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Buddy Holly produced some of the most influential work in rock music before he died at 22 in 1959.
Buddy Holly produced some of the most influential work in rock music before he died at 22 in 1959.
November 7, 2003 - In October 1958, Buddy Holly, then a rising 22-year-old rock 'n' roll star, went into the recording studio. He had an orchestra with him for these sessions, and two of the songs — "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" and "True Love Ways" — became hits after his death in a plane crash four months later.
Those recordings have become known as Holly's last. For many fans, they were a signal that he was turning away from rock 'n' roll and embracing more mainstream pop music.
But the October 1958 sessions were not his final recordings. Holly made another set of tapes in the living room of his New York apartment just weeks before he died. Buddy Holly fan Dale Lawrence, who has heard these still-unreleased songs, tells their tale. Lawrence says the living-room recordings come across as perhaps the strongest — certainly the most personal — music of Holly's career.
Click the "Listen Now" link above to hear about Buddy Holly's apartment tapes.
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