Peggy Sue
by Buddy Holly
- 152
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 66
- Danceability
- 91
- Acousticness
Buddy Holly released "Peggy Sue" on September 20, 1957, while he was making records with the Crickets, though the band is not named on the label. Joe B. Mauldin played string bass, Niki Sullivan rhythm guitar and Jerry Allison drums. Allison plays paradiddles throughout, and the drums fade in and out thanks to real-time engineering by the producer, Norman Petty, at his studio in Clovis, New Mexico.
The song began as "Cindy Lou", named after Holly's niece. The title changed to "Peggy Sue", after Peggy Sue Gerron, who was Allison's girlfriend and later his wife, after the couple had temporarily broken up. In her memoir she said she first heard it at a live show at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium in 1957 and was so embarrassed she could have died. At first only Allison and Petty were listed as authors. After Holly died, Allison insisted that Holly be added as a co-writer.
The single reached number three on the Billboard Top 100 in 1957. On December 5, 1958, Holly recorded a demo of a sequel, "Peggy Sue Got Married", alone with his guitar in his New York City apartment. The Crickets released a version in 1960.
Peggy Sue runs at 152 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.58 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 395 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.