Record #82: Buddy Holly/The Crickets – 20 Golden Greats (1978)

There are two things worth noting right off the bat with this record: 1) while released in 1978, the songs were recorded twenty years earlier, and 2) a number of these songs were already familiar to me, despite never making a conscious effort to listen to Buddy Holly. But that’s to be expected. As the liner notes state, in eighteen months, Buddy Holly recorded nine number one singles. As a songwriter and recording musician, that’s astounding. Granted, the music industry (a pre-Beatles industry, notably) was a tad different in those days, but over fifty years on, those songs still endure, and thanks to the occasional rockabilly revival, they remain ageless. Even besides the mega-hits like Rave On, Oh, Boy! and the eternal Everyday, the material here never shows its age. In their sixth decade, they still bleed youth.

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