Norman Petty was born in the small town of Clovis, New Mexico, in 1927, the youngest son of Sidney and Thelma Petty. The Petty family operated a garage in Clovis, and both parents were musically proficient.

Norman taught himself to play the piano at an early age, and encouraged by his father, also started to experiment with radios, and other electrical equipment.

When he entered High School, Norman formed a combo called The Torchy Swingsters, playing swing initially to their fellow pupils. However, they soon found themselves in demand at the local Cannon Air Force base, performing for soldiers and airmen who were about to ship out to the Pacific.

Norman's attachment for the US Air Force was to last, and some ten years later, the Norman Petty Trio was regularly performing to the top brass at dozens of Air Force bases across the United States.

By the time he was thirteen, in addition to playing every Saturday night with The Torchy Swingsters, Norman was holding down two jobs after school - as a projectionist in a local cinema, the Lyceum, and as a pianist - playing requests over his local radio station KICA.

Although he was a shy child, to the point almost of brusqueness, and constantly terrified at the thought of having to read out requests, he loved the atmosphere at the radio station, and the opportunity it gave him to examine the studio equipment, and to meet and mix with other more mature performers.

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".

Norman Petty Trio
Jack Vaughan, Vi Petty & Norman

In 1943, when he was just fifteen, Norman was introduced to Violet Ann "Vi" Brady, who was already regarded as one of the most promising young pianists in New Mexico. They started an informal romance, but oddly never performed together as musicians. A combo with two pianists would have been, as Norman once joked, a band with one pianist too many!

Meanwhile, the Torchy Swingsters had become Norman Petty & His Swing Kings, but just as he began to plan the building of a future Norman Petty Orchestra, he was drafted into the US Air Force, and transferred to Langley Air Force base in Virginia.

While he was at Langley, the padre introduced Norman to the chapel's Hammond organ. It was love at first sight, and from then on, he rarely played piano, realising that although two pianos might indeed be one piano too many, an organ and a piano could blend together beautifully.

When Norman was discharged from the Air Force in 1947, he returned to New Mexico to enrol at the New Mexico University in Portales, but within weeks, had quit college to set up the Norman Petty Recording Studios in Clovis, a very basic operation, but the first of its type in Clovis. Vi, who had been trained as a classical pianist, was majoring in music at The University of Oklahoma, but during Christmas 1947, the couple became engaged, and with local guitarist Jack Vaughn, formed what was to eventually become the Norman Petty Trio.

The studio was making little money, and so the couple were dependent on their performances around Clovis, and Norman's work at KCIA. 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".

Norman Petty Trio
Their first hit, "Mood Indigo" (1954)

On their return from Dallas, the studio was re-activated, and the trio started to make demo recordings, to send to the major labels. It took several years before 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".

Altjough a hot recording act, he decided to return to Clovis and to use some of the money from these records to set up a state of the art recording studio, primarily he reccalls, to record the trio.

He also began accepting bookings from local bands and singers from the New Mexico and West Texas area, offering a fixed price per song, so that no matter how long it took to record the track, the price would remain the same.

This enabled many inexperienced musicians to experimnent and produce quality tapes without worrying about the costs.

For those who preferred to take a gamble on their chances of success - he offered free recording sessions in return for either a split of the music publishing or inclusion in the writer's credits. It was however, a decision which he freely admits, has come back to haunt him, because since Buddy Holly's tragic death, some critics have pointed only to his earnings from Holly's hits, choosing to ignore both the huge amount of time spent recording the act, and Norman's heavy losses from those other acts who had accepted the same deal, and then failed to make it.

Norman Petty Studios
Clovis, New Mexico

"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 other.

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 an instant liking to Holly, and brought the quartet into the studios, several months later emerging with a number of recordings, including "That'll Be The Day" which he placed with Brunswick Records in New York (a million-seller for the Crickets in 1957) and "Peggy Sue" placed with Coral Records in New York (and a hit 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).

Norman Petty at the desk
of this studios in Clovis, New Mexico

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.

