“Ooh, Frankie Frankenstein, that’s a pretty bad tune!” Allison would later recount. However, his run as a front man was short-lived - there was only the one follow-up, a lame novelty track Frankie Frankenstein, written by Jack Huddle, Jim Robinson, and Norman Petty. With a redo of Oh You Beautiful Doll as the B-side, Petty shipped Real Wild Child off to Coral, and that autumn Ivan had a #68 pop seller. There was a fellow there named Johnny O’Keefe, and he had a number one record at the time, which was Wild Child. “We did a tour in Australia in the early part of ’58, the early part. Here’s what Allison had to say about the recording: Two versions of the song were recorded on 12th September 1958. Like most of Buddy Holly’s hits it was produced by Norman Petty at his recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico and featured Buddy Holly on lead guitar and backing vocals, Crickets bassist Joe Mauldin, and Bo Clark on drums so Allison could concentrate on his singing. So, how did he come to record a song under the name of Ivan? One can only surmise that for contractual reasons he couldn’t release it under his own name or that of The Crickets. What’s more, he co-wrote another Buddy Holly classic, That’ll Be The Day. He was responsible for changing the name of one of Holly’s most famous compositions from Cindy Lou to Peggy Sue, as that was the name of his childhood sweetheart, and the girl he would eventually marry. Prior to that, Jerry was a lot more than just Buddy’s drummer. The original Crickets, split from Buddy shortly before he went out on the infamous Winter Tour that saw him recruit a new backing band that included Waylon Jennings on bass. Both he and Buddy Holly, (at that time Charles Hardin Holley) went to Lubbock High and both performed together from their high school days and for most of Buddy’s short career.
So the first question was, who was Jerry Allison?īorn 31 August 1939, in Hillsboro, Texas, Allison – known to his friends throughout his life as “JI” – moved to Lubbock when he was ten. Ivan, it turns out, was the middle name of Jerry Allison, the drummer of the original Crickets, Buddy Holly’s backing band. The result of that search started me on a new journey, down a new rabbit hole as I pursued the story behind Real Wild Child by Ivan. The artist was called Ivan, someone I’d never heard of, and if I remembered right, Buddy Holly played on the song.Īnd with that, curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it I was googling ‘Ivan’ and ‘Buddy Holly’ to see what I could find. The phrasing sounded an awful lot like Marc Bolan, but this was a song from 1958. That being said, the story of Buddy Holly has always appealed to me and I remember reading biographies about him and going to see the West End musical Buddy many years ago.Īround the anniversary of his fatal plane crash - the so-called day the music died - I was listening to as many podcasts as I could find about Buddy and his songs, when I heard a snippet of one that whilst unfamiliar to me, reminded me of something else. However, there’s little that hasn’t already been written about them.
Having just marked the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, by posting my art remix of a remarkable and rarely seen photo of him, I thought about looking at one of his songs. It was time to do another one, but I couldn’t find something that piqued my interest. What I really like is going down the rabbit hole of a song and exploring the story behind it and the people involved in creating it: the writers, the musicians and the producers. Previously, I’ve written about These Foolish Things which was covered by Bryan Ferry, Ghost Town by The Specials, All The Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople and most recently, Still Of The Night by Whitesnake. Over the years I’ve enjoyed doing some deep dives into songs that for one reason or another I find interesting.
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