Buddy Holly: Biography (32 page)

He and his fiancée Maria Elena were looking forward to a double wedding with Jerry and Peggy Sue. Jerry began to push for an early date, but Buddy was still uncertain how to handle his mother’s resistance to the prospect of an interracial marriage in the family. Finally he informed her that he was bringing Maria Elena to Lubbock in August. According to Goldrosen, Mrs. Holley said, “Oh, no.” Ella Holley wasn’t the only obstacle Buddy and Maria Elena faced. Petty continued to voice strenuous objections to both Buddy’s and Jerry’s marriages, protesting, Jerry later told Goldrosen, that they were neither old enough nor sufficiently mature. Petty was probably correct on both counts, Jerry later conceded. Peggy Sue said in a 1994 interview, “There is a warm side to Jerry. Our relationship was extremely stormy, and it was from the very beginning. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that we can all make a decision that is not especially good for us.”

Before long, Buddy and the Crickets were flat broke. They had to go to Petty for every cent. It was, time and again, a way for Petty to tether his boys as if they were children. Jerry later told Goldrosen that he would never have been able to tolerate the idea of his wife going to Petty for money.

Maria Elena at last arrived in Lubbock in August 1958, and Buddy braced himself for inevitable flak. His Baptist neighbors felt the marriage had two strikes against it from the start: race and religion. Buddy settled the issue with his mother first, displaying the forcefulness that he was sometimes capable of. According to Goldrosen, he said his mother “might as well not say anything because I’ve made up my mind, and I’m going to marry her.”

Buddy was literally penniless. “He didn’t have a red cent,” Maria Elena disclosed in 1993. “Buddy did not have a red cent in his name. Norman controlled all of the monies.… He paid for everything. Buddy would send him whatever needed to be paid, even the cars that they bought were paid for by Norman. Any money you got you had to go through Norman.”

Petty later characterized his relationship with Maria Elena as hostile and jealous. His gravest miscalculation was dismissing her as someone who was naive and inexperienced about the music industry. Nothing could have been further from the truth: She had worked in New York at the center of Tin Pan Alley and had kept her eyes open. At Peer-Southern she probably gained a more comprehensive knowledge of deals and negotiations than any outlander from Clovis could ever hope to possess. Petty mistakenly figured that the threat to his position as Buddy’s manager came from the A&R men at Decca when in fact it was closer to home; his only adversary was Maria Elena, but he persisted in fretting over Dick Jacobs, who, he later confided to Goldrosen, appeared to be undermining his clout with Buddy.

“Norman did not want Buddy to get married because he felt like his fans would find out and that would take away something from the popularity,” Maria Elena said in 1993. “Of course, that was the belief of everybody at that time, that they’d lose their popularity. It turned out that marriage really didn’t affect popularity at all.” Petty also failed to realize how determined a man Holly was—neither racial prejudice on the public’s part nor Petty’s warnings would deter him. Petty even raised the specter of scandal, saying that the press would be outraged if Buddy Holly wed a Puerto Rican. The adverse notoriety of Sammy Davis, Jr.’s, marriage to blond May Britt, Brando’s co-star in
The Young Lions,
demonstrated that Americans were unready to accept mixed marriages. What Petty failed to take into account was that the careers of both John Wayne and Marlon Brando had survived interracial marriages; by society’s double standard, Caucasian males were allowed to marry outside their race.

As Maria Elena and Buddy approached their August nuptials, Petty made one last attempt to turn Buddy against her. “Norman said that Buddy should not marry at that time,” Maria Elena recalled in 1993. “First of all, he knew about my aunt.… Norman knew that once I got involved, I would be finding things that he didn’t want me to find or Buddy to find and that once I was in the picture, things would turn around.”

Though a joint ceremony with Jerry and Peggy Sue had long been Buddy’s desire, Jerry and Peggy Sue finally decided they could wait no longer and went to the Lubbock County Courthouse on July 21 for their marriage-license affidavit. They eloped the following day. Both were eighteen years old. On July 22 they drove 320 miles to Honey Grove, a tiny town on the Texas-Oklahoma border, where Jerry’s uncle, a minister, performed the ceremony. Despite her hasty departure, Peggy Sue’s bridal attire was appropriate, including a white tiara-type hat with a short veil, long white gloves, and a form-fitting white short-sleeved dress that displayed her shapely, wasp-waisted figure. Jerry wore a dark single-breasted three-button jacket and Slim Jim tie. Years later he told Goldrosen that he was much too young to realize “what I was doing.”

