Jerry Allison, Buddy Holly's Drummer, Dead At 82

Jerry Allison (top), drummer for rock legend Buddy Holly (bottom), died Monday at age 82.  (Photo: RB via Getty Images)

Jerry Allison, a pioneering rock drummer who worked with rock legend Buddy Holly and his band The Crickets, died Monday at age 82.

Allison’s death was announced via a post on the official Buddy Holly Facebook page, which stated:

Allison was Holly’s good friend and collaborator and co-wrote some of their most enduring songs, including “That’ll Be The Day,” “Not Fade Away,” and “Peggy Sue,” which was named after Allison’s first wife.

Born in 1939, Allison started playing the drums after his family moved to Lubbock, Texas, when he was 10, according to Variety.

Allison told Lubbock Online in 2012 that he was inspired to “whack the drums” after seeing a halftime show at a football game. Although he joined the school band, his musical career went in a different direction after he met Holly in junior high.

“We met in the school yard at J.T. Hutchinson Junior High School. But we did not become best friends until some time in high school,” Allison remembered. “Buddy and [bassist] Bob Montgomery played for a school assembly program during my eighth-grade year, and it affected me like marching band in the fifth grade. It was the very best live music I had heard up to then.”

Although Allison did briefly play in the Texas Tech school band, he dropped out as his music career took off.

“Buddy got us a job backing Hank Thompson and George Jones and others for two weeks. We traveled 6,000 miles in two weeks,” he told Texas Music Monthly. “I couldn’t stay in college.”

Holly and Allison decided to name their band the Crickets after being inspired by a band called the Spiders.

“We looked in the dictionary under insects and stopped at cricket. We had a lot of crickets in Texas that year, too,” Allison said.

Allison and Holly wrote the breakthrough hit “That’ll Be The Day” after seeing “The Searchers,” a John Wayne Western that features the actor saying the line throughout the film.

“Buddy said, ‘Let’s write a song,’ and I said, ‘That’ll be the day!’ We worked on it for about half an hour,” Allison recalled.

Although legendary country music producer Owen Bradley dismissed the song as “one of the worst” he had ever heard, Brunswick Records’ Bob Thiele signed Holly and the Crickets after he heard his kids playing the demo recording over and over again.

Allison also helped Holly write “Peggy Sue,” which was originally called “Cindy Lou” after Holly’s niece. Allison convinced Holly to change the title to the name of his then-girlfriend and future wife, Peggy Sue Gerron.

Allison approached percussion in innovative ways, such as by using a paradiddle beat on “Peggy Sue,” slapping his hands on his thighs for “Everyday,” and playing only tom-toms on the Everly Brothers’ 1960 hit “(Till) I Kissed You,” which was recorded after Holly’s death.

He also had a minor hit in 1958 with “Real Wild Child,” which he recorded under the name Ivan.

After Holly died in a plane crash in 1959, Allison continued recording with the Crickets and writing songs, including “More Than I Can Say,” which, in 1980, became a No. 2 hit for Leo Sayer.

In addition, Allison and other members of the Crickets worked as Waylon Jennings’ backup band in the 1970s, and Allison recorded with artists including Bobby Vee, Nanci Griffith and Paul McCartney.

Although Holly was inducted into the first class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Crickets weren’t inducted until 2012. “That’ll Be The Day” was placed in the National Recording Registry in 2005.

Allison last performed with the Crickets in 2016 before retiring to a farm outside Nashville.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.