This has been one of my favourite records ever since a friend - who was a Buddy Holly fanatic - gave it a twirl on the Dansette record player in their bedroom sometime in 1963 or '64. I was never quite as mad about the speccy songster as my chum back then - especially not the pop ballad stuff, which seemed almost sacrilegiously wet - but "That'll be the Day", "Maybe Baby", "Rave On", "Oh Boy, "Not Fade Away" and "Ollie Vee" were all sublime.
When Nick Cohn's Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom was published in 1970, he was exceptionally sneery about Buddy Holly, casting doubts on his right to be considered a hairy-chested rocker. I went out and bought a compilation LP of the great man's hits after reading the book and concluded that Cohn had a tin ear. The records sounded remarkably fresh and clever and bursting with energy.
In the mid-1970s, MCA released The Nashville Sessions, an LP of Holly recordings done at Owen Bradley's renowned Quonsett Hut studio in 1956. Any lingering doubts about Holly's rocking credentials evaporated when I heard it - the LP proved he had been a stupendous rockabilly original well before the rock 'n' roll and pop hits started flooding out of him. He was 19 years old when he cut those sides, which seems ridiculous (as did the fact that Decca, the record company which paid for the recordings, and drafted in Nashville's top session players to help, didn't rate the results.)Holly made two versions of "Rock Around with Ollie Vee" - one which featured a saxophone and a "proper" guitar break. I prefer the simpler one, and that's the version I've copied here. The original record's in A, but my voice can only vaguely handle it in C, so that's the key I've chosen. I also had to slow it down slightly, because the original's so fast, I'm not sure where Holly managed to take a breath. Ah, youth!
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