ABOUT
THE SHOW

SYNOPSIS

The action takes place in Lubbock (Texas), Clovis (New Mexico), New York City and Clear Lake (Iowa), between January 1956 and February 1959.

Starting out as a Country & Western singer in Lubbock, Texas, Buddy and his two friends Joe and Jerry form ‘The Crickets’, and with the support of a local radio DJ, ‘Hipockets’ Duncan, they begin to carve out a career in music.

After an inauspicious start at Decca Records in Nashville, Buddy and the Crickets sign a contract with up-and-coming and innovative record producer, Norman Petty. Within hours of meeting they start to experiment musically, and record a number of songs including Buddy’s biggest hit ‘That’ll Be The Day’ which will rocket up the charts to number one in a matter of weeks. Buddy Holly & the Crickets suddenly become the hottest act in the country.

Now successful, the Crickets travel to New York, where they perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, becoming the first white act to do so (having been mistakenly booked as a black act!), ultimately winning over the notoriously tough to please Apollo crowd. In New York, Buddy meets and proposes to Maria Elena Santiago, the Puerto Rican receptionist of his music publisher, after a courtship which takes all of five hours! Newly married and ambitious, Buddy completely shifts his focus to New York and an inevitable rift develops between him and the Crickets. After a declaration of home truths during a recording session back in Clovis, the band split and Buddy unexpectedly finds himself having to pursue a solo career.

Following the break from Norman and the Crickets, Buddy joins the ‘Winter Dance Party’ of 1959, a tour travelling by bus through the Midwest, quenching the teenage thirst for the ‘new music called Rock & Roll’. The tour, in extreme wintry conditions, is hard work and the performers are alternating between sleeping in the luggage racks and dropping into hospital to be treated for frostbite.

Here, on February 2nd, 1959, Buddy’s final performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, along with Ritchie Valens (‘La Bamba’) and the ‘Big Bopper’ J.P. Richardson (‘Chantilly Lace’) is recreated. After the concert, during the early hours of February 3rd, Buddy breaks his promise to his pregnant wife not to fly as he and the other two headliners board a small plane and fly off into the night heading for the next tour stop in Moorhead, Minnesota, only to crash into a ploughed field shortly after take-off. There are no survivors.

The tragedy snatches away the lives of three young, dynamic musical talents – Buddy Holly (22), Ritchie Valens (17) and the Big Bopper (28) – and as the legend says (as Don McLean called it in his song ‘American Pie’), it was “the day the music died.”

Buddy Holly’s brief life has become the stuff of legend. Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story is a celebration of the life and talents of the young man with spectacles, and catches that unique mixture of innocence, determination, humour and charm that was Buddy Holly, and wraps it up into a package that has become:

“THE WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL ROCK & ROLL MUSICAL”

RUNNING TIME: 2 hours 15 mins (including 1 x 15 minute interval)
AGE RECOMMENDATION: BUDDY is suitable for ages 8-80+!