GIANT
1. Peggy Sue Got Married
2. Slippin' And Slidin' I
3. Smokey Joe's Cafe
4. Dearest
5. Crying, Waiting, Hoping
6. Holly In The Hills
7. You're The One
8. Slippin' And Slidin' II
9. Wait 'Till The Sun Shines, Nellie
10. What To Do
11. Love Is Strange
12. That Makes It Tough
13. Learning The Game
14. That's What They Say
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Hello! This is an album of Buddy Holly's final recordings, made in the weeks before his sudden death in a plane crash in early 1959. In order to make demos for what would presumably be his fourth studio album, he obtained a nice tape recorder and proceeded to record a number of solo (i.e., voice and guitar) performances in his apartment. A little background noise can occasionally be heard, such as clattering dishes or running tap water, but it is otherwise a charmingly intimate set of recordings. Although it was put down around the same time, "You're The One," however, was made at a radio station for a challenge to see if Buddy could write and record a song within an hour. Waylon Jennings, among others, features on handclap duty. All in all, "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," "You're The One," "What To Do," "That Makes It Tough," "Learning The Game," "That's What They Say," and the unnamed instrumental that I titled "Holly In The Hills" (after a compilation from the 1960s) were all composed by Holly, while the rest are covers (of which "Nellie" was apparently done at his mother's request). All tracks here are sourced from Not Fade Away: The Complete Studio Recordings And More (2008), except for "You're The One" which comes from 2009's Memorial Collection.
These originals, barring the instrumental, were all overdubbed shortly after his passing by Jack Hansen and released on his second posthumous album, The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 (1960). Most were overdubbed again and released over the course of the 1960s by the New Mexico band the Fireballs, and it was only in the decades after that when Buddy's original raw recordings were gradually released. Since these demos are more artistically authentic to Buddy Holly than the overdubbed versions are, and the former also more than enough on their own without any extra musical backing, I wanted to create an entire album of these intimate demos which would complement the three albums from his lifetime as well as my already-posted collection of his final studio recordings, Reminiscing. As always, tremendous care was put into the song sequencing; for example, the slightly lower fidelity "You're The One" follows the aforementioned instrumental in order to mask the drop in sound quality. Taking it from one of the Fireballs compilations that came out after he died, the cover art and title of this collection were chosen in order to contrast these up-close-and-personal performances with his retrospectively posthumous larger-than-life stature. My personal favourite of the songs is most likely "Dearest," which has made me tear up a few times by its simple, caring honesty. It is perhaps that dimension that the intimacy of these recordings most clearly shows. So, with all of that said, happy listening!!
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