DONATO DI CAMILLO FOCUSES ON THE KRUSTIES

DONATO DI CAMILLO FOCUSES ON THE KRUSTIES

 

New York’s leading street photographer meets the Krusties, grunge-style, modern-day nomads

 

November 28, 2018

photo © by Donato Di Camillo

by Burt Kearns

 

All photos © by Donato Di Camillo

 

You can find them in just about every major American city. Many are not much older than teenagers, huddled together, hanging out near the train station or shopping district, on the boardwalk, on the sidewalk. They’re dirty, unwashed hair soldered into dreads. They’re marked with tattoos, mostly non-pro, often across their faces. They’re homeless, right? But not the typical “homeless” the term implies. Not mentally ill or brother-can-you-spare-a-dime homeless. They’re young, a little scarier. So you ignore them, maybe make a quick detour to the other side of the street. Donato Di Camillo did not.

 

Donato Di Camillo takes photographs. In a little over five years, he’s risen to the top ranks of street photographers, not only in his native New York City, but around the world. He first made a splash with in-your-face flash-color portraits of people on the Coney Island beach and boardwalk: the mother in the burkha in the water, the wrinkled old ladies, the fat people in the sand, the crazy derelict howling at the wind while a seagull hovers overhead. The photos were raw, vivid, alive. This was not Miami Beach.

 

Next came searing black and white portraits of the mentally-ill homeless. All people on the fringe, outcasts, hard stuff to look at until you realize the artist is drawing you in. You’re not looking away. Not sneering.

  

 “I think I empathize with people because I know

what it’s like to have been judged. Obviously, I’ve

been locked up, or categorized growing up for

hanging out with the people that I hung out with.”

 

Di Camillo’s work got him immediate attention, but it can’t be denied that a big reason he smash-cut onto the art scene was his backstory. A kid from Brooklyn who was in trouble from the start, he studied photography — the story’s familiar now — while serving three years in a federal prison for his role in a Goodfellas-style Colombo crime family heist conspiracy. He honed his camera skills during two years of home confinement. When he was freed in 2011, he returned to his mean streets, this time looking not for trouble but to connect with the ones most everyone else looked past.

 

Di Camillo swiftly outgrew the backstory as his work got bigger and his scope expanded to include reportage, video documentary (when I first met him, he was filming a study of a community of rats — not Mob squealers, but actual squeaking vermin in a wall), and commercial branding. He’s also led workshops and accepted assignments and projects around the world, including the Deep South, Texas, Arizona, Mexico, Italy and Havana. It was during these travels that he noticed and began to document an underground punk subculture across the country, steeped in American rebel and hobo traditions. Meet the Krusties.

 

“People spell it different ways,” Di Camillo tells me. “But the guys that I know, they spell it with a K, ‘Krusties,’ like Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons.”

 

PKM: So who are they? Who are the Krusties?

 

Donato Di Camillo: They’re a bunch of grunge-style, modern-day nomads. They’re a punk movement. Most of them are tattooed on their faces, and they ride the rails. They hop the rails from state to state, to where it’s warm. Like, say if they’re in New York, as soon as it gets colder, they’ll jump a freight train back to California or into the warmer climates somewhere. They live off people’s handouts. They’ll hustle. And they’ve grown. Over the past couple of years that I’ve known them, I see them growing in numbers.

 

PKM: Where did you first notice them?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Union Square Park was where I first met them. The park on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. I met this girl Jessica. She was beautiful, a gorgeous girl, but she was really, really grungy and dirty and, well, I was taken aback by her looks. That was the first time I photographed one of them. And I asked her what the deal was, what this movement was about.  And I found they basically believe in non-compliance. They make their own rules. They’re not for any kind of government. They’re anti-establishment, basically rebels.

 

PKM: I’ve seen them in L.A., on the Venice boardwalk, in Santa Monica.

 

Donato Di Camillo: They’re very easy to point out. Usually they have a pet rat or a dog with them. They travel with these animals. They’re kind of like companions — and I think it helps with their hustle. You know, people empathize with the dog more than with humans sometimes. And they’re willing to help out the dog and throw them some change.

