On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly was in the middle of the tour from hell and would do anything to avoid another three hundred mile, overnight bus ride that already had inflicted frostbite on another band member.  That determination changed American popular music forever. Buddy Holly, early Brunswick Records publicity photo Charles Hardin Holley was born in Lubbock, Texas on September 7, 1936.  The “e” in his surname would be dropped when Decca Records misspelled Holley on one of his first recording contracts.  Nicknamed Buddy by his mother, as she considered “Charles,” too formal, he was the youngest of four siblings.  The family was Baptist and deeply religious, attending church routinely but singing hymns from an early age probably developed Buddy’s interest in music.  Despite Lubbock’s location in the heart of the bible belt, Holly was also intrigued by country and rhythm and blues popular tunes that were available via radio stations from larger midwestern radio stations.  By the seventh grade, he was playing with another junior high school student, Bob Montgomery, in a duet called Buddy and Bob, mostly country music covers of artists like Hank Williams. Norman Petty Studios, Clovis, New Mexico 1957 began with Buddy getting a predictable release from his Decca contract.  If you were out of Lubbock, Texas in 1957 and had just been dropped from a major label there wasn’t much of a Plan B.  The best Buddy could come up with was heading to Clovis, New Mexico and the Norman Petty Studio to pay for his own demo and hope to interest a regional industry professional, in this case Norman Petty, in getting interested in representing Holly.  Norman Petty was one of the many small time independents that operated on the fringes of 1950’s rock and roll.  Less successful than the legendary Sam Phillips of Memphis’ Sun records who discovered Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, Petty still had a reputation for recognizing performers that he plugged either to record companies or radio stations.  But in early 1957, he also was still looking to get involved with talent that would translate into national success.  That’s why, when Buddy Holly returned to Petty’s studio in January of 1957 and cut a demo, Norman recognized that Holly had greatly evolved.  He told Buddy to get some more material together, polish it up and come back in February and they would seriously concentrate on developing a single, exactly the result Holly was looking for.  When he returned to Clovis on February 24, Buddy not only had three other backing musicians, Larry Welborn, Jerry Allison and Niki Sullivan, he also had Gary and Ramona Tollett as backup singers.  Because Petty’s studio was close to a busy street with daytime noisy truck traffic, recording didn’t begin until after office hours. Petty wanted, “I’m Looking For someone To Love,” to be the “A” side of a single and when that was arduously completed over many hours, at 3 AM, it then took only four takes to record, “That’ll Be The Day.”  Subsequently, Norman Petty claimed to have greatly influenced this session, Gary Tollett maintained that Buddy already had the arrangements down and all Petty did was arrange the microphones.  Nevertheless, Petty then executed two of the more audacious moves in the history of Rock and Roll skullduggery.  The first revolved around songwriting and publishing credits.  Petty maintained that because he had provided the free use of his studio, had music connections in NY and was a known quantity in the business, his name should appear on the record as one of the songwriters.  A known quantity, he explained, is better than some unknown kids from West Texas.  He also offered to...