The man? Norman Petty.

Jim Liddane spoke with him for Songwriter Magazine

Norman Petty was born in the small town of Clovis, New Mexico, in 1927. By the time he was thirteen, he was holding down two jobs after school - as a projectionist in a local cinema, and as a pianist - playing requests over his local radio station. Both jobs, he recalls, paid about the same amount of money, but destiny was about to play its part.

"One afternoon, the announcer who, shall we say, enjoyed the  juice too much, failed to show up to read the commercials on my request programme. The lady at the desk handed me the commercials and just told me to read them. Naturally I protested but she just insisted saying that the sponsors had bought time on my show, and if the announcer was not going to turn up, then I would have  to read them. Well I did of course, and I'm sure they  sounded just terrible. Anyway, after the broadcast was over, I was informed that the station manager wanted to see me. I decided that I was about to get fired, but instead, he offered me a job as an announcer.  Well, I was making about $7 a week as a projectionist, and they offered me three, or perhaps four times that, so naturally I took it! Within a couple of months, I was a fully-fledged disc jockey. Now the station I was with was the  only one for miles around and so we naturally tried to please everybody. You might find yourself playing classical music, western swing, big band music, and what have you, throughout the one afternoon, and that was a fantastic indoctrination into the world of music as far as I was concerned. I think that it enabled me to enjoy, and play, all kinds of good music".

Later on, Norman started to play dates around Clovis with his wife Vi, who had been trained as a classical pianist, and had majored in music at The University of Oklahoma. However, things were not going so good at the radio station. Norman recalls the events with some humour .

"I think I established some sort of record with that station, in that I was fired by them three times! The third time, I decided that they were trying to tell me something! We left Clovis. and moved to Dallas where I had been offered a job playing organ on the now-defunct Liberty Network. A booking agent who had heard me play in Clovis and had offered to get us work if we ever went on the road, contacted me again, and soon we began to play country clubs, officer's clubs, hotel rooms, NCO clubs, resorts etc., in that area. I was also working as a part-time recording engineer for Jim Beck, who had a recording studio in Dallas which catered for all the big western stars like Ernest Tubb. Actually, those were really marvellous times for us: Jim Beck was really kind to Vi and myself, and of course, I was picking up valuable experience working in the studio".



In 1954, Norman Petty had his first American hit, with the standard "Mood Indigo", recorded, as Norman recalls, "in a Jackson, Michigan, hotel dining-room", and this was followed by several other hits, including his own compositions "Almost Paradise" (covered by Roger Williams and Eddie Calvert) and "The First Kiss". He decided to return to Clovis and to use some of the money from these records to set up a recording studio in his home town, primarily he calls, to record the trio who were by now, a hot recording act . . .



"We called the company NorVaJak, making up the name from Norman, Vi and Jack (Vaughn) who played guitar with the trio, but we built the studio for our own use. None of us appreciated the pressure a musician is under in a commercial studio where you keep watching the clock and realise that every extra minute you take is costing you money. Anyway, we never really advertised the studio at all, but naturally word got out that there was this studio in Clovis with excellent equipment and people started coming in and asking us to record them. Our first really big record from the studio, in 1956 - "Party Doll" sung by Buddy Knox, and of course, we also had a hit with Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Sticking By You". Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen along with a friend of theirs named Donny Lamer, came over to the studio one day. They wanted to put out a record to sell at high-school hops, and so for sheer economics, instead of doing two separate records, they decided to put out one disc with one singer on one side, and one on the othe. Later on of course, Roulette Records who picked up the rights to the recordings for national distribution, split the record, and the two sides went on to become two separate million-sellers".



As a result of the publicity which followed this double-hit, the studios began to attract more singers and instrumentalists from further afield . . . people like Trini Lopez from Dallas, Roy Orbison from Vernon, and of course - Buddy Holly and the Crickets, from Lubbock. Norman took the boys into the studios, and several months later emerged with several recordings, including "That'll Be The Day" (a million-seller for the Crickets in 1957) and "Peggy Sue" (ditto for Buddy Holly in 1958). During the early months of 1958, several more hits came out of Clovis, including "Oh Boy" and "Maybe Baby" (by the Crickets) and "Rave On" and "Listen To Me" (by Buddy Holly).

In actual fact, Buddy Holly was the lead singer on all the recordings, but Norman had arranged two separate recording contracts for the group ( a ploy later copied by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) with the result that between September 1957 and March 1959, Buddy Holly and/or The Crickets had made no less than 15 appearances in the American charts. The records by the Crickets usually made use of vocal backings and were rock-orientated, while those by Holly were probably more progressive and generally "sweeter". The most distinctive thing about them was the unusual and immediately recognisable "sound". I asked Norman about this . . .



