Buddy Holly - The NEW Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 (Purple Chick) (14 Disc Set + DVD)

Dag nabbit...

A couple of years ago, I posted what was known as the Holy Grail of Buddy Holly offerings, an eleven-disc set compiled by the elusive, reclusive Purple Chick collective purported to contain every known song, utterance and appearance on vinyl or film of the great rock 'n' roll pioneer Buddy Holly. I assumed, as did many of you, that this set was the be-all and end-all, the final definitive word on Holly's vocal and musical appearances, and I presented it as such, in a post laden with stylish poetic trappings and heartfelt tributes to the man and the mass of music he left behind...

Turns out, however, that the Complete Buddy Holly wasn't as complete as all of us thought it was.

Back in 2017, Purple Chick announced that they had put together an even MORE definitive Buddy Holly set, featuring songs that were inadvertently left out or otherwise unavailable for inclusion in the 2005 version. I didn't get wind of this new and improved set until last year... simply because I hadn't been looking for it, since I'd already assumed I had it all. I went ahead and acquired this new version, and started trying to document the changes between new and old for a possible later release on this blog. But honestly, my heart wasn't in it. It took me FOREVER to sort out the titles and tags on the previous set, and I just didn't have the stomach or wherewithal to go through the drudgery of putting together another writeup on this new set, and/or doing a disc-to-disc, track-by-track comparison of the former "Complete" Buddy Holly Purple Chick set and this replacement one. 

Fortunately, the people at Purple Chick saved me the trouble, and already put one together in a text file attached to this compilation. For the sake of my time and my sanity, I've taken the liberty of "appropriating" their narrative/description below:

The original Complete Buddy Holly remains one of our favorite projects. (Some Purple Chick restorations even made it - via Rev-Ola's "Gotta Roll" which added unnecessary processing - onto the wonderful-but-too-flawed Hip-O Select 'complete' collection).

Because a number of new and improved sources have appeared over the last fifteen years or so, we thought it was time for a Purpler Chick Completer Buddy Holly. We redid the whole set from scratch: almost everything has either been sonically improved from the earlier version or - most of the time - is from a different source entirely.

Even better, now that we have a complete* set of Buddy's undubbed recordings we can ignore the posthumous overdubs and present the absolute complete Buddy Holly on just five CDs.

So, if you want, you can completely forget the other discs, depending on how interested you are in their various themes. For example, you might not care about our (completely redone) selection of Buddy's record collection or the experimental stereo extractions and synchronizations. In particular, the "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" stereo tracks need more work but we wanted to get the set out before doomsday.

(*NOTE: we believe the so-called 'lesser dubbed' versions of "Wishing" and "Reminiscing" are actually undubbed versions. Even if that is not the case, any overdubs are so unobtrusive that it shouldn't prevent them from being the sole exclusions from the 'undubbed' section).

AND, here's the thing. Maybe you're not a CD person anymore. Maybe you just like the files. Well, they're all named so you can copy and paste into one folder and have them run chronologically, with session recordings and interviews all mixed with the studio sessions (you'll have to remove the 'i' prefix for the interviews. (You probably want to leave the 'BRC' and 'S' prefixes alone for Buddy's record collection and experimental stereo recordings.)

So here's what we have:

DISCS 1 - 5 - The Complete Buddy Holly

All of Buddy's studio recordings, live appearances, home recordings, and interviews.

Everything comes from the best available source; with many significant sonic upgrades including, for the first (*or second) time anywhere:

- Sonic improvements to the 'first four' recordings;
- An in-line "I Guess I Was Just A Fool" without the acetate skip;
- Un-composited alternate "Don't Come Back Knockin'" take fragments;
- The complete live Maybe Baby from Off The Record*;
- "Drown In My Own Tears" without the wow and flutter;
- A new, upgraded source for the KLLL promos; and
- Many more surprises...

DISC 6 - The Completer Buddy Holly

Outfakes, songwriting and a tribute

This disc collects the important outfakes (complete takes created from incomplete sources or edits patching audio errors); all of the songs Buddy co-wrote but never recorded; plus Buddy's friend Snuff Garrett's radio show from the day the music died.

