Bob Thiele on signing "That'll Be The Day"
With reference to Bob Thiele's book "What a Wonderful World: A Lifetime of Recordings"
When Murray Deutch at Peer-Southern Publishing let Bob Thiele hear "That'll Be The Day", that was the day that changed modern music. Norman Petty sent the acetate demo, or "dubs", as Bob Thiele called them, of "That'll Be The Day/I'm Looking For Someone To Love". Murray visited Bob at his office and he played him the songs. Murray thought they were terrific, and prior to his visit to Bob, he went around large record labels in New York, touting the new dubs, but they all rejected them outright.
In Bob's own words from his book (above), "After all the geniuses and big shots had rejected it, it was time to give the second-class citizenry a shot. Jerry Wexler, chief of the gutsy and at the time, independent Atlantic Recording Corporation, listened to Holly & The Crickets and reacted as negatively as his colleagues at the major companies. Coral Records was next on Murray Deutch's B List, as it was basically a small label subsidiary of the massive Decca Corporation, (who had previously and very firmly passed on the group).
Bob continues...
When Murray played the recordings for me, I became rabid, as soon as I heard "That'll Be The Day". I said "Jesus Christ, this is fantastic!", and wanted to release it immediately. It would only cost a trifling $2,500 (small change even then - not even tip money now), to buy the Master, and as excited as I was, I anticipated some problems. I knew my production budget for the present fiscal period was depleted, and that my bosses, as rigidly unimaginative as they were miserly, could not properly comprehend what Buddy Holly and his group had originated,
Bob Thiele then fought tooth and nail to get Buddy & The Crickets signed, in the end, as a compromise, under Brunswick, because his big wig bosses did not want to put out That'll Be The Day under their main label Coral. The then President of Coral said, "Forget it ! you can't put this record out! This record absolutely cannot come out on Coral. It'll destroy the image of the label ! We have great and beloved artists like Lawrence Welk, Debbie Reynolds, The McGuire Sisters, Theresa Brewer. and now you want to come out with this horrible music by something called The Crickets !"
Bob suggested a compromise, and asked them, if not demanded, they be signed to their other, smaller and not doing very much label, Brunswick. He won his case and it was released and then it sold, and sold, and sold and became a hit, as we know.
Bob Thiele and Murray Deutch were big supporters of Buddy Holly and his music. Had they not stood up and voiced their support to release That'll Be The Day, music history would be slightly different than what we knew happened afterwards.
Bob's book "What a Wonderful World: A Lifetime of Recordings" is superb. He had a remarkable music career, some of it detailed in his self penned book, which is still available and is a hardback cover. A great read for music history fans, as well as Buddy Holly fans.
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