After the ceremony they drove to Dallas and pondered how to break the news to Buddy, who was bound to be disappointed that they hadn’t waited. Jerry called him on July 23 and, as Peggy Sue later told Griggs, admitted “jumping the gun.” Peggy Sue then got on the line and Buddy made her promise to postpone their honeymoon until he and Maria Elena were wed. Buddy had made up his mind that they were all going to Acapulco and announced he’d plan the entire trip, right down to making the reservations.

Meanwhile, at the Holley home, Buddy’s parents and future wife were getting used to each other. According to Goldrosen, Buddy’s father liked Maria Elena, recognizing a certain logic in this match between an assertive girl and his son. First Buddy had been a mama’s boy, L.O. said, then he was manipulated by Petty. Now at last, he’d “come into his own,” L.O. told Maria Elena. Perhaps he was still unaware of the power she was beginning to exert in the management of his professional affairs. Maria Elena later told
16
magazine that Buddy’s “mother and father were so wonderful,” giving her “the same warmth and affection” that she’d received from Buddy.

The editors of the
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal,
evidently uninformed that a world-renowned singing star was in their midst, misspelled Buddy’s name and misstated his fiancée’s hometown in the routine marriage notice they buried in the back pages after Buddy and Maria applied for their license in August: “Buddy Charles Halley [sic], 21, and Miss Maria Elena Santiago, 25, both of Lubbock [sic],” it began, as if an addled Linotypist had set the notice. It had been taken from the court docket and no supplementary information was offered by the couple; Petty’s paranoid horror of massive fan defections was allowed to spoil much of the fun of their wedding.

“There wasn’t a proper announcement or anything,” Maria Elena comments in 1993. Buddy wanted to buy her a large diamond ring, but Petty wouldn’t hear of it. “‘One karat is enough,’ Norman said. He didn’t like me at all, so I got a one-karat ring,” she recalls. “It didn’t make any difference to me. The wedding was at the Holleys’ home, performed by the minister of the Tabernacle Baptist Church [Ben Johnson]. There were some of Buddy’s cousins and relatives, his sister, brothers, nephews. And Jerry, Peggy Sue, and Joe B., who was not married at that time. Jerry was, to Peggy Sue. Just members of the family. Nobody from the outside.”

It was a hot day, the temperature hitting 97 degrees. Maria Elena wore “a short—not even to the calf—white dress with a veil, nothing ostentatious, a simple dress,” she remembered. Buddy wore a dark suit. He had on his dark sunglasses because he hadn’t yet replaced the regular glasses he’d lost waterskiing in Buffalo Springs Lake. The bride gave the groom a gold wedding band. After the ceremony, Jerry played Buddy’s record “Now We’re One,” a bouncy, upbeat Bobby Darin tune that Buddy had recorded at the Pythian Temple. He tipped pastor Johnson $100, paying by check. Bill Griggs revealed in
Rockin’ 50s
magazine in 1991 that Buddy maintained a checking account under the name “Charles Holley.” He was so secretive about it that not even Maria Elena knew of its existence. When asked in 1993 if Buddy had “no bank account, no money in his name,” she replied, “No. Just Norman, and he handled that as he saw fit.” But there is ample proof of the account’s existence in the form of canceled checks that turned up at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 1990.

After their wedding, Buddy and Maria Elena flew to Mexico for a double honeymoon with Jerry and Peggy Sue, which would prove less than blissful for some of the newlyweds. Acapulco, nestled among the Sierra Madre Mountains, lies along the curve of an aquamarine bay. Villas and plush hotels are stacked on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Tourists relish long cool drinks at bars on the beach, ride in horse-drawn carriages streaming colorful balloons, and shop for silver in the Mercado de Artesanias. Watching the divers plunge each day from La Quebrada cliffs into a narrow cove 130 feet below is de rigueur, but Peggy Sue reveals in 1994 that they skipped this attraction. There was too much tension between Peggy Sue and Jerry for it to be a very happy honeymoon. “It was uncomfortable,” Peggy Sue recalls in 1994. As for Buddy and Maria Elena, when Griggs asked Peggy Sue in 1987 whether Buddy’s behavior altered after marriage, her answer was intriguing. Buddy was indeed different, she replied, adding that the Buddy she’d previously known so well had always been “a happy person.” Griggs attempted to dig deeper, asking again if Buddy acted differently after getting married. “I don’t think that Buddy was real happy,” she said. Later, in the 1994 interview, she also mentioned the differences in background and age between Buddy and Maria Elena.

