Surf will host largest ever Cricket reunion as part of Winter Dance Party

The Surf Ballroom & Museum will host the largest ever Crickets band member reunion as part of its annual Winter Dance Party event, Feb. 3-6.  The Saturday evening highlight will feature a tribute to the band’s late bassist, Joe B. Mauldin. Many of the past and present Crickets members will perform together and make music history at the legendary venue, including current members J.I. Allison and Sonny Curtis, along with Glenn D. Hardin, Tommy Allsup, Tonio K., Gordon Payne, Albert Lee, Keith Allison and Special Guests The Killer Vees.

Joe B. Mauldin was one of the original Crickets, a rock ‘n roll band originally formed in Lubbock, Texas, by Buddy Holly and J.I. Allison.  They were one of the first rock ‘n roll bands to be self-contained; writing, playing, producing and recording their own material. They were among the first, too, to utilize overdubbing and multi-track recording years before it became standard studio practice. Above all, they were the first rock musicians to make rock ‘n roll truly accessible to their audience; their instrumental format of guitar, drums and bass spawned thousands of garage bands worldwide – including one formed by a very young John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Mauldin was also ranked among the top rock bassists by the “Book of Lists,” became a recording engineer at Gold Star Studios, the legendary Los Angeles studio that became the hit factory for Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and other major ‘60s rock performers. While at Gold Star, Mauldin engineered many hit recording sessions including those with Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba

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Band, Phil Spector, Leon Russell and Maureen McGovern. An accomplished writer as well as performer, Mauldin penned “Last Night,” “I’m Gonna Love You Too” and “Well All Right.” In addition to his work with the Crickets, he toured with the Everly Brothers, Johnny Burnette, Nanci Griffith and Waylon Jennings before his death in February 2015.

In a career that has spanned nearly five decades and millions of records, The Crickets are unquestionably The American Rock and Roll Band. Since the group’s founding in 1957, they have influenced virtually every major rock performer in the United States and abroad – from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles (whose name was even Crickets- inspired). Their hits “That’ll Be The day,” Peggy Sue,” “Oh Boy,” “Not Fade Away,” “Maybe Baby,” “It’s So Easy,” “I Fought The Law“ and “More Than I Can Say” are bona fide rock classics and considered by many to be primary lessons in how rock music should be written, played and enjoyed. As Paul McCartney once put it, “If it wasn’t for the Crickets, there wouldn’t be any Beatles.”

With the release of “That’ll Be The Day” in June of 1957 and their many subsequent hits, The Crickets became the leading rock and roll band in the world. In late 1958, Buddy Holly decided to move to New York and become more involved in the business side of music. Exhausted from touring, Nikki Sullivan left the Crickets at the end of 1957. Holly, Mauldin and Allison carried on as a trio for several months. Tommy Allsup, a guitarist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who Holly met at Petty’s studio, joined in the summer of 1958, recording such classics as “Love’s Made a Fool of You” and “It’s So Easy” with Holly and the Crickets. Tommy Allsup was the guitarist on the ill-fated 1959 Winter Dance Party Tour.

After the tragedy, Allison and Mauldin continued on with The Crickets, adding their old friend Sonny Curtis as lead guitarist and vocalist. Sonny had played guitar and fiddle in earlier groups with Buddy and J.I, so his joining was a welcome and seamless fit with the band’s unique sound and approach. The first Crickets’ album without Buddy Holly, In Style With The Crickets, was recorded in the same Clovis, New Mexico studio as had all their hits, with additional sessions in New York and Los Angeles. Their classics “I Fought The Law” and “More Than I Can Say” were introduced on this album. Their early-Sixties albums included “Bobby Vee Meets the Crickets” (1962), Some Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Else!!! (1963) and California Sun (1964). This Crickets lineup comprised Allison, Curtis, keyboardist Glenn D. Hardin (who later played with Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris) and bassist Jerry Naylor.

Glenn D. Hardin became a member of the Crickets in 1961. He played the piano on the singles “My Little Girl” and “(They Call Her) La Bamba,” on their album California Sun. Additionally, after Joe B. Mauldin temporarily left the group, Hardin furnished their bass sound with a Fender Rhodes piano bass. He also wrote songs with Crickets guitarist/singer Sonny Curtis, co-authoring the group’s single “Teardrops Feel Like Rain,” and the songs “Count Me In,” “My Heart’s Symphony,” and “Where Will the Word Come From,” recorded by their fellow Liberty Records artists Gary Lewis & the Playboys.

In the early 1970s, Tonio K. (born Steve Krikorian) recorded two albums with Buddy Holly’s backing band, The Crickets. The group consisted of founding members J.I. Allison and Sonny Curtis, plus Ric Gretch (Blind Faith, Traffic), Nick van Maarth and Albert Lee (Eric Clapton).

Remnants (1973) and Long Way from Lubbock (1974) were produced by long-time Cricket and Holly cohort Bob Montgomery. In 2004, Tonio K. reunited with the Crickets for a track on their star- studded (Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, Phil Everly) album, The Crickets and Their Buddies, singing lead on the Holly classic, “Not Fade Away.”

Gordon Payne was Waylon Jennings’ right-hand man as guitarist and singer. Gordon spent ten years, from 1985 to 1994, as lead singer and guitarist with his pals J.I. Allison and Joe B. Mauldin of The Crickets.

Known best for his fingerstyle and hybrid picking technique, guitarist Albert Lee toured with the Crickets in 1973. Lee has worked with many famous musicians from a wide range of genres, including the likes of Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Rodney Crowell, Ricky Skaggs, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, The Everly Brothers, and Carlene Carter. Albert Lee is universally recognized in music circles as one of the world’s finest, as well as one of the top rockabilly guitarists in history. In fact, Eric Clapton is on record stating that Albert Lee is “the greatest guitarist in the world.”

A cousin to J.I. Allison, Keith Allison passed briefly through the lineup of The Crickets and has also worked with Roy Orbison, Ray Peterson, The Monkees, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and in  1969, he joined Paul Revere & the Raiders for several years. Allison continues to perform today.  He’s a longtime member of the Waddy Watchel Band, and also played bass on Last Man Standing, the 2007 album by rock and roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis; as well as recording  backing vocals on “Love’s Made A Fool of You” on the Crickets 2004 album, The Crickets and Their Buddies.

The Crickets continued to tour and record, issuing albums throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. In April of 1995, they recorded “Not Fade Away” with Levon Helm and The Band for a critically-acclaimed musical tribute to Buddy Holly entitled “Not Fade Away” released on Decca Records. The following year, The Crickets recorded Too Much Monday Morning an album of all new material and which featured guest vocalist Nanci Griffith. It was released on the British label, Carlton. That year they also toured extensively with Nanci Griffith and The Blue Moon Orchestra.

As the millennium approached, the Crickets were again in the studio with Grammy Award-winning producer Greg Ladanyi to record what may well be their most memorable album of all, The Crickets and Their Buddies. The album features 15 new tracks of the band’s classic hits with the Crickets joined by their “buddies” – Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, John Prine, Rodney Crowell, Albert Lee, Nanci Griffith, J.D. Souther, Johnny Rivers, Phil Everly, Vince Neil, Keith Allison, Bobby Vee, Tonio K. & Peter Case and Waylon Jennings (one of his last recordings).

An entire schedule of events for the 2016 Winter Dance Party is located at www.surfballroom.com.

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