The Last Days of Buddy Holly

On February 2nd, 2009, the Surf Ballroom and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party with a concert at the Surf Ballroom, MC'd by DJ Cousin Brucie Morrow and featuring, among others, Graham Nash, Bobby Vee, Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys, Joe Ely, Wanda Jackson and the Crickets. Also expected to attend will be Buddy Holly's widow, Maria Elena Holly. Maria Elena, who now lives in Dallas, met Buddy in June 1958 in New York when she was 25; they got married two months later. "I know it sounds a bit mystical, but I felt that I somehow knew Buddy from before," she says. "One day this guy comes in through the door of Peer-Southern Music, where I was working as a receptionist, and I acted very reserved — 'Can I help you?' — and he was with the Crickets and said, 'Oh, we're not in a hurry,' and then turned to them and said, 'You know what? I'm going to marry that girl.'

"He asked me out for that evening, and because I'd never even been on a date before, I had to get my Aunt Provi's permission. He took me to P.J. Clarke's saloon, and sometime during our dinner, Buddy left the table and returned with a red rose and proposed to me right then and there. I thought he was joking and said, 'Do you want to get married now or after dinner?' He said he was serious and that he was going to come to my aunt's apartment, where I was then living, at nine the next morning to ask for my hand.

"He showed up promptly at nine, got my aunt out of bed and said, 'Did Maria tell you that we're getting married?' My aunt looked at him and said, 'Are you pulling my leg?' 'No, ma'am.' 'Don't you think you should take some time and think this over?' she asked him. And Buddy said, 'No, I don't have the time.'"

After getting married in Lubbock, Buddy and Maria Elena moved back to New York and rented a $1,000-a-month one-bedroom apartment in the Brevoort, on Fifth Avenue and 9th Street, where he recorded on his Ampex home tape recorder the legendary songs now known as the "Apartment Tapes" (among them, "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and "Peggy Sue Got Married"), just released on the multi-CD sets Down the Line: Rarities and Memorial Collection.

Both night owls, Buddy and Maria Elena would often get out of bed at midnight, roll up their pajamas under their raincoats, and stroll through Greenwich Village and drop into folk and jazz clubs. And almost every morning, Buddy would take Maria Elena and his Gibson guitar to nearby Washington Square Park, where, unrecognized in his dark glasses, he would sit by the fountain and play with the young musicians and give them pointers. He'd advise them, "Look at anything you see here in the park and then write something about that — that's how you compose."

In October 2008, Maria Elena visited the Brevoort for the first time in 50 years. "I didn't think I could take it," she says. "I was weepy, but a friend took me in and announced to the doorman, 'This is Mrs. Buddy Holly.' And I know this sounds strange . . . but I felt Buddy's presence there, and I visualized him smiling and thought I heard him say, 'Finally you came for me.' Because they say that when you die, you come back to the place you left. I hadn't realized that Buddy had been waiting there for 50 years. And I've brought him home with me now."

[From Issue 1071 — February 5, 2009]

Related Stories:

• Ritchie Valens, J.P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson and Buddy Holly
• Photos: Rockers Lost Before Their Time
• More from Issue 1071