The Crickets. Buddy Holly, Joe Mauldin,
Jerry Allison and Niki Sullivan:
New York City 1957

"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".

Norman Petty and Buddy Holly, accepting
a Gold Disc from Bob Thiele, Decca Records
New York City 1958

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 style, 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 receptionist who worked in the Southern Music publishing house in New York.

Soon after, he split with both his group 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 did make some rough tapes in his New York apartment (to which Norman later 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.

Almost immediately after Holly's death, the remaining Crickets split from Norman, moving initially to New York and later to Los Angeles where in 1961, they signed with Liberty Records. Meanwhile, Norman 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 managed to score more than a dozen hits between the two combos. However, he 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, that they really hit the big-time.

This record became the biggest ever Norman Petty hit - 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.

Apart from having a hit career of their own, the Fireballs were also involved in Norman Petty's attempts to add backings to the rough demo tapes Holly had left behind after his death.

Initially, backings had been put to these by Decca - backings which it is generally agreed, were of acceptable quality for the time, although not up to Holly's usual high standards.

Norman set to work, and for my money, the results cannot be faulted, though many Holly purists have been loud in their criticisms, I asked Norman for his views on this.

"As years go by, I have been criticised for doing what I did, but I would not have done any differently than I did at the time.

I still feel that what we did added rather than subtracted from the overall sound of Buddy, and after all Buddy too always wanted the best and most exciting sound possible to be in the finished product.

This was my priority when Buddy was alive, and equally so after he died. It was very time-consuming but I never minded that . . . as far as I was concerned, it was a labour of love".

Norman Petty at the Norman Petty
Recording Studios, Clovis, New Mexico

Norman Petty shrugs off criticisms directed against himself, but will brook no criticism of Buddy Holly or indeed of any singer or individual associated with his studios.

My attempts to get him to compare the various singers with whom he has worked, were politely but firmly brushed aside.

"Each artist has his own individuality, and thus his unique contribution to music. It would be unfair to rate one against the other in view of this".

As the seventies approached, the studio in Clovis moved with the times with plans for becoming one of the first studios in the world to go 46-track.

I asked Norman if he ever wished for the simplicity of the fifties.

"Sometimes. The simplicity and indeed the feeling of being unique, were of course very enjoyable, as were the people we were associated with then.

Again, when you did something different in those days, it was more noticeable and more outstanding, Of course, living was far less complicated then too!

However, multi-tracking has certainly added many new and exciting possibilities, as well as problems! I wouldn't want to change the times, but it is nice to think back over the great times all of us who were part of musical history had".

NorVaJak Music, Clovis, New Mexico,
owned by Norman Petty

Norman Petty has been involved with so many hit recordings, and has been the man behind so many recording innovations, that it is often easy to forget that he ranks as one of the most successful songwriters of the last twenty years.

I asked him for advice for our readers - advice which he is probably more qualified to give than most songwriters since he has seen the business from all sides - as a writer, a producer, a recording artist, and a music publisher. His advice is well worth noting.

"First, he honest with yourself in self-criticism of your ideas.

You must believe that what you are doing is different and good, and that it will evoke memories or active thinking in the mind of your listener . . . will bring to life the fact that music is a great denominator in every person's life.
Next, the best possible presentation is important, including both your best ideas and a good sound.

Probably most people listen for good and different ideas than for good sound, but having both helps. Don't forget connections . . , they are very important to the writer . . . knowing as many artists as possible, being able to communicate with responsible people in music publishing, in recording, in artist representation . . . and you also need patience, but coupled with confidence in yourself.

When you have selected a publisher you feel will do the best job for you - give the publisher a chance to work for you.

If he is the right publisher and if he believes in you and your song, you will have little need to prod ctivity on your behalf.

After all, the publisher agrees to accept your work because he feels that it will be successful and make money for a long time to come; accordingly the sooner it starts to make money, the happier he will be.

But above all - keep writing and practising your craft.

Copyright Jim Liddane: All Rights Reserved: Printed By Permission.

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