DISCS 7 - 8 - Buddy For Others

All of the circulating sessions featuring Buddy as a session guitarist, vocalist and/or producer

Featuring numerous additional session recordings compared with our last set. It seems the only significant tracks now missing are Lloyd Call's "Little Cowboy" and Carolyn Hester's "A Little While Ago"

Caveat: some of the session appearances might not include Buddy after all. We excluded tracks that definitively did not include Buddy but otherwise took a 'when in doubt, leave them in' approach (while noting any questions about Buddy's contributions).

DISCS 9 - 10 - Dick Jacobs and Norman Petty overdubs and mixes

All of the posthumous releases from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

DISCS 11 - 12

The rest of the posthumous overdubs - from the 1980s right through the 2010s.
(You'll have to buy the recent Philharmonic Orchestra CD and slot in those tracks.)

DISCS 13 - 14

Buddy's record collection; and stereo Buddy.

The original versions of the songs Buddy recorded, plus a selection of Buddy's songs in synchronized stereo and/or digitally extracted stereo.

(Most of these are Purple Chick creations but some we grabbed from the Internet and, unfortunately, did not keep attribution notes at the time. Sorry!)

DVD

OK, this is just the old DVD. We couldn't face redoing it just for about a half-second of additional HighTime footage; and to change the mistaken "Clear Lake" caption. Then again, we improved the sound of some of the 'live' recordings on the CDs so maybe we should have fixed that on the DVD as well.

So, while I am leaving the old post from 2018 up (I hate taking posts down), I am retiring the request link for the music there (the 11-disc version) in favor of the one provided below (the 14-disc-plus set). I still have the old and now apparently obsolete 11-disc version; if you're still burning to have that one as well, let me know.  Just know that everything on that set is present here as well.

Once again, I proudly offer to you all Purple Chick's new and expanded The Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 from 2017, in the hope that this will be the final time they modify this huge collection. Take a look, have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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Don Dixon - Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To

For some odd reason, an old post from ten years back, Marti Jones's Unsophisticated Time (her solo debut), has been getting a lot of views this week. With that, I thought I'd take the opportunity to pen a few words regarding her future husband's first album, also put out later that year.

Don Dixon was born in South Carolina in 1950, later moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He got into music while in junior high school there, starting with bass guitar (a cheap Danelectro Silvertone from Sears department store), which he played in a pickup band he formed with some school friends.  Later, while in high school, he moved to upright bass, and began playing with a local jazz band as an established member.

After his high school graduation, Dixon attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where in 1969, with a number of other UNC freshmen, he formed the band Arrogance. Arrogance started out as a covers band, doing versions of songs by The Beatles, Mountain, Cream and Black Sabbath, but soon began penning and performing their own original tunes. The band gained a huge following in the Piedmont area, but despite several attempts to broaden their reach and audience (including a couple of major label releases on Vanguard Records and Warner Brothers Records) and changes in their musical approach (from straight-ahead rock, to early '70s folk, late '70s New Wave/power pop and early '80s post-punk), they never managed to break out nationally. After a final series of local North Carolina concerts, Arrogance disbanded after fourteen years in 1983.

However, in late 1982, with the band obviously on its last legs, Dixon was contacted by an old friend and fellow musician, Mitch Easter, who wanted his assistance in producing the debut album by a band from Athens, Georgia who Easter had worked with the year before, a four-member combo called R.E.M. In 1981 at his small studio located in his parents' garage in Winston-Salem, Easter had produced the band's first single, "Radio Free Europe", an independent release that put R.E.M. on the map and led directly to them being signed by industry giant I.R.S. Records. The group had begun recording their first album with this major label in Boston in the fall of 1982, but the sessions had not gone well, so the band pleaded with I.R.S. to allow them to travel back to North Carolina to let Easter try his hand at producing once again. The label granted conditional permission to R.E.M. to record one song with Easter, that I.R.S. would then assess and determine if it was good enough to allow the rest of the album's recording to take place there. Easter knew he was under a lot of pressure to deliver, and therefore called upon Dixon and his trusted ear to assist him in this tryout.

