Tag: That'll Be The Day

Max Picks …songs from 1957

I usually run this on Wednesdays after the Star Trek. We finished up season 2 and we are starting the last season…season 3 tomorrow!  Thanks for visiting the third installment of Max Picks. If you missed the first or second just follow the links.

1957

Let’s start this year with two brothers with some of the best harmonies ever in Rock/Pop…The Everly Brothers. Many guitar players could get close to the intro to this song but never exactly. The reason is Don Everly was using open G tuning…what Keith Richards later learned and made a career out of it…and that’s not an exaggeration. If you tune your guitar to open G tuning…you could play over half of the Stones catalog…believe me I do. Enough of guitar talk… this song was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. This song has sheer beauty to it and also drive. I love Elvis but I’m leaving him off of this one since we featured him in the last two.

Now we get to the one…the only Pat Boone! NOT. I had to make sure you were paying attention. Now lets get to the bad boy of the fifties and all the decades that followed. He made other “bad boys” look tame. Jerry Lee Lewis was the real deal. Pure Rock and Roll that made Elvis look subtle. I can imagine he was public enemy number one with a lot of parents. Forget that though… his music is like an adrenaline rush to get up and move. The song was written by Dave “Curlee” Williams and James Faye “Roy” Hall.

I promised more Buddy Holly in the last post so I’m coming through on that promise. I could not believe the songs I could pick from in 1957. Take a look at the singles he had this year. Oh Boy, Not Fade Away, Peggy Sue, Everyday, Rock Around With Ollie Vee, and last but not least…That’ll Be The Day. That simple intro to this song is magic. I could have picked any of those songs. This song was written by Jerry Allison, Buddy Holly, and Norman Petty.

Now we have a singer who had a voice that was as smooth as silk. Sam Cooke‘s voice still gets to me. It was named as one of the 500 most important rock and roll recordings by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many artists have covered it but I’ll take Cooke’s version of it any day. It was written by the man himself.

I want to add a doo-wop vocal group because they were very popular then and this song is great. This song is called Come Go With Me by The Del-Vikings. The first time Paul and John met…John and his band The Quarrymen were playing this song with Lennon making up the words “Come and Go with me to the penitentiary” and probably some obscene words here and there. It was written by Clarence Quick.

As always…thanks for reading and listening!

Buddy Holly – That’ll Be The Day

I first heard this song by the Linda Ronstadt version. She did a great job and this was one of the first songs the Beatles covered.

The movie “The Searchers” starring John Wayne inspired this song. This song peaked at #1 in the US Hot 100, #2 in the US R&B, and #1 the UK in 1957.

Holly and bandmate Allison wrote the song. Norman Petty took a writing credit on this because he produced it. This meant Holly and Allison had to share royalties with him.

Buddy Holly and his band The Three Tunes recorded this in Nashville in 1956, but Decca records didn’t like the result and refused to release it. A year later, Holly re-recorded it with The Crickets in a studio in Clovis, New Mexico owned by his new producer, Norman Petty.

Backup vocalists were brought in and the key was lowered to fit Holly’s voice a little better. This version became a huge hit and made Holly a star that summer in 1957.

From Songfacts

Holly had been kicking around his home town in Lubbock, Texas trying to write a hit song for his small rockabilly band since he had attended an Elvis Presley gig at his High School some time in 1955. His band in those days consisted of him on lead vocals and guitar, Jerry Allison on the drums and Joe B. Maudlin on upright bass. He and Jerry decided to get together and go see The Searchers, a Western movie staring John Wayne. In the movie, Wayne keeps replying, “That’ll be the day,” every time another character in the film predicts or proclaims something will happen when he felt it was not likely to happen. The phrase stuck in Jerry’s mind, and when they were hanging out at Jerry’s house one night, Buddy looked at Jerry and said that it sure would be nice if they could record a hit song. Jerry replied with, “That’ll be the day,” imitating John Wayne in the film. 

This was Holly’s first hit, but it was credited to The Crickets, Holly’s band. They worked with two record labels, with one releasing Holly’s songs as The Crickets and the other as Buddy Holly. Both labels were subsidiaries of Decca Records.

This inspired the British 1973 movie of the same name, about a young man with dreams of becoming a rock star.

This was the first song John Lennon learned to play on guitar. American rock stars like Holly and Little Richard were a big influence on The Beatles.

The movie that inspired Holly and Allison to write this also provided the name for the British group The Searchers in 1964.

When this became a hit, Decca records released Holly’s earlier version as well.

“That’ll Be The Day” was the first song John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison recorded together. In 1958, when they were still known as the Quarrymen, they pooled their money, recorded the song at a local studio, and pressed one copy on a 78rpm disc, which they shared. The disc ended up in the possession of Duff Lowe, the piano player in group. In the early ’80s, he sold it to McCartney; it was first heard in a 1985 documentary on Buddy Holly, and was released in 1995 on the Anthology 1 collection.

Linda Ronstadt released her version as the lead single from her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind. This came at the suggestion of her producer, Peter Asher, who recorded the song completely live, just as Holly’s version was done in the days before multitracking. The song went to #11 in the US and marked a shift for Ronstadt away from country rock.

On this version, listen for the guitar solo – Waddy Wachtel played the first four bars, then Andrew Gold took over for the last four. Wachtel’s performance helped raise his profile in the Los Angeles music scene, where he soon became one of the top session players.

In the US, a version by the Everly Brothers reached #111 in 1965; Pure Prairie League took it to #106 in 1976.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq9FCBatl3A

That’ll Be The Day

Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die

Well, you give me all your loving and your turtle doving
All your hugs and kisses and your money too
Well, you know you love me baby, until you tell me, maybe
That some day, well I’ll be through

Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die

Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die

Well, when Cupid shot his dart he shot it at your heart
So if we ever part and I leave you
You sit and hold me and you tell me boldly
That some day, well I’ll be blue

Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die

Well, that’ll be the day, woo ho
That’ll be the day, woo ho
That’ll be the day, woo ho
That’ll be the day