Actually, the Beatles were totally irrelevant in 1950s America, or anywhere else for that matter. 
As for Chuck Berry, in 1964 he was coming back from a prison sentence (for a dubious Mann Act conviction), and while he still had some good music left in him, was a known quantity and not new and exciting like British Invasion performers (ironically, their covers of Chuck Berry songs aided in keeping him relatively popular).
I think the key point is that when you look at fifties rock stars; Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Bo Diddley - all of their careers had peaked by around 1960. Many of them still had active careers but none of them was as big a rock star after 1960 as they had been before 1960. And the ones who did best were the ones who got out of rock and went into a different genre like country or soul. Or left singing to go into acting.
There’s no reason to think Richie Valens or Buddy Holly or J.P. Richardson would have been different. Even if they had lived past 1959, their biggest fame would have already been behind them.
You may be right. Are you old enough that you experienced all this as it unfolded? I’m not – I only know Holly through the music he left, with no real-time context. And when I listen to it I hear a genius who died before he could see many of his ideas reach fruition – and then I hear some of those same ideas flourishing in the early Beatles’ records a few years later. Hence my theory: Holly lives, Beatles smaller impact. But it’s also possible his star would have faded.
Well that’s kind of my point. If Berry had been white (or America less bigoted) his records would have been played on every station, he wouldn’t have been arrested, and could have staked a claim as the true king of rock & roll – diminishing the status now attributed to Elvis, the Beatles and others.
No, I’m just a speculative music fan.
Holly was a rock and roll star, but not on the level of Elvis. Elvis was in the stratosphere. Everyone else was at a lower level.
It was only 18-19 months from That’ll Be The Day to the plane crash, but it seems a lot longer than that. Holly already seems like a veteran on that Winter Dance Party tour, with Valens and Dion being younger.
Dion’s career is a good example because he didn’t die or have some other malady that’s attributed to all of these other cases. He and the Belmonts had some semi hits, Teenager In Love wasn’t even out yet at the time of the plane crash. Then he had those hits, split from the Belmonts and did even better 1961-63 with more of a turbo-charged doo-wop until the British Invasion killed off his chart action.
I think that’s the more likely trajectory for Buddy Holly. I just don’t think he was ever big enough to dictate the future of music. He was a star, but not a superstar. He might have had more hits in the early 1960s, but more likely he updates his sound some to reflect changing tastes instead of calling the shots. He’d have been welcome to have some sort of recording career and live act for the rest of his life based on his early hits.
Dying is a good career move for artists. Their works become much more valuable and demand skyrockets. Many artists have done much better after they die than before.
This sounds right to me. The changes in the early 60s, especially with Kennedy’s death, involved wholesale changes in the culture. The old guard, even those as successful as Elvis, didn’t maintain their cultural relevance except as throwbacks. They might have thrived in a different genre, but not in rock.
Their music probably sounded as out of date by the mid-60s as MC Hammer and Ton Loc did in a world of Tupac and Biggie in the few short years from the early 90s to the mid 90s.
Spot on. By 1960, Tin Pan Alley had figured-out the method of making safe teen pop that didn’t scare the parents and re-established itself. Dick Clark was essentially dictating what was In and what was Out from Philadelphia, and local Top 40 radio stations simply followed his lead. Don’t get me wrong. There were some great records from 60 to 63 from the Beach Boys, Phil Spector and others, but a lot of the pop hits from that era were very formulaic, unlike the unpredictable nature of early rock & roll. 1963 was a particularly dismal year for pop music. Clark, by his own admission, lost his power when the Beatles turned everything upside down. And 1964 was also the year that Motown really got its act together and perfected the sound they’d been working on for the first few years of the decade.
As I opined in an earlier post, Holly might have gravitated to Country and been quite successful. Who knows what might have happened with Valens.
Didn’t GOOD LUCK CHARM hit #1 in 1962?
It did. So Presley’s career started fading in 1963 not 1962.
I guess some more comments about Holly would be OK, right?
I think that Holly would have drifted over into production and songwriting and basically stopped performing/recording. He became heavily involved in production and studio recording towards the end of his life and I think this would have continued. I believe we would remember him for a string of good recordings and then as someone who developed studio and recording techniques that helped revolutionize records made by others.
I think you’re discounting the whole “The British Are Coming!” angle of promotion for the Beatles and subsequent groups from the UK. They were regarded like space aliens coming to visit the earth. Buddy Holly was talented, sure, but he didn’t have that mysterious aura that the Beatles had. In fact, no one else even came close.
As parodied in the Flintstone’s episode The Masquerade Party:
“Bedrock has been invaded by the Way-Outs! Strange creatures from way out!” and it turns out to be a DJ’s promotion…
Exactement, as the French would say!
It’s possible, but it’s maybe more possible that NYC was just a pipe dream for Holly like the Beatles going to India.
So many of the rockers wanted to dabble in other things, acting (Holly was taking acting classes) or producing or proteges or business side (Apple Records.) 95% of the time at least it all just comes down to dabbling and the artist is really only remembered for what made them a star.
Phil Spector, a less talented artist, certainly learned to work through the system and become something else, but I really don’t know if Holly could have managed the same transition, would have been willing to build the same sort of connections.