Biography
An outlier amid the mid-1960s scene, fellow Texan Bobby Fuller stood apart through his open admiration for Buddy Holly. Playing a Stratocaster and delivering a bold, expansive tone, he came closest at peak moments to evoking the sound Holly might have achieved had he lived into that decade. In 1966 he reached the Top 30 with a version of Holly’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You” and climbed to the Top Ten with “I Fought the Law,” a song written by former Cricket Sonny Curtis. Just as national recognition arrived, Fuller died under puzzling conditions inside a parked car in Hollywood; authorities ruled the death a suicide, yet nearly everyone acquainted with him rejected that conclusion. His brief stretch of widespread fame capped roughly six years of steady recording that yielded numerous strong sides. After issuing a handful of local singles from his El Paso base in the early ’60s, he relocated to California with his group in 1964, entertained a short-lived interest in surf music, and soon aligned with producer Bob Keene. During his 1965–1966 tenure on Mustang he cut many originals beyond the hits—“Let Her Dance,” “Another Sad and Lonely Night,” “My True Love,” “Never to Be Forgotten,” “Fool of Love,” and “The Magic Touch” among them. These rocking, melodic, and buoyant performances positioned Fuller as a natural successor to early rock & roll and rockabilly without any trace of deliberate revivalism. Sustained popularity during the psychedelic era seems unlikely, yet he would surely have continued to explore fresh territory. A gifted and prolific songwriter as well as a studio craftsman, he absorbed influences from Eddie Cochran and, to a modest degree, the dense guitar textures of the British Invasion while remaining rooted in Buddy Holly’s style. Much unreleased studio and live material surfaced in the ’80s, prompting wider recognition of the talent that had been lost.
Albums