Well, the rest is history: R.E.M. recorded "Pilgrimage" with Easter and Dixon producing, a song that I.R.S. subsequently flipped over, and the rest of the album, titled Murmur, was OKed for recording with the producing duo. Murmur was a huge critical success, eventually reaching #36 on the Billboard Album charts, and the reputations of both Easter and Dixon were made. From then on, a steady stream of bands came through North Carolina to have their records produced by the pair, or by Easter or Dixon separately, including Guadalcanal Diary, The Smithereens, Chris Stamey, Fetchin Bones, Game Theory, Pylon, The Connells, The Waxing Poetics, and many, many more. The sound being produced by the pair - characterized mainly by minimal/no guitar distortion and "dry" drumming - was described/celebrated as "jangle pop", and in the mid-'80s, it was the sound of college and independent alternative radio nationwide.

[Dixon's mid-eighties work in particular with Fetchin Bones, a North Carolina early proto-grunge band, almost paid big dividends for him a few years later, as he was a top choice to produce the sophomore album by a Washington State group on the verge of superstardom. As Dixon tells the story: "Fetchin Bones was definitely an early, quirky grunge band, you know, pre-grunge, because this was all in the ’80s. I got called to do that Nirvana

record [Nevermind]. Went out to spend some time with them before ”[Smells Like] Teen Spirit.” They were playing some version of it, but it didn’t have any real words yet. That was ’91. We actually worked out a deal, but they ultimately thought I wanted too much money ... Butch Vig was going to engineer, I was going to produce, but they came to their senses and didn’t give me all that money I was asking for. Butch ended up making the record and did a great job ... It only increased my respect for them that they didn’t want to waste money, because they didn’t need me. They really didn’t."]

In 1985, Dixon was assigned production duties by A&M Records for Marti Jones, who had just come off a disastrous stint with Color Me Gone and was looking to establish herself as an individual artist. Her first solo album, Unsophisticated Time, was a great critical success; although it didn't make any big waves commercially, it got her noticed in certain areas (I mentioned before how songs from this disc were in heavy rotation in the Washington, DC area in 1985-86). And it began a longstanding professional collaboration between Jones and Dixon (he produced her next four albums) that blossomed into a romance; the pair married in 1988.

But in 1985, on the strength of his reputation as a producer and residual word-of-mouth praise for his work with the now-defunct Arrogance, Enigma Records gave Dixon the opportunity to release his own solo record. His initial outing, titled Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, contains recordings and reworkings of songs from his personal music stash of demos and singles written and performed over the previous five years.  Some dated back from his Arrogance days, others were 4-track home recordings and one had been recently recorded at Mitch Easter’s garage studio (a cover of Nick Lowe's "Skin Deep", featuring Easter on lead guitar).   But all of them showcase Dixon's clever, sometimes biting wordplay, vocal adeptness, and affection for ’60s pop and R&B. I found the entire disc to be pretty good.

This album did practically nothing on the mainstream charts (reaching a high of only #162 on the Billboard Album rankings).  But it was championed by alternative and college radio; the disc's lead single "Praying Mantis" was played constantly on DC's WHFS for weeks in late 1985/early 1986.  Here's the video:

Dixon recorded prolifically for the next three decades, mostly between producing duties, releasing eleven more albums either individually or in collaboration with other artists, including his wife.  He hasn't put out a record of his own since 2013's High & Filthy & Borderline. But he still occasionally performs, usually with Marti Jones, and they are both still beloved and appreciated by generations of music fans, myself included.

Despite containing one of Dixon's most popular, enduring songs, his debut album has long been out of print, and rather difficult to track down online.  Therefore, here it is for your enjoyment: Don Dixon's impossibly hard-to-find solo debut album, Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, released on Enigma Records in the latter half of 1985.   Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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