This'll Be the Day

Happy birthday to rock-and-roll legend, Buddy Holly.

Born on this day in 1936, Holly was influenced by rhythm and blues, bluegrass, and country music. He formed the Crickets in 1957, and he crafted the hit singles "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" before his untimely death in a 1959 plane crash.

The handsome guitarist featured here was whittled by Shields Landon Jones. After his first wife's death and his retirement from forty-five years with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, Jones said, "A person has to have some work to do, so I carve some and play the fiddle." Bowie knife in hand, Jones carved figure and animals using the poplar, walnut, and maple he gathered in the woods of West Virginia.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Shields Landon ("S.L.") Jones, 1901–97, Guitarist, 1976, carved and painted wood, 25 x 9 1/4 x 7 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.