Buddy Holly – Peggy Sue

It is one of Buddy Holly’s best-known singles, built on a simple idea and a drum beat you can’t miss. The song moves fast, with Holly’s voice staying calm but urgent. This song is one of those records that feels like it was cut in one take, even if it wasn’t. It hits fast, and it doesn’t waste a second getting to the point.

Holly wrote this about Peggy Sue Gerron, who was dating Holly’s drummer with The Crickets, Jerry Allison. Holly was not involved with Peggy Sue but liked the name for the song. Allison and Peggy Sue eventually got married but divorced nine years later. At first, Holly was going to call this “Cindy Lou.” Jerry Allison asked if the name could be changed as a favor to him. It probably wouldn’t be heard outside of Lubbock, Texas, anyway, and it would really mean some brownie points for Jerry. Buddy had no problem with the name change.

The song peaked at #3 in the US, #6 in the UK, and #4 in Canada. Peggy Sue was written by Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Norman Petty, and originally performed, recorded, and released as a single by Holly in early July of 1957. It started out with a cha-cha beat, but Allison couldn’t get it right. He reverted to a warm-up drill he did with the high school band, and Holly changed the guitar around, and it worked. Buddy wrote a sequel to this song that I covered a few years ago called  Peggy Sue Got Married. Peggy Sue passed away in 2018.

A little trivia: On September 8, 2001, 48,000 people in Lubbock, Texas, tried to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by singing this at the Texas Tech-New Mexico football game. Horn-rimmed glasses like Holly used to wear were distributed to get them in the mood. The day before the game is when Holly would have turned 65. From the info I’ve looked up…they did it.

Peggy Sue

If you knew Peggy Sue
Then you’d know why I feel blue without Peggy
My Peggy Sue
Oh well, I love you gal, yes, I love you Peggy Sue

Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue
Oh how my heart yearns for you
Oh Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh well, I love you gal, yes, I love you Peggy Sue

Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue
Oh Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh well, I love you gal and I need you Peggy Sue

I love you Peggy Sue
With a love so rare and true
Oh Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Well I love you gal, I want you Peggy Sue

Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue
Oh Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh well, I love you gal yes I need you Peggy Sue

I love you Peggy Sue
With a love so rare and true
Oh Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh well I love you gal, and I want you Peggy Sue
Oh well, I love you gal and I want you Peggy Sue

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

37 thoughts on “Buddy Holly – Peggy Sue”

  3. Classic tune…and now I know the backstory as to who Peggy Sue was. I forgot the Texas Tech fans went for that Guinness Record. Apparently, that was part of a four-day symposium in Lubbock honoring Holly’s life. Nice to see a singer so honored years after his passing, Max…like he is here today!

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  5. Pingback: Buddy Holly – Peggy Sue – MobsterTiger

  6. That’s a great story about the recording and a reminder of how many things were done on the fly back then. I am a pretty big fan so I thought… but I don’t really recall the singing of the song at a football game!

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  10. Great song, Max as it was nice hearing this again. Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley, but his name was misspelled as ‘Holly’ on his first record contract, and he liked it that way.  Cindy Lou was Holly’s niece, Cindy Lou Kaiter, the daughter of his sister Pat Holley Kaiter.  In the mid-Fifties while Peggy Sue Gerron was still a high school student at Lubbock High she met Holly, well actually their first encounter occurred when Holly was running late for a gig, and he accidentally knocked her over.  Peggy Sue said, “He ran over to me, guitar in one hand, amp in the other, and said, ‘I don’t have time to pick you up, but you sure are pretty’, before he ran off”.  Another girl helped her pick up her books and told her that was Buddy Holly.  Several weeks later, Gerron was on a date with Crickets drummer Jerry Allison, when they ran into Holly and his date.  When Holly started laughing, Jerry asked him what was so funny, and he said, “I’ve already overwhelmed your girl.” 

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  15. I cannot believe I once had the original 45 in my hand when I was in 10th grade. that Blue Suede Shoes (which had 4 songs on it) and Dream Baby and I left them in our collection at our High School Radio Club when I graduated….grrrrr if I knew then?

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      1. funny thing is I borrowed/stole all three from an uncle who was in his late 30th when I was a pre-teen….hopefully someone that appreciates them now has them….when I volunteered at that radio club in one of the first batch of 45s we received as a donation from a local radio station was the first single Kiss released, I cannot for the life of me remember the a side, the b side was the Theme from Kiss……

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  16. Our lead guitarist, the late John Payne, was a Lubbock boy and could sing like Buddy, so we did most of his hit tunes, except for True Love Ways; we didn’t have the strings for that one. He met Buddy’s parents back in the late 60s and became sort of friends with them. A bandmate of his, named Wemus, in The Fabulous Sensations knew them, or claimed to, but the meeting did take place, although a bit awkward. I also had the original 45, but it was long lost during some move, or I lent it to a buddy and never got it back. My late, late, late cousin, Cookie, burned up her record player with this song and Return To Sender. I think it was one from Sears or Wards, but she ruined the motor, and that sent her off the deep end of life, then became a Beatnik for a while, then, moved to L.A. in the late 50s, became a hippie chick in the mid 60s, had a fling with Warren Zevon and a few other musicians who hung around on the Sunset Strip. Her brain was a bit fried when she returned to Texas in the mid-70s, so I’m not certain how much of what she told me was true, which is why I’m hesitant to write about her more than I have already. If you’re a rock band in Texas, you had better know at least two Buddy Holly tunes or your out the door with no pay.

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