Holly’s road to hits … a drive up U.S. 84
The facade of the newly opened Norman and Vi Petty Rock & Roll Museum in Clovis, N.M., honors the regions music pioneers. (Provided by Barbara Brannon)
No Buddy Holly fan’s tour could be complete without a visit to Clovis, N.M., a city today known more for rails and ranching than rock ‘n’ roll.
But in Holly’s day the pioneering Norman Petty Recording Studio was to Clovis what Sun Records is to Memphis or Motown to Detroit. In the 1950s, Petty’s expertise and his passion for popular music drew in Texas talent like Buddy Knox, Waylon Jennings and Roy Orbison – and Buddy Holly & The Crickets.
The group cut their first demos in Clovis in 1956 and within months hits like “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue” boosted them, and the studio, into the international spotlight.
Local lore has it that Buddy, in his red Cadillac, would aim to make the 90-mile drive across the state line to arrive at the studio the same time he’d left home. Mountain Time worked in the group’s favor going westward. Petty typically scheduled recording sessions during the evenings, when variations in electrical power supply were less frequent and highway noise minimized. He could call in his wife, Vi, to play the piano or write up lead sheets, and he could draw on a network of backup musicians such as The Picks or The Roses.
The museum
Today, the Norman and Vi Petty Rock & Roll Museum, which opened in September 2008, preserves the artifacts, culture and equipment of the studio’s heyday. Visitors learn how a hit record was made – the business and the technology – and revisit the stories of the many musical legends who recorded in Clovis.
Hours are 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Weekend hours may be available in the future. Admission $5 and the museum is located at 105 E. Grand Ave.
For more information, call (575) 763-3435.
The studio
The Norman Petty Recording Studio itself, which remained active into the 1990s, is located at 1313 W. Seventh St. Petty estate co-administrator and museum board member Kenneth Broad, a storehouse of Clovis musical history, makes tours available by advance appointment, (575) 356-6422 or (575) 760-2157. Treasures abound that die-hard fans will appreciate: working mixer board and monitors, original instruments, gold records and other documents of recording history. Connected to the studio is the apartment, its 1950s d¿¿cor deliciously intact, where musicians once spent the night or unwound after a long session.
Next door are the offices of Nor-Va-Jak Music, the label named for the original Norman Petty Trio (Norman and Violet Ann, and Jack Vaughn).
The festival
The Clovis Music Festival, first organized in 1986, features bands and tribute acts and reunites musicians who helped make the “Clovis sound.” The 2009 festival, slated for Sept. 10-13, will commemorate “The Day the Music Died.” Call (575) 763-3435 for details.
The drive-in
At the Foxy Drive-In, 720 W. Seventh St., you can still order up a curb-service burger and shake just as Buddy and the guys did in the 1950s.
Other sites
On West Second Street, just off Main, see if you can name all 12 of the musical luminaries depicted in the mural.
Tarpley Music Co. expanded its fourth-generation family business into Clovis in 1991. Drop by 406 N. Main St. to reminisce about Fenders or fiddles. (575) 763-1993.
Other musical sites of interest in Clovis include the historic Mesa Theater on West Second St., now under renovation by Clovis Community College as the Norman and Vi Petty Performing Arts Center. (Main Street boasts two other art deco movie houses, the Lyceum and the State, both also now repurposed.)
The elegant ballroom of the now-shuttered Hotel Clovis, the tallest building between Dallas and Albuquerque when it was built in 1931, once hosted such names as Louis Armstrong, Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Hank Williams.
Web sites
And if you have time only for a virtual tour, the Web site www.superoldies.com/pettystudios/pettytour.html (not associated with the museum) features background, photos, and discography.