 

PKM: Do they all live on the street?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Yeah, basically. Most of them. If they’re not living on the street, they’re living in subway shelters or public housing. But they never do for long. They’re hopping trains, constantly moving around. Most of them find a comfortable place, like in Coney Island, where I ran into Jessica again. This time she was with about ten or twenty of them. They all shared cigarettes and liquor. Whatever they do, they all make sure look they after each other. But as far as working or anything like that, I’ve never seen any of them do any kind of work.

 

PKM: What’s the age range?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I think the oldest one that I met was probably around forty-seven, forty-eight. The youngest, God, probably seventeen.

 

PKM: Teenage runaways?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Yeah, most of them are. The stories that I’ve heard are incredible. I’ve taped a number of them. Some have been victims of incest, from fathers and mothers. I’m always very inquisitive about what makes them tick and why they do what they do. So I’ve found out through a lot of encounters that a lot of them drink because they’ve been molested. Others, there’s something tragic that occurred in their lives. A lot of them come from these middle-American towns that are very poor and the per capita is very low.

 

PKM: So the Krusties are more like a nationwide community?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Look. I’ve been on assignments that’ve taken me to Georgia, and I’ve run into people that I met here in New York and San Antonio, Texas. I met this one guy, Mark, and I showed him photos of a few Krusties that I’d met back East. And he was like, “Hey, I know all these guys.” They’re all friends, and it seems to be a really big network. They’re spread out all over the U.S.

 

PKM: Are they a product of tough economic times? Or would they be around anyway, like hobos once were?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Nah. I don’t think they’re part of a tough economy, because, for me, I believe if you really want to work, you could find some type of work, whether it’s as a dishwasher or working at a carnival. Any work is work if you need the money, but it seems that they just don’t want to.  I mean, they tattoo their faces. I’ve got a photograph of a guy who had “Fuck society” on his forehead, for crying out loud. How are you going to get a good job with those words on your face? (laughs)

 

PKM: Yeah. You can’t work the counter at McDonald’s with a ‘fuck you’ tattoo on your face.

 

Donato Di Camillo: Look, we’re all judgmental. I think we’re all raised a certain way, and I think that we’re raised to judge people by their looks, obviously. Let’s face it. Magazines don’t portray people that are down and out. And so when I first encountered them, I was guilty of it myself. I mean, it’s not even the fact that they live on the street. They don’t wash. The women, a lot of them, don’t shave under their armpits. They don’t change their clothes. They don’t take care of themselves. I’ve seen staph infection and liver disease. I’ve seen one kid, throw up, I’m talking about pints of blood, right in front of me. But with that said, when I got to know them, I found they’re not dumb by any means. They’re intelligent. A lot of them are big readers. They read a lot. They’re not bad people, but they’re on their mission. I don’t know what their mission is, but I think a lot of them are running from who they really are or what’s happened to them.

 

PKM: So you say you’re judgmental, but still you approach them. How do you get their confidence?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I’ve become really good at approaching people, because I’ve always dealt with all different types. I grew up on the streets, just in a different sense. I grew up with all kinds of tough guys and all kinds of characters, if you will, so being on the street, and being on the defensive, I had to learn how to read people and how to navigate around bad situations. So I learned how to approach certain people. In this case, I make myself known by maybe giving them a dollar or some change. And after a while, I’ll kind of establish a relationship slowly. And then I dig in and find out exactly what’s going on. I’ll share a little bit about me. That always helps. And that’s where the trust starts.

 

PKM: You seek out and meet people on the fringe, the people who seem to be down and out.  Why do you have that empathy? Is it because of how you grew up?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I think I empathize with people because I know what it’s like to have been judged. Obviously, I’ve been locked up, or categorized growing up for hanging out with the people that I hung out with. I made some bad decisions, and I know what it’s like when people stare at you or look at you and think, ‘Hey that’s the bad guy.’ So in that sense, I know what it feels like. Being in their shoes, I could never understand fully, but our feelings are all similar. For instance, I don’t know what it’s like to be raped, but I know how it feels to feel hurt and pain and that kind of emotional distress. So, I can empathize with anybody, because we all are human beings, and we all share that commonality.

 

 

PKM: You’ve been in in the national spotlight, the international spotlight, for what? About four or five years?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Yeah. Roughly, I guess. About five years now.

