Entertainment business organization Songmasters hosted a tribute to Buddy Holly's legacy Friday in conjunction with PJ Clarke's, where Holly proposed to his wife Maria Elena Holly hours after meeting her.
The event featured a performance of Holly's "True Love Ways" by Peter Asher, who with his late partner Gordon Waller, had a No. 14 hit in 1965 with the song that Holly wrote for Maria Elena. Asher performed it alongside a video projection of Waller performing it; he played a True Love Ways guitar, one of 18 replicas of Holly's 1943 J-45 guitar, each including a fret from the original.
PJ Clarke's also designated "Table 53"--the booth in the restaurant where Holly proposed--as the True Love Ways booth, and presented Maria Elena with a framed, previously unpublished photo of their wedding kiss, which was placed on the wall above the booth.
Maria Elena's voice cracked as she acknowledged the "bittersweet" nature of the tribute. She wished that Holly, who died at age 22 in 1959 in the tragic plane crash immortalized as "the day the music died" in Don McLean's 1971 hit "American Pie," could be there to celebrate the moment (the crash also claimed the lives of Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson).
But the event also served to draw attention to Songmasters' new Listen To Me series of albums, established to raise funds for music-industry charities supporting the next generation of music makers and entrepreneurs. The first disc, Listen To Me: Buddy Holly, is due later this year; produced by Asher, it will include contributions from Stevie Nicks, The Fray, Cobra Starship, Jeff Lynne, Train's Pat Monahan, Patrick Stump, Jackson Browne, Chris Isaak, Natalie Merchant, Imelda May, Ringo Starr, Lyle Lovett and Brian Wilson.
"It's appropriate that Buddy Holly is the artist for the inaugural year of Listen To Me," says Songmasters managing partner/founder Jennifer Cohen. "He would have been 75 this year, and his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will take place on September 7 [Holly's birthday]."
Cohen says that the Holly album will be released through Walmart around that date, to be accompanied by a PBS special that night involving a live concert event at the Music Box Theater in Los Angeles.
But Cohen notes that the Listen To Me series does not so much create tribute albums as it "celebrates different strains of our musical tradition--and connects legacies."
"It's set up to salute groundbreaking artists of contemporary music as defined by the slogan 'True. Great. Original,'" she says, adding: "It's a celebration by today's leading artists as a way of making money for, and supporting, the next generation of truly great, original artists."
Specifically, Songmasters will make grants to charitable music industry groups including the Grammy Foundation and Artists House, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame--which has established the Holly Prize, via Songmasters, to commemorate Hall of Famer Holly by annually recognizing and supporting a young artist who evokes Holly in meeting Listen To Me's "true-great-original" standards.
Additionally, Listen To Me, in conjunction with online music community/competition site OurStage, is conducting a six-month talent search backed by extensive online and radio promotions, culminating in a national finals and concert event.
"The whole program is about the music industry celebrating its own and coming together to support the next generation," reiterates Cohen.
It also fits in with Songmasters' tag line, "Where Doing Good is Good for Business." Founded in 1994, the organization, notes Cohen, is a coalition of senior executives from the worlds of music, film, television, fashion, brand marketing, communications, and civil society that design multi-media entertainment marketing platforms that harness the power of music and celebrity to benefit educational and charitable endeavors.
"Buddy Holly is perfect to launch Listen To Me because of his authenticity," says Cohen. "He only had an 18-month recording career, but he was the father of guitar-based bands and the singer-songwriter tradition--and really the independent music business, because he died on a tour to raise money for what would have been the first artist-owned label. He's been deceased over 50 years, but he's a very modern artist."
Asher, who is performing this week at Feinstein's At Loews Regency, recalls that Waller introduced Holly's music to him.
"I was more of a folky," says Asher, who seconds Cohen's assessment. "Buddy was a brilliant songwriter--before the singer-songwriter term came to exist. He also was ahead of his time in producing his own records, and wanted his own label. He didn't like the [music business] machine then--which is more of a machine now."
Holly made "very unconventional records," Asher continues. "He was a brilliant producer, with a kooky and quirky sound that I liked and admired. As a producer and singer-songwriter, he squeezed a career into a crazy small amount of time."
Asher suggests that had Holly lived, "he wouldn't have gone crazy or become a druggie. [Lady] Gaga would be on his label! The advantage of dying young is that one never knows, but he had a tremendous imagination, and I very much feel he had a major future in the music industry, and would have written some really extraordinary stuff."
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