Buddy Holly Archives

The Buddy Holly Center at 1801 Crickets Ave. is small, but a quick glance at its guest register reveals an enormous interest in all things Buddy Holly.

Visitors have come to Lubbock not only from states across the nation, but from countries around the globe. It’s easy to find signatures from England, where Buddy Holly once spent a month on a tour credited with influencing that country’s popular music for a generation.

The center held a grand opening event in 1999 to recognize a combining of the Buddy Holly Museum with the Lubbock Fine Arts Center into a single building that in the 1930s was the Fort Worth & Denver South Plains Railway Depot.

Jacqueline Bober, curator, said the center has a large gallery that is devoted to the life and legacy of Buddy Holly.

“We have memorabilia in that gallery, and a timeline that looks at his life pretty much from birth to death,” she said. “That was only 22 years, but we have things from his childhood – marbles he played with, crayons he drew with. And we have some of his drawings – he was quite proficient in his drawings of horses.”

“We also have some of his report cards, and his Cub Scout uniform,” she said.

Then there are the things he is known for internationally:

“His music, his love of music,” she said. “He performed very early on with Jack Neal and Bob Montgomery. Buddy and Jack had a show on one of the early radio stations. Then, when Jack left, Bob Montgomery came in, so it was the Buddy and Bob Show.

“We have collections of his records that he enjoyed listening to – gospel music, blues, Ray Charles, Bob Wills, Hank Williams. And also some of his own records that he himself had made.”

The two identifying objects that are most symbolic of Buddy Holly on the international performance stage are there also. They are his Fender electric guitar, which was sent on ahead by bus to the concert he was on his way to when his plane crashed Feb. 3, 1959; and his signature eye glasses that he had with him on the plane.

Bober said an overnight bag he carried on the plane also is in the gallery.

Other items from his career are a part of the collection.

“Buddy wrote a lot of his own music, and J.I. Allison, his drummer, contributed.,” she said. “We have a little lyric book where they worked out the lyrics of their songs together. There are some drawings and words written in there by J.I. Allison where they were working out the name of their band.”

The Buddy Holly Center also houses the Lubbock Fine Arts Center, which has a variety of art exhibits each year in its gallery in the west side of the building.

“We also have the Texas Musicians Hall of Fame, which at some point we hope to develop into a permanent exhibit. Right now we do music-related and Buddy Holly-related temporary exhibitions in there,” said Bober.

“We have done a show on Wayland Jennings in there at one time, with the hope that eventually we will be collecting memorabilia and information about the different artists who were well known in the West Texas region,” she said.

The center also has a gift shop, which not surprisingly has Buddy Holly music CDs and a variety of other items.

A small projection room has a 20-minute film narrating the career of Buddy Holly, and it runs continuously.

The former train station seems a fitting building for music, art and Buddy Holly. It houses the reminders of a local legend, yet has become a stopping place for travelers from around the world.