That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly

That'll Be the Day is the sound of a record label cashing in on the one that got away. Buddy Holly's second and final studio album was assembled by Decca from songs he had cut for them in 1956, sessions produced by Owen Bradley that never gave the label a hit and left Holly chafing at Bradley's style and his grip on the studio. So the Lubbock kid took his songs to Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and "That'll Be the Day", issued by Brunswick under the Crickets' name, went to the top in both the US and the UK in September 1957.

Only after that did Decca bundle up the old sides and send them out under the hit's name. It was the last album to appear before Holly died in the plane crash of February 3, 1959, and copies are rare finds for collectors today.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.