The Crickets/Buddy Holly - The Chirping Crickets/Buddy Holly

Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All time — No. 420/500

Plus Buddy in his solo album debut! Two albums — 24 tracks — on one Hybrid Mono SACD!

Country, rockabillly and R&B fused into epochal rock 'n' roll

Remastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analog master tapes!

"The variety in Holly's first two albums reveal why he's an icon of American popular music. There's no self pity or pathos in his voice, just an unmistable clear tone and that wild hiccup. Almost every cut has some striking characteristic, like the wordless, swaying harmonies in 'Words of Love.' He walks between raw rock 'n' roll and a polished pop sound, and even in his most sentimental songs he's believable. Keven Gray mastered this mono SACD (preceeded by last year's LP versions) from the original master tapes and, due to the limitations of the sources, did as good as could be expected. Erick Labson's 2004 remasters for Geffen are too compressed and bright, and the bass is artificially prominent. Steve Hoffman stayed faithful to the first-generation masters he used for his 1985 compilation on MCA, From the Original Master Tapes. Though it's not a track-for-track match, I mention it because it's held in high regard by collectors, and the SACD bests it with a more spacious soundstage. I have an early pressing of Coral's 1959 The Buddy Holly Story, and the SACD is equally well-balanced while offering even better vocal presence." — Music = 4/5; Sonics = 3.5/5 — Stephen Estep, The Absolute Sound, May-June 2018.

"Amazing largesse from the label: Chad Kassem says the albums had too-short running times to issue as separate SACDs, so he created the most desirable two-on-one rock 'n' roll SACD ever. This is the essence of Buddy Holly and The Crickets, two of the three albums released during his lifetime and containing 'Oh Boy!,' 'Not Fade Away,' 'Rave On,' 'Words Of Love,' 'That'll Be The Day,' 'I'm Gonna Love You Too,' 'Everyday' and 17 others that didn't just inspire but empowered the entire British Invasion, from The Beatles to The Hollies to The Searchers to The Stones. This pair of milestones from 1957-8 is as responsible as any body of work for shaping the path music followed from then onwards. Utterly magnificent." — Sound Quality: 95% — Ken Kessler, Hi Fi News, April 2018

This is a musical duo to be reckoned with. For this Hybrid SACD we've included two of the greatest albums in the Buddy Holly canon for a can't-miss package for rock 'n' roll history buffs and music fans of all stripes.

One of rock's greatest albums is the debut album by the Crickets and the only one featuring Buddy Holly released during his lifetime. The Chirping Crickets contains the group's number one single "That'll Be the Day" and its Top Ten hit "Oh, Boy!." Other Crickets classics include "Not Fade Away," "Maybe Baby," and "I'm Looking for Someone to Love."

Three months after the release of The Chirping Crickets came the self-titled 1958 classic. It was Buddy's last album released prior to the plane crash in Iowa that struck him down in 1959 at age 22. The album Buddy Holly features the Top Ten smash "Peggy Sue" plus several songs that went on to be standards: "I'm Gonna Love You Too," "Listen To Me," "Everyday," "Words of Love," and "Rave On."

These are among the best rock 'n' roll songs of the 1950s or ever, making this SACD a collectible of truly historic and memorable tunes — "ranking with Elvis Presley and Meet the Beatles," writes AllMusic.

Born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, Holly was nicknamed "Buddy" by his mother. She felt that his given name was too big for her little boy. "Holly," the altered form of his last name, would later result from a misspelling in his first recording contract. Holly learned to play piano and fiddle at an early age, while his older brothers taught him the basics of guitar.

In early 1956, Holly and his band began recording demos and singles in Nashville under the name Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes, but the group's lineup was later revised and dubbed The Crickets. Holly wrote and recorded his breakthrough hit, "That'll Be the Day," with The Crickets in 1957. The song's title and refrain are a reference to a line uttered by John Wayne in the 1956 film "The Searchers." Between August 1957 and August 1958, Holly and the Crickets charted seven different Top 40 singles.

Composer and singer John Fogerty, of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame, inducted Buddy Holly into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame at the 1986 Hall of Fame induction ceremony. What Buddy Holly meant to him, Fogerty said, was destiny calling. Fogerty, 12, bought "That'll Be The Day" and soon began dreaming of forming his own combo, like the group of musicians — The Crickets — he saw on the album cover. And in Liverpool, England, "the same thing was going on with four other guys. They named their group The Beatles, because Buddy Holly's group was called The Crickets.

"We are, each of us, made up of the people we love and the people we admire," Fogerty, said. "We take those reflections, and hopefully, grow."

Holly's talented life was cut short in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959, that also claimed the lives of Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. This SACD is a tribute to what was, and what might have been a lengthy pioneering musical career.

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