"Our sound was special Some have said it was the guitar sound, while others have felt that the drum sounds from the studio were unique. However, the "sounds" used on the different songs usually "caused" one song or the other, to be designated as a record for release under the name "Buddy Holly" or under the name "The Crickets". We did not consciously decide these things in advance".

Throughout 1958, Norman Petty was a busy man. Holly had asked him to act as his personal manager after "That'll Be The Day" started to break, and although the Petty Trio was still undertaking personal appearances across the country, he now found himself travelling to Australia and Britain with his protégées. Indeed the pace became so hectic that one urgent recording session had to be fixed for an Oklahoma Air Force Base (where the trio was performing), so that Holly and his group (who were on an equally gruelling tour) could meet up with Petty and his truck-load of recording equipment, and cut some follow-up tracks. One of them was the emotive "Maybe Baby" - a Gold Disc for The Crickets. In the summer of 1958, Holly cut his first record without the Crickets. Norman recalls the events surrounding this decision . . .

"Buddy and myself were in New York on a promotional tour and I was sitting in the office of one of Decca's top promotion executives and he told me this story about Bobby Darin. Bobby was under contract to Atlantic but his contract was about to expire and he believed that it might not be renewed. Therefore, in order to have something going for him as it were, he had recorded a song he had written called "Early In The Morning", under an assumed name, and Decca had put it out. In fact, it was already beginning to sell.

However, Ahmet Ertegun is nobody's fool; he has great ears and of course he said "What's going on - that's Bobby Darin!" and so he filed a legal action against Decca and took over the record. Naturally the people at Decca were very sore at losing the record so I said to them - how about getting Buddy to do the song? Anyway I called Buddy to come over, and he listened to both sides and said sure, he'd do it. He got together next day (Wednesday I think) with Dick Jacobs who was doing the orchestraton of it. It was recorded on Thursday night at the Pythian Temple studios, and on Friday, they were carrying round acetates of the song to all the key radio stations. Monday morning, Decca had copies pressed and on their way into-the shops".



A short time later, Buddy recorded with a string orchestra, again at Norman Petty's suggestion. Contrary to popular belief however, it was Holly (not Petty) who chose the songs recorded at this session, Norman recalls...

"Buddy picked the four songs himself. He had played rhythm guitar on my trio's recording of "Moondreams" which probably accounts for his deciding to pick that tune, but it was he who picked the songs".

One of these was a Paul Anka song "It Doesn't Matter Anymore", while another was a song himself and Norman had written together, called "True Love Ways", later a big hit for Peter & Gordon, When these string recordings were released after Holly's death, some Holly fans criticised Norman for "tidying-up" Buddy Holly's rock found, and pushing him in the direction of a softer, more sophisticated sound. Norman understands this viewpoint, but he is politely unrepentant . . .

"It was fun to try and get sounds that were different. I accept that I was probably to "blame" for most of the changes, but it was always with the thought in mind to build something nice around Buddy, that was tasty in the way I viewed music, and yet acceptable in the way in which Buddy viewed music. Anyway, the point is that he loved all this experimentation . . . in spite of what you may now hear from the "experts".

In August 195&, Buddy Holly married - after a few week's courtship - a Puerto Rican girl who worked in the Southern Music publishing house in New York. Soon after, he split with both his gtoup The Crickets, and with Norman Petty, and went to live in New York. Although it has been suggested that the split was as a result of Holly's marrriage, Norman refuses to be drawn on the subject. Buddy Holly as far as is known, never entered a recording studio again. Although he made some rough tapes in his New York apartment (to which Norman latex added backing tracks), he made no more commercial recordings. On February 3rd 1959, he died in an air-crash while taking part in a ballroom tour of America's mid-west. He was just twenty-two years of age.



Meanwhile, Norman Petty had started concentrating on the careers of two more groups - both instrumental combos. The first of these, The Stringalongs, had a smash hit in 1961 with "Wheels", a tune written by Norman which has become yet another Norman Petty standard. The following year, the second group "The Fireballs" had a huge hit with "Quite A Party" another though quite different instrumental. Although very few instrumentals turn into hits, Norman disclaims any special talent in this direction . . .

"Perhaps it was just luck. However, I have always "felt" and instrumentally tried to create emotion in music, be it instrumental or vocal, almost as if the instrumental "sings" your own ideas and feelings at that time".



The Fireballs had several more instrumental hits, but it was not until Norman cut "Sugar Shack" that the group, now fronted by vocalist Jimmy Gilmer, began to hit the big-time. This record became one of the biggest ever Norman Petty hits - staying at number one on the American charts for five consecutive weeks in October 1963. The group had several more hits, including "Daisy Petal Pickin° and made some fine albums, though they waned a bit from 1966 on, However, Petty changed the group's sound and his perseverance was rewarded in 1969 when their recording of "Bottle Of Wine" became a smash American hit.

Continued