 

PKM: So, one of the reasons that you probably got attention from the media initially is because you had this great little backstory that could be told in a couple of sentences. “Here’s the goodfella who went to prison and learned how to be a photographer. And then he practiced while he was on house arrest and then he came out.” And that was a good tag to start with in your career. But do you feel like you’re kind of past that whole ‘backstory’ story? That you’ve grown bigger than that?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I was past it when they brought it up! I just didn’t think it would be so sensationalized. I mean, for me, really, who gives a fuck? (laughs) I didn’t think it was a big deal. I mean, for crying out loud, 18th Avenue where I grew up, it wasn’t odd for me to see John Gotti or Sammy the Bull and these guys walking around. My friends used to wash their cars when they were kids. It was like something out of Goodfellas, really. And you’d see bodies pop up in the streets. It was like that. So for me, it wasn’t that unusual ’til they ran it, and I said, “Really?” People made such a big deal out of it. I didn’t think that the backstory was so sensational. But obviously people thought it was.

 

PKM: And the art crowd always loves that little bit of danger. That’s good.

 

Donato Di Camillo: I like danger. (laughs) I still like danger. (laughs again) But I just like to do it legally these days.

 

PKM: Now, again, you’re on house arrest or home confinement, and you start out very, very micro with the camera, shooting spider webs and raindrops, and whatever you can find on your property. What led you to people? What led you to street photography?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Somebody told me, “Shoot what you know.” An old timer, he wasn’t even a photographer. I was locked up. I remember sitting on the bleachers. I used to hang out with this old man. I like the old-timers; they always had the best stories. So I was like, “You know, I think I want to try this photography thing out. I liked it before I went in and once I get a chance to get out, I wanna try it. I just don’t know what the fuck I’m going to shoot.” And he was like, “If I was you, go home, and do what the fuck you want to do. Shoot what you know.” And I said, “What do I know? The only thing I know is the fucking streets.” And he told me, “Then shoot the fucking streets.” And then that’s exactly what I did.

PKM: You know a lot about the history and the great photographers. Who are your major influences?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Some of the great influences for me were (Sebastião) Salgado — his work is incredible — and the real gritty photographers, Bruce Gilden, Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. There’s so many.

 

PKM: You mentioned that you met Bruce Gilden at one point.

 

Donato Di Camillo: Yeah, Gilden I met in a snowstorm. We were like the only two nutjobs. He’s kind of a whacked-out guy, he’s pretty blunt, and you could tell he don’t pull any punches. I ran into him in what is now my friend’s store in Manhattan. And for me it was like seeing Frank Sinatra! I was like, “Holy shit, you’re fucking Bruce Gilden.” And he goes, “You know who I am?” I said, “Yeah, I know who you are. I read about you in prison.” And he goes, “In prison?” And he liked that. He had a kind of fucked-up childhood as well, and we were talking a while. He gave me some advice, to take bits and pieces from work that I like and make it my own. I was trying to imitate him for a bit but I realized that I can’t be anyone else but who I am.

 

PKM: When people look at some of Gilden’s work, or Diane Arbus, they might say, “Oh my God, look at those freaks.” But your work takes people who are on the fringe and who might be considered freaks, and draws the viewer in.  You see their humanity. The viewer is not put off by them.

 

Donato Di Camillo: Well, I believe that the viewer should feel the photograph. It should be something that evokes feeling and emotion. I’m not a critic by any means, and I’ve only been in this game for a very short time, but with that said, I made a little bit of a mark. And I think that these days, it’s very difficult to find something that’s fresh and different and new and with a different approach. People aren’t looking for the same old shit. I can’t be Cartier-Bresson, just like somebody can’t be me.

 

PKM: When you’re out on the street, is it just you and a camera?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I usually got a camera and maybe an extra lens, that’s it. I don’t carry anything heavy, unless I go on assignment, when I don’t know what the hell I’m going to expect. If I need a little more reach, I’ll carry a longer lens. I’ll bring a couple of lenses and some light, you know. Depending on the assignment, sometimes I need help, an assistant with me to hold a light or maybe to just hold my fucking bag. (laughing) Because it gets in the way!  So yeah, sometimes I need an assistant just to hold the light or just do my editing, while I keep working.

