How KFMX Made Buddy Holly’s Crickets Smile

I have to confess one thing up front. At the time of most of these doings, I was pretty uninterested. I was a lot like a lot of other young people, my music mattered to me and anything that happened before then seemed somewhat irrelevant. Anyways, you may not realize it, but KFMX was WAY more instrumental in honoring Buddy and the Crickets than anybody realizes.

For the longest time this city ignored Buddy Holly. I don't know if they resented him because he was a rock and roller or because he married a Hispanic woman (kind of a big deal at the time). My guess is actually more of the first. It seems to me Lubbock always wanted to be a "country" town but never produced a star (at that time) to take that title.  So back in the early 80's, NO ONE cared about Buddy Holly. No one promoted him and no one even spoke his name. There were no oldies stations to glom onto his success and no politicians that wanted to offend the town by speaking up on his behalf. His legacy was just waiting around for a few heroes to step up. His statue had just gone up to unremarkable fanfare and little support.  I had a music director at that time named Bill Bateman (R.I.P.), I can't even remember where Bill was from, but he had mad respect for Buddy Holly.  He took it upon himself to call a friend with MCA records and ask if any gold or platinum awards had been issued for  Buddy Holly's greatest hits. The answer was a no, but Bubba was also a fan so Bill and Bubba conspired.  We then contacted Maria Elena Holly and presented her with a platinum award at half-time at a Texas Tech Football Game.  Lubbock seemed to ignore the presentation, but it was big enough that it made all of the football highlight shows and an entertainment program or two.

Now, here's where the chronology goes a bit wanky in my mind, I can't remember if our next awards happened before or after some shows, so excuse me for that.  KFMX as a radio station was approached by blues musician P.J. Belly to put on a show called "Budfest".  The first one was awesome with Bo Diddley, Del Shannon, The Crickets and more.  The second "Budfest" featured a more contemporary lineup with Marshal Crenshaw who was having a bit of success at the time.  Somewhere are this time, my other music director, Kidd Manning, called Bubba, this time asking if we could get awards made for the new Buddy Holly boxed set. Bubba took care of us once again, and believe it or not, when we presented them to the Crickets they said it was the first award they had EVER received.  Somewhere around this time we also donated KFYO's original soundboard to the Buddy Holly Museum as well. I little while later I was able to have a Platinum Buddy Holly Album made for Don Caldwell to thank him for his work in promoting Buddy's legacy. I was also given an unused Buddy Holly Avenue Street sign, for doing my part.

I think it's important that for whatever reason, that we should recognize that Buddy Holly was criminally ignored by the people of Lubbock. Maybe we should just remember so we'll never do it again........whoops, I guess we're already doing that with Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks ( I guess women with opinions are still shunned around here).

Anyways, I wrote this in honor of Joe B. Mauldin, bass player for the Crickets who passed away over the weekend. I'm glad we were able to make you smile.