2025’s “Top” Ten Music Losses: Sonny Curtis (#6)

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While it’s brutally cold outside, here in the house things are fine and warm. I’m feeling well, doing a load of laundry now (that might sound like “work,” but let’s face it, I’m not collecting water from the creek, warming it up over a fire, then scrubbing the clothes on a washboard [“worshboard” for you fans of Loretta Lynn’s song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” ]), and ready to salute another great musician we lost last year. #6: Sonny Curtis Trust me, know DO know a song by this guy. He wrote the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. He also wrote “I Fought the Law.” Oh, and the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back”? He wrote that too. Most people know Sonny Curtis, apart from those songs, as having “survived” the Buddy Holly/Big Bopper/Ritchie Valens plane crash. Holly had rented the plane for he and his band; however, Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to J.P. Richardson because the Big Bopper had the flu. Curtis was ready to go, then went back into the Surf Ballroom to make one last check to make sure they’d packed everything. In the green room, he ran into Ritchie Valens. Valens talked Curtis into flipping a coin (a silver half-dollar from 1956, the same year of the coin Curtis flipped, is hanging at the entrance to the green room in the Surf Ballroom where the exchange took place) for the last seat. Valens called correctly, telling Curtis, “It’s the first time I ever won anything.” After the tragedy, Curtis continued writing songs, playing guitar (taking former members of the Crickets on the road), and producing records. His career was long and varied, including those three iconic songs listed above. Curtis was the last surviving member of the Buddy Holly/Crickets circle. In the Surf Ballroom, there’s a quote from one of Sonny’s songs: And, you know, the levee ain’t dry And the music didn’t die ’Cause Buddy Holly lives every time we play rock and roll. You too, Sonny. Rock on. Sonny Curtis Born May 9, 1937, Meadow, Texas Died September 19, 2025, Nashville, Tennessee (pneumonia) (age 88) HALLS OF FAME: Rock and Roll, 2012 (with the Crickets); Nashville Songwriters, 1991; Musicians, 2007 (with the Crickets) Sonny and the Crickets’ first recording of the classic “I Fought the Law”: