THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL MEETS THE FATHER OF ROCK AND ROLL | Elvis and Buddy Holly Meet

THE KIN OF ROCK AND ROLL is proud to display this tribute page to someone Elvis truly admired--Buddy Holly, acknowledging both their historic meeting and the contribution to music history by these two rock and roll heroes and legends. What is more, The Kin of Rock and Roll recognizes that both Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly were greatly influenced by each other's music, and that each brought his own style of country and rock to the music fold. Following are some excerpts from reported accounts of that meeting in Lubbock, Texas, when Holly was the opening act for a young, touring Elvis. Elvis was promoting his first Sun record, "That's Allright Mama." Meanwhile Holly was soonafter signed to a five-year recording contract with Decca records.

"...Holly was already growing famous by this time; he had recorded several records, been on the Ed Sullivan Show and had toured in the United States and abroad. He and Montgomery had opened for Elvis Presley’s show in Lubbock. Following the show, Holly took Griffith backstage to meet Presley. When he asked if he could kiss her, she turned him down. "I wasn't that kind of girl," she explained..." Excerpt from an interview with Echo McGuire Griffith, school sweetheart and first steady girlfriend of Buddy Holly, entitled " ENMU Grad Dated Buddy Holly (Turned Down Kiss from Elvis)Date: 9/27/2007 Reporter: Erin Griffith," for the Eastern New Mexico University Alumna Assoc.

"...While working around Lubbock with his next partner Bob Montgomery (Neal had married in 1954), Holly introduced himself to Presley at Lubbock's Cotton Club in early 1955. He came away dazed that the King was so approachable and soft-spoken, a real country boy; onstage the King was greased lightning, offstage he was all shucks. The "Buddy and Bob" act opened for Elvis the next morning at a Pontiac dealership. "And when the next KDAV Sunday Party rolled around," write Goldrosen and Beecher, "Buddy was singing Elvis's songs." The next time Presley came through town, Holly and Montgomery met him outside Lubbock and gave him the tour: Elvis and Buddy, just two hicks cruising town..." Taken from an excerpt of "Buddy Holly-Learning the Game," by Tim Riley, Oct. 2006


From the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas, the following excerpt is taken from his biography:

"Elvis --And Rock 'N Roll!

{<<Buddy Holly and his famous black rimmed glasses}

"If there was a single influence that indelibly shaped Buddy Holly's life and music, it was Elvis Presley. By the time Elvis first barnstormed through Lubbock in early 1955, Buddy and Bob (along with Larry Welborn) were starring on their own Buddy & Bob Show on Lubbock's KDAV radio Sunday Party. They were also opening shows for the big country acts at the Fair Park Coliseum and local clubs.

The boys were familiar with Presley's early Sun Records That's Alright Mama and Good Rockin' Tonight, as well as black rhythm and blues picked up from powerful late night radio stations in Memphis and Shreveport. But seeing "The Hillbilly Cat" in person at Fair Park Coliseum and the Cotton Club was something else. "Presley just blew Buddy away," recalls Sonny Curtis. "None of us had ever seen anything like Elvis, the way he could get the girls jumping up and down, and that definitely impressed Holly. But it was the music that really turned Buddy around. He loved Presley's rhythm --it wasn't country and it wasn't blues --it was somewhere in the middle and it suited just fine. After seeing Elvis, Buddy had only one way to go." Buddy himself would later tell Billboard columnist Ren Grevatt that "without Elvis Presley none of us would have made it." Rock 'n roll had taken hold of Buddy Holly -- and vice versa."

Buddy Holly died tragically in a plane crash on 3 February 1959, along with the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Richie Valens. His career had only begun.

Elvis was in the army when news of Holly's death was announced. Like the rest of the nation, Elvis felt deeply saddened by the news and understood that rock and roll had lost a great friend and three budding inspirations.

Elvis had Col. Parker send beautiful floral wreaths to the four separate funerals.. To the left is the very wreath sent by Elvis and the Colonel as it appeared at the wake of J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper. Elvis had similar wreaths sent to Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and to the funeral of the pilot, Roger Peterson, he had sent yellow roses. The loss of these young musician's lives to a plane crash, and the loss of Patsy Cline, who Elvis also knew, played a strong factor in Elvis' fear of flying. Flying had always made him wary, and not until he bought his own jets and had his own personal pilot, did he feel the more comfortable traveling across the skies.

Please join The Kin of Rock and Roll in remembering another rock and roll legend. Elvis would encourage it for he was the first to give credit to others for their contributions to the music world.


Elvis once said, "Looking back over the last 20 years, I guess the guy I've admired most in rock and roll is Buddy Holly."