They all stayed at Las Brisas at the beginning of the honeymoon but soon moved to El Cano, “which was closer to town,” recalled Peggy Sue in 1994. “El Cano” means “the ghetto” in Spanish, which indicates that their first hotel, Las Brisas, a well-known money-shredder, had proved to be too expensive and that they’d moved to El Cano in order to economize. An aficionado of waterskiing, Buddy discovered that the bay and lagoon were perfect for water sports. They rented a boat and skiis. Peggy Sue later stated in
Waterski
magazine that Buddy taught her how to waterski.

On their way back to the States, they stopped over in Mexico City and checked into the Hilton. “We spent the night and had our picture taken there,” Peggy Sue recalls in 1994. In the photo, Jerry and Maria Elena are beaming at the camera while Buddy and Peggy Sue appear somewhat subdued. Peggy Sue is wearing a drab jersey shift that does nothing for her excellent figure, while Maria Elena is chic in a stylish tropical outfit: an airy white dress with a low, ruffled neckline. Jerry was not as happy as he appears in the photo. Like Peggy Sue, he was “uncomfortable,” he later revealed in McCartney’s film
The Real Buddy Holly Story.
“All of a sudden it wasn’t Joe B., Buddy, and I hanging out,” he said. Naturally he wanted to spend time with his wife and Buddy wanted to be with Maria Elena, which created a “weird” situation, Jerry added. He and Buddy longed for the old camaraderie, which was now impossible.

Upon returning to Lubbock, Buddy and Maria Elena, in abject poverty, had to move in with Buddy’s parents. They couldn’t even afford to buy groceries. In desperation, Maria Elena called Provi. “My aunt was the one supporting us when we got married,” Maria Elena said in 1993. They appealed to Petty for money, but he turned them down. With current recordings on both sides of the Atlantic, Buddy knew that he’d earned more money than he’d yet collected, but Petty refused to budge. “Norman said, ‘No. I have to get together with the accountant,’” Maria Elena added. “After we got married, Norman was furious.”

Buddy’s father looked on Maria Elena as his daughter, he later told Goldrosen. L. O. Holley heaped extravagant praise on her, telling her that her marriage to his son was the most beneficial thing that had ever occurred in Buddy’s life. L.O. seemed to be under the impression that Maria Elena was capable of working some magic in the improvement of his son’s character. She had unleashed Buddy from Ella Holley’s apron strings, L.O. proclaimed; marriage was transforming Buddy into a real
“man.”
Not everyone agreed. “She was running Buddy’s life,” says Jerry Coleman, the KSEL DJ, in a 1993 interview. “When she hollered jump, he jumped. The only thing I ever heard Norman Petty say something almost bad about was Buddy’s wife. ‘Well, we don’t get along,’ he said.”

Maria Elena does not deny that she assumed a decisive role in Buddy’s business affairs, nor that she alienated some of his friends and associates in the process. “Jerry and Joe B. felt a little bit intimidated by the fact that I was there and that Buddy didn’t do very much without my being involved,” she remarks in 1993. “I guess Jerry more so than Joe B. felt uncomfortable with the fact that I was making decisions.” Her low opinion of Norman Petty was all the evidence Buddy needed that his wife possessed a shrewd and penetrating grasp of human character. She was not going to let him be exploited anymore.

For most people marriage is a personal matter. For Buddy Holly it was also a professional partnership. Mixing pleasure and business is risky at best. For Buddy it would bring a season of long-delayed fulfillments as well as drama beyond his wildest imaginings.

Chapter Eleven

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Voices from every establishment stronghold, including evangelistic crusader Billy Graham, had been condemning rock ’n’ roll since the Boston riot, and finally the music industry itself seemed to turn against rock. Tin Pan Alley songwriters felt threatened by performers such as Buddy, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, who wrote their own songs and didn’t need ASCAP hacks for material. Muckraking author Vance Packard told the Senate Subcommittee on Communications that rock had been imposed on unsuspecting teens and that this “cheap music” was “largely engineered, manipulated for the interests of BMI.… The public was manipulated into liking rock ’n’ roll.” Frank Sinatra denounced rock singers as “cretinous goons” who seduced teenagers with “the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has ever been my misfortune to hear.” Oscar Hammerstein, smarting over the disappearance from the charts of his Broadway show tunes, charged that rock ’n’ roll could not be sold to the public without payola.