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As I discussed in a previous Word Routes column, we're now seeing a similar transformation with the word dude. This demonstrates how boy, like man, has transformed from a male term of address (or "vocative") into an exclamation that can be used regardless of the addressee's gender. Linguistically, the song is notable for its prominent use of "(Oh) boy" in addressing someone of the opposite sex. Holly takes West's words and invests them with great excitement and anticipation. Fellow Lubbock native Sonny West wrote "Oh Boy!", and Holly was quick to record it with the Crickets ("Not Fade Away" was actually its B-side). Though Holly is remembered as a pioneering "singer/songwriter" (matched only by Chuck Berry in the early rock 'n' roll era), he also was an excellent interpreter of music and lyrics composed by others. You don't know what you've been a-missin' Stephanie Zacharek, writing in Salon, observed that Holly "was talking about keeping a love affair alive, but his followers took the song to heart as a pledge to keep rock 'n' roll thriving, past the stage of being a fad." The Who turned the expression on its head in their rebellious youth anthem, " My Generation": "Why don't you all f-f-fade away?" Later rock acts from Blondie to Bruce Springsteen incorporated "fade away" into their lyrics - to lament a loss, or, like Holly, to vow against its possibility. In any case, "(not) fade away" became a popular expression in rock music, and not just from groups like The Rolling Stones that covered the Crickets tune. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die they just fade away."Ĭould Holly have been suggesting that his love was tougher than even MacArthur's old soldiers? Perhaps he was just drawing on a phrasal verb with echoes going as far back as the King James Bible ("The earth mourneth and fadeth away," Isaiah 24:4). In his Farewell Address to Congress in 1951, MacArthur famously said:
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As with "That'll Be the Day," Holly might have been inspired by a tough guy of the times: in this case, General Douglas MacArthur. Here's another song on the theme of obstinate resolution in the face of love's evanescence. We know them better, of course, as The Beatles - an insect-y name that was partially an homage to their heroes The Crickets. The following year, a cover version of "That'll Be the Day" was the first recording ever made by an up-and-coming Liverpool group known as The Quarry Men. The single made him a big star in the summer of 1957 and had a lasting influence on the course of popular music. Holly took Wayne's expression of dogged defiance and repurposed it for a heartfelt love song. As Ethan Edwards, an ex-Confederate soldier obsessed with finding his kidnapped niece, John Wayne utters the line several times over the course of the film: But it was John Wayne's swaggering delivery in "The Searchers" that would have been foremost in the mind of young Buddy Holly as he was toiling away in Lubbock, Texas to come up with songs for his new band The Crickets. The expression "That'll be the day" had actually been floating around American pop culture for a couple of decades - etymologist Barry Popik notes its use in the comic strip "Joe Jinks" in 1938 and then as a tagline for Kellogg's Corn Flakes in 1942. You say you're gonna leave, you know it's a lieįor his first hit single, Holly drew inspiration from a memorable line in the 1956 John Wayne movie, " The Searchers," directed by John Ford. Yes, that'll be the day, when you make me cry
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Well, that'll be the day, when you say goodbye Here are my brief thoughts on the language of four of his songs. He had a beautiful touch with the English language (sung in his signature hiccupy style), and in his lyrics he found ways to take familiar words and phrases and innovatively shape them into his own. Rather than glumly mope about "The Day the Music Died," as Don McLean dubbed the tragedy in the well-worn song, "American Pie," I'd prefer to reflect on what a tremendously gifted singer/songwriter Holly was. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and J.P.