On October 27, 1957, American Rockabilly and rock music pioneer Buddy Holly and his band the Crickets released their second 45 rpm single, as a follow-up to their first smash hit “Peggy Sue.” This new single featured “Oh Boy” on one side and “Not Fade Away” on the other.
Although “Not Fade Away” was actually the “B” side of the record, it eventually became much more widely known.
It’s a classic rock ode with a Bo Diddley beat about a guy whose love for his girl is “bigger than a Cadillac” – a love, the singer says, that’s real and “will not fade away.”
The music and lyrics were written by Holly, whose birth name was Charles Hardin Holley. On the record, it’s credited to him as “Charles Hardin” with what was pro-forma co-writing credit to his producer Norman Petty.
The single didn’t sell well enough to appear on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1957. However, it helped boost Holly’s initial fame and became a favorite of many Buddy Holly fans.
Holly was killed in a tragic plane crash on February 3, 1959, a date memorably called “the day the music died” by Don McLean in his 1971 hit song “American Pie.”
In the decades since then, “Not Fade Away” has become one of the most famous, most covered early rock songs.
The Rolling Stones’ 1964 version was one of their first hits.
The song has also been recorded by many other groups and musicians, including: The Everly Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, The Byrds, Tom Petty, James Taylor, and Sheryl Crow.
Although Holly’s song popularized the phrase “not fade away” as a hip phrase, it had been used in literature as far back as the early 1800s.
For example, in 1824 the American Unitarian preacher and writer William Ellery Channing used it in a treatise about the English poet John Milton, who is best known for the epic poem Paradise Lost. He said that Milton had a “genius ‘which would not fade away.'” The fact that Channing put quotation marks around the words “which would not fade away” suggests that he was quoting an already well known phrase.
It’s likely that “not fade away” is a vernacular echo of an earlier phrase found in the Bible: “fadeth not away.”
In I Peter 5, Saint Peter, the apostle of Jesus who is considered to be the first Pope of the Catholic Church, gives some advice to leaders of the growing number of Christian congregations.
Among other things, he tells them they need to take care of their flocks and set good examples for them. If they do, he explains, they will be rewarded with a crown of glory that won’t fade away when Jesus returns in the Second Coming to take true believers to heaven.
In verse I Peter 5:2-4 of the King James Version of the Bible, Peter’s words are given like this:
“…Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.”
Nobody says “fadeth not away” nowadays unless they are quoting the Bible. But the phrase “not fade away” is heard fairly often. My favorite recent example was its use as the title of an episode of the AMC Network TV show “Fear the Walking Dead.”
I suspect Buddy Holly’s song and the phrase “not fade away” will continue to be used even after those of us who were around when Buddy Holly first sang those words have fadeth away.
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