Buddy Holly and the Crickets at The Elephant and Castle

---

Buddy Holly and the Crickets were an American pop group of the late 1950s who made a remarkable contribution to the development of popular music, producing a series of records that were new, exciting, full of energy and  joyous enthusiasm. Works like 'That'll be the Day' and 'Peggy Sue' are instantly  recognisable to us all, even after a period of over fifty years has past.

Along with performers like Elvis Presley, Ritchie Valens and The Big  Bopper they helped set the scene for the explosion of pop music during the  1960s. Without Buddy Holly and his 1950s contemporaries there would have  been no Beatles, no Rolling Stones - at least not in the form we know them.

It is a sad fact that Buddy Holly had a short career of just about twenty  months, between 27th May 1957 when he released his first hit record 'That'll  Be The Day' and 3rd February 1959 when he was killed in an air crash in   Iowa. He was taking part in an exhausting tour of America, and, together  with two other stars of the time, Ritchie Valens and Jiles Perry Richardson,  known as The Big Bopper, he chartered a light plane to take them from Mason  City in Iowa to Fargo, North Dakota. Holly was worn out travelling from  city to city in a freezing bus, so took the decision to hire a plane for  this leg of the tour. But the plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, ran into a blizzard   just outside Mason City and crashed into a frozen snow-covered field, killing  the three passengers and the pilot.

The shortness of Buddy Holly's career makes it all the more special that  he had time to undertake a tour of Britain, which happened during the month  of March 1958, less than a year before his death. He visited nineteen cities   throughout the country, and it is a wonderful fact that the tour opened  on 1st March 1958 with two shows at The Trocadero at The Elephant and Castle,   which had 3,400 seats and was the largest cinema in Britain. 

 The Trocadero was one of the last surviving relics of the pre-war Elephant and Castle, which was once so rich in theatres, cinemas, pubs and shops  that it was known as the Piccadilly of the South. Instead of being merely  the brutal traffic roundabout it now is, the Elephant and Castle once had   a strong cultural identity, rough and ready throughout, but vibrantly alive,  and Buddy Holly's British debut at The Trocadero indicates the way it could  capture contemporary trends and introduce the country to new and exciting  movements in popular culture.  

Here is the itinerary of Buddy Holly's Tour of Britain. It gives an idea of just how exhausting tours like this were, two, sometimes three shows  per day, seven days a week, for almost a full month. 

Buddy Holly tour of Britain, March 1958

• March 1, 1958 - Trocadero - Elephant & Castle, London (2 shows)
• March 2, 1958 - Gaumont State - Kilburn, London (2 shows)
• March 3, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Southampton, Hampshire (2 shows)
• March 4, 1958 - City Hall - Sheffield, Yorkshire (2 shows)
• March 5, 1958 - Globe Theatre - Stockton-On-Tees, Durham (2 shows)
• March 6, 1958 - City Hall - Newcastle-On-Tyne, Northumberland (2   shows)
• March 7, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (2   shows)
• March 8, 1958 - Odeon Theatre - Nottingham (3 shows)
• March 9, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Bradford, Yorkshire (2 shows)
• March 10, 1958 - Town Hall - Birmingham, Warwickshire (2 shows)
• March 11, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Worcester (2 shows)
• March 12, 1958 - Davis Theatre - Croydon (2 shows)
• March 13, 1958 - Grenada Theatre - East Ham, London(2 shows)
• March 14, 1958 - Grenada Theatre - Woolwich, London (2 shows)
• March 15, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Ipswich, Suffolk (3 shows)
• March 16, 1958 - De Montfort Hall - Leicester (2 shows)
• March 17, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Doncaster, Yorkshire (2 shows)
• March 18, 1958 - Ritz Theatre - Wigan, Lancashire (2 shows)
• March 19, 1958 - Regal Cinema - Hull, Yorkshire (2 shows)
• March 20, 1958 - Philharmonic Hall - Liverpool (2 shows)
• March 21, 1958 - Granada Theatre - W althamstowe, London (2 shows)
• March 22, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Salisbury, Wiltshire (2 shows)
• March 23, 1958 - Colston Hall - Bristol, Gloucestershire (2 shows)
• March 24, 1958 - Capitol Cinema - Cardiff (2 shows)
• March 25, 1958 - Gaumont Theatre - Hammersmith, London (2 shows)