the corner was a notation "The Picks"........

Now, I have mixed feelings about The Picks. Yes, they did provide vocals for the Crickets while Buddy was alive, but they also came back and jumped on Norman Petty's bandwagon when he started seriously overdubbing (ruining) the demo tapes following Buddy's death. I was torn between asking my mom to procure another autograph from the guy, or just letting it go. I ended up acting delighted with the gift, but later I stuck it in a desk drawer at her house and left it---turned out that my lingering anger at Norman Petty outweighed my interest in the autograph from The Picks bandmember.

Am I a die-hard Buddy Holly fan or what? I still hold grudges against people I've never even met out of my loyalty to Charles Hardin. }=]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Charles Austin,

I think it was okay that the Picks and whatever outher groups provided background vocals while Buddy was alive. After his death though, it became a totally different story. During his life, I'm thinking Buddy had a bit of control over the overdubs. But after his death, and the Crickets refused to overdub on the Apartement Tapes because they were what was to be considered sacred, who was to say what or what not was too much overdubbing? All Norm Petty thought about was making another pretty penny. Now, when I listen to overdubs, I know that Buddy's genius is somewhere in there, but there's so much crap on top, to someone that has never heard anything else, they have no chance of hearing the real magic of the 50's.

I love all Buddys songs

Hi there. I'm a UK Holly fan of 42 years standing.

Let's face it hardly anything he ever recorded was less than great so it's really hard to pick one. Several favourites spring to mind:

'True Love Ways' is a beautiful song; 'Peggy Sue' must have the most instantly recogniseable beat in rock and roll history. I've a soft spot for 'Love's Made a Fool of you' which features great country rock guitar from Tommy Allsop, 'Not Fade Away' is great... The list goes on and on.

Elvis may have been the 'king' - as a performer he was unbeatable - but unlike Buddy he never wrote a song worth a damn and was nothing like the musician Buddy was. It was Holly who actually contributed more to the development of the future of rock. It was Holly and the Crickets who established that rock was a group of 3 or 4 playing guitar and drums, writing their own material and controlling the recording process.

All the great groups that followed (Beatles, Stones etc etc.) based their sucess on the pattern that Holly developed. Elvis may have inspired many but it was Buddy who showed most of those who followed how to do it!

as my 11 year old daughter said, there is one buddy song i really like dad, it is "true love ways", because it is for his wife. i couldn't say it any better. but i would add rave on, oh boy, down the line, buddy's cover of bill doggetts "honky tonk" great stuff

Honky Tonk is actually a pretty cool song, but I don't think a lot of people mention it as their favorite because it's just instrumental and not lyrical, so it's not something that immediately pops to mind when one mentions Buddy Holly. So I guess Honky Tonk should be added to my list of favorites too (well, in reality, they're all my favorites, it just depends which one is my more favorite over the others. ) I like that song because there's one part, it's easiest to hear if you're wearing headphones, though it's possible to listen on a normal stereo too, I call it the part where the guitars are "talking." Buddy plays one riff, and then I assume that it's Tommy Allup, Sonny Curtis or Niki Sullivan (one of them anyways ) that plays a riff back. However, even at this part in the music, you can still hear that there's a distinct rhythm guitar playerand lead guitar player, each person knows their place, because one riff is much longer, I don't know enough to say more complicated, than the other. Give it a listen.

I would like to add 'That's what they say' to those that have already been mentioned.

I'm Gonna Love You Too has to be his most interesting and creative song with the cool vocal overdubs and very haunting ending.