BUDDY HOLLY Vinyl Records and CDs

... joy ("Peggy Sue," "Rave On," "Every Day"), but straightforward pain is curiously absent from much of his work. Holly is much more likely to manifest an adult bewilderment, as he did in one of his last compositions, "Peggy Sue Got Married." Critic Jonathan Cott would later point to that song as prefiguring folk rock and the Beatles' Rubber Soul -- six years before their advent. Holly's death is all the more tragic given what we now know about the business pressures that led him to join the poorly managed Winter Dance Party tour of early '59. His legend has been burnished by the horrible results -- Bob Dylan has testified to a sort of metaphysical passing of the baton during a show he attended -- but that alone hardly explains the ongoing love for the tough, innocent sounds Holly left behind. The Beatles, Stones and Hollies (wink, wink) all took major inspiration from him, as did later generations of Bruce Springsteens, Elvis Costellos and the participants in several tribute albums and countless cover versions. But one only has to put on a recording by the man himself to feel that, as the old slogan goes, Buddy Holly lives.