Buddy Holly: A Biography

Front Cover
St. Martin's Press, 1995 - 422 pages
Here, in Buddy Holly, Ellis Amburn presents the most comprehensive biography ever written about this legendary figure, a young man who transformed the course of American music with his shocking blend of country and western and rhythm 'n' blues. Having devoted the last five years of his life to this work - crisscrossing the rural paths of the United States from Texas to Iowa to Minnesota - Amburn portrays Holly as a mythic antihero, whose rebellious, dramatic life was a reaction against the constricting values of America in the 1950s, when his music was regarded as the work of the devil. From his wild days as a juvenile delinquent, to his first romances, to his early associations with then virtually unknown singers like Elvis Presley and Waylon Jennings, Holly emerges as a deeply tortured, driven individual and a brilliantly talented young man in a hurry to make it as a star.

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About the author (1995)

Ellis Amburn was born in Texas on August 2, 1933. He graduated from Texas Christian University in 1954. He worked as a reporter-researcher at Newsweek before becoming a book editor at Putnam, where he edited John le Carré and Jack Kerouac. Amburn was also an editor-in-chief at Delacorte and William Morrow. He worked as a ghostwriter with Priscilla Presley, Shelley Winters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Sammy Davis, Jr. He wrote several biographies including Buddy Holly: A Biography, Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story, The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty, Subterranean Kerouac, and Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin. He died after a long illness on August 18, 2018 at the age of 85.

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