Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All time — No. 420/500

Country, rockabillly and R&B fused into epochal rock ‘n’ roll

Remastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analog master tapes!

Plating and 200-gram vinyl pressing by Quality Record Pressings!

Old-style tip-on gatefold jacket from Stoughton Printing

One of rock’s greatest albums, this is the debut album by the Crickets and the only one featuring Buddy Holly released during his lifetime. The Chirping Crickets contains the group’s number one single “That’ll Be the Day” and its Top Ten hit “Oh, Boy!.” Other Crickets classics include “Not Fade Away,” “Maybe Baby,” and “I’m Looking for Someone to Love.”

These are among the best rock ‘n’ roll songs of the 1950s or ever, making this one of the most significant album debuts in rock ‘n’ roll history — “ranking with Elvis Presley and Meet the Beatles,” writes AllMusic.

What has Analogue Productions done to kick this classic album up a notch? For starters, our version features stellar remastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. Followed by state-of-the-art plating and pressing on 200-gram heavyweight vinyl at Quality Record Pressings, maker of the world’s finest-sounding LPs. Stoughton Printing provides a sturdy old-style tip-on jacket to round out the package.

Born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, Holly was nicknamed “Buddy” by his mother. She felt that his given name was too big for her little boy. “Holly,” the altered form of his last name, would later result from a misspelling in his first recording contract. Holly learned to play piano and fiddle at an early age, while his older brothers taught him the basics of guitar.

In early 1956, Holly and his band began recording demos and singles in Nashville under the name Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes, but the group’s lineup was later revised and dubbed The Crickets. Holly wrote and recorded his breakthrough hit, “That’ll Be the Day,” with The Crickets in 1957. The song’s title and refrain are a reference to a line uttered by John Wayne in the 1956 film “The Searchers.” Between August 1957 and August 1958, Holly and the Crickets charted seven different Top 40 singles.

Composer and singer John Fogerty, of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame, inducted Buddy Holly into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame at the 1986 Hall of Fame induction ceremony. What Buddy Holly meant to him, Fogerty said, was destiny calling. Fogerty, 12, bought “That’ll Be The Day” and soon began dreaming of forming his own combo, like the group of musicians — The Crickets — he saw on the album cover. And in Liverpool, England, “the same thing was going on with four other guys. They named their group The Beatles, because Buddy Holly’s group was called The Crickets.

“We are, each of us, made up of the people we love and the people we admire,” Fogerty, said. “We take those reflections, and hopefully, grow.”

Holly’s talented life was cut short in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959, that also claimed the lives of Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. This album is a tribute to what was, and what might have been a lengthy pioneering musical career.