Song of the Week: Buddy Holly - Down The Line

I just returned from a road trip which found me clipping through the dusty West Texas town of Lubbock, Texas. The birthplace and home of none other than Buddy Holly. I've never quite really come to terms with the reality that Buddy Holly only recorded professionally for 18 months and was but 22 years old when he died. He was such a brief flash of the headlights on such a dark, dark road. My traveling companion and I struck out West from Lubbock in the heifer heavy filled morning air. We rumbled down the same dusty highway that Holly, Jerry Allison, and Larry Welborn drove in late February of 1957 as they drove to the East New Mexico dirt patch of a town of Clovis to record some of Holly's compositions. I, of course, had to stop at the Norman Petty studios where the trio of cowpokes turned nascent rockers recorded hits like That'll Be The Day, Everyday, Not Fade Away and Peggy Sue.

Today's SoTW preceded that trio's winter road trip. It was recored live at the roller hop in Lubbock in 1955 when Holly was but 18 years old. It's his original composition, Down The Line. It features fellow Lubbock Western and Bop players Bob Montgomery, Larry Welborn and Jerry Allison.