Wer war/ist Ivan (Jerry Allison) ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD und mehr

Ivan was Jerry Allison’s middle name. He used it when he briefly stepped out on his own in the studio while working as Buddy Holly’s drummer with The Crickets. Without Allison’s percussive innovations, Holly’s Peggy Sue, Everyday, and many more wouldn’t have been so singular. Born August 31, 1939 in Hillsboro, Texas, J.I. became interested in playing drums in school. “I went to a football game when I was about in fifth grade, and I just thought, >Well, I can do that!=” he said. “I started playing in the school band, playing marching drums and all that,

“Before I did that, though, my folks took me to school. I got with the band director, and if I could pat my foot and clap my hands at the same time or off the beat, he said, ‘Oh, yeah—he can be in the band!’ So they ordered me a drum from Sears & Roebuck. Probably about $15. Anyway, I got started, then played through junior high and then high school. And then I went to Texas Tech and played some down there. 14 weeks was all the time I went there. It didn’t pay. And then I got a job to go on the road and back up George Jones with a bunch of guys. I left that college!”

Segueing from country to rock and roll proved no challenge. “I tried to copy Little Richard=s drummer in that movie ‘The Girl Can't Help It,’” said Allison. “I just listened to old rock and roll records.” He had to rock behind Holly. “I was probably 15,” said J.I. “I played some joints around Texas that Buddy's folks were a little more touchy about him playing, so he didn't work those joints as much. He'd come out and sit in.

“He and I got to hanging out and practicing and sitting around. We finally started a bit of a music scene in Lubbock, because we called the Bamboo Club, which was actually a pretty far out joint—we called it the youth center on Friday nights. And we would play,” he said. “At first we’d just get together and practice, then I started playing with that band and it was a big hit. Sonny Curtis was in that band at the time. He played fiddle. It was country. That’s when we started veering off towards rock and roll.”

Allison didn’t back Holly on a commercial record date until Buddy’s second Decca session in Nashville in July of 1956, which produced the blazing Rock Around With Ollie Vee and the first version of That’ll Be The Day, co-written by Holly and Allison.  In February of ’57, Holly and his band (Allison, bassist Larry Welborn, and guitarist Niki Sullivan) came to Norman Petty’s studio to recut That’ll Be The Day. It came out on Brunswick as by The Crickets and paced the pop charts that fall.

Allison launched his short-lived recording career as Ivan on February 15, 1958 in Clovis with Holly on guitar, Crickets bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and Bo Clark deputizing on drums so J.I. could concentrate on his singing. “We did a tour in Australia with Jerry Lee Lewis and Paul Anka and some people in '58, the early part,” he said. “There was a fellow there named Johnny O'Keefe, and he had a number one record at the time, which was 'Wild Child'.I think he called it 'Wild One.' So we learned it during that period. We got to be good friends. Then we just came back and cut it, with me singing sort of for a joke, just >cause we liked the song. In fact, Jerry Lee learned it, and he's recorded it a time or two.” Indeed he did, for Sun.

With a wacky redo of the pop chestnut Oh You Beautiful Doll occupying the B-side, Petty shipped Real Wild Child off to Coral, and Ivan had himself a #68 pop seller that autumn. Allison’s run as a front man was short-lived—there was only one Coral followup, the novelty Frankie Frankenstein, the work of Jack Huddle, Jim Robinson, and Petty. “Ooh, >Frankie Frankenstein,= that=s a pretty bad (tune),” laughed Allison. Another O’Keefe tune, That’ll Be Alright, adorned the B-side.

Allison kept The Crickets going after Buddy’s death with Mauldin, Curtis on lead guitar, and a series of front men beginning with Earl Sinks. They cut the original I Fought The Law, a Curtis composition, in New York for Coral in May of ’59 after leaving Petty. Allison also played on The Everly Brothers’ ’59 hit (‘Til) I Kissed You, and after The Crickets relocated to Los Angeles, on sides by Liberty stars Eddie Cochran, Bobby Vee, and Johnny Burnette. The Crickets recorded for Liberty from 1961 to ’65, and with many personnel changes, performed into the new millennium with Allison, Curtis, and Mauldin their core members (Mauldin died in 2015).

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