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| The Crickets and their new Britbikes; Joe B.Mauldin on this Thunderbird, Jerry Allison on his TR6A Trophy, Holly on his Cyclone |
I hadn't seen this home movie of
Buddy Holly and his band the Crickets with their new motorcycles. It's long been known that Holly and his musician pals were motorcyclists, including the tale of how he came to purchase an Ariel twin in
Dallas, Texas, in 1958. The band were experienced motorcyclists, Holly having owned a Triumph previously (and received a citation for riding without a muffler!), and while their hometown was
Lubbock, TX, the boys decided that Dallas would have a much bigger selection of machines.
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| Jerry Allison's receipt for his TR6A Trophy, engine #011972...who has it now? |
After being snubbed as 'bothersome teens' at several motorcycle dealerships along Main and Elm Streets - the dealers not realizing these were wealthy musicians, with a #1 hit on the charts (
'That'll be the Day') - they lads were actually kicked out of the Harley dealership (you can imagine their horseplay from the film), and took a cab to Ray Miller's Triumph and Ariel dealership at 3600 W. Davis St, out in the Dallas suburbs on old Highway 80.
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| Jack McCormack from importer Johnson Motors congratulates Ray Miller on the opening of his new Triumph/Ariel dealership. McCormack's story is worth retelling; he left Johnson two years later to become Honda's sole importer in 1961, selling a phenomenal 17,000 units, after spending literally half the combined ad budget of the entire US bike industry ($150k) on a series of pages in Life magazine. Honda refused to raise his salary after making them a household name, so he set up Suzuki US in '63. In 1967 he founded American Eagle, which offered a wide range of re-badged Laverda, Kawasaki, Italjet, and Sprites. |
Ray Miller had only
opened his shop the previous year, in the summer of 1957, having moved from El Centro CA; he and his wife must have watched the Ed Sullivan Show, for they recognized the lanky boys (Holly was just under 6' and weighed 145lbs), and gave them the red carpet treatment. While Holly chose the rare 650cc
Ariel Cyclone (only 21 were noted in factory record - it was the high-compression, 40hp version of the more sedate
Huntmaster), bassist
Joe B. Mauldin chose a
Triumph Thunderbird, and drummer Jerry Allison bought a
Triumph TR6A Trophy...all paid with cash on the spot. They each bought the 'biker' hats shown in the photo, too!
Later in 1958, Holly 'went solo' and moved to NYC, and played under his own name with
Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch, and
Waylon Jennings, who purchased Holly's Ariel after the
'day the music died' plane crash. The Jennings family still owns the Ariel; what became of the two Triumphs is a mystery.
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| Holly's 1958 Ariel Cyclone, in Waylon Jennings' home |