 

PKM: When you lead your workshops, what’s the one most important thing you could say to somebody who wants to start up in photography?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I think it’s important to be yourself and I think it’s important to have respect for people. Be yourself and have respect for whoever you’re creating the story on or you’re creating work on with. It’s important to have that respect because if they sense that you’re not being genuine or you’re being one-sided, you’re not going to get what you’re looking for. They’re gonna withdraw and their face is not going to look right or their eyes won’t hold the photograph. You have to have the ability to have them drop all their defenses. And if you’re a street photographer and you’re in a strange country, people don’t know who you are, so you better be good at what you’re doing. And the only way that a person could be really good at what they do is if they really be themselves and they’re really honest about who they are and what they’re doing.

 

Any work is work if you need the money, but it seems

that they just don’t want to.  I mean, they

tattoo their faces. I’ve got a photograph of a guy

who had “Fuck society” on his forehead, for crying

out loud. How are you going to get a good job with

those words on your face?

 

PKM: What’s next for you now? What’s your next project?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I’m going to Disneyland! No, I’ve been asked to do a couple of assignments. I’m working on something, I don’t know if I can say where it is. The town’s in a red state and the politicians there are trying to push low-income people out by holding back jobs and outsourcing them, basically because they don’t want them around. It’s a tourism town and they’re bad for business. There’s even Krusties down there. I was called by a foundation to shed some light on the injustice. I’m known for that. I’m going to go there and I’ll be photographing the situations and reporting what’s really going on. I understand about making money, but this is a lack of human decency. You have to make money, but there’s also people dying on the street there.

 

PKM: All right, man, thank you for this. And getting back to the Krusties. Are they into music?

 

Donato Di Camillo: Oh, yeah. I’m not familiar with a lot of the music, but they’re into that heavy thrash kind of punk. Even the Ramones, the older stuff, they’re into all that really hard punk music.

 

PKM: What kind of music are you into? You into music at all?

 

Donato Di Camillo: I like it all the way down to classical music. I like all music as long as it’s good music. (laughing) I don’t know what good music is anymore. I haven’t heard good music being made in probably, twenty years maybe. Not anything that I would say was good, anyway. I like jazz. I like Johnny Cash. Frank Sinatra once in a while. You know, it depends on the mood, I guess.

Burt Kearns and Donato Di Camillo

 

Donato Di Camillo’s instagram:

 

https://www.instagram.com/donato_dicamillo

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/donatodicamillo

 

Website: donatodicamilllo.com

 

 

Burt Kearns wrote the book TABLOID BABY and produces nonfiction television and documentary films. BURT KEARNS & JEFF ABRAHAM have written a book about performers who died onstage. THE SHOW WON’T GO ON will be published by Chicago Review Press / A Capella Books in September 2019.

 

DAVID BOX: THE OTHER ROCK & ROLL GENIUS FROM LUBBOCK

DAVID BOX:  THE OTHER ROCK & ROLL GENIUS FROM LUBBOCK

BURT KEARNS

NOVEMBER 7, 2018

He joined the Crickets after Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, befriended Roy Orbison, toured with Dusty Springfield, the Everly Brothers and the Searchers… and then died in exactly the same manner as Buddy Holly

by Burt Kearns and Jeff Abraham

On February 3, 1959, a small plane crashed into a field, killing four people, including the rock ‘n’ roll singer from Lubbock, Texas who, with The Crickets, recorded a song about Peggy Sue. That date was later declared “The Day The Music Died.”

 

It didn’t, though. The music, that is. It didn’t really die that day. Buddy Holly, former leader of The Crickets, was already a star and innovator, and was immortalized by his premature death. The music of fellow crash victims Ritchie Valens, the teenage Chicano rocker, and songwriter-deejay J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson still plays on, celebrated and imitated sixty years after that fatal trip.

 

“The Day The Music Died” is a label that might be better applied to the day a small plane crashed into a field, killing four people, including the rock ‘n’ roll singer from Lubbock, Texas who, with The Crickets, recorded a song about Peggy Sue.

 

That date was October 23, 1964. The musician was David Box. To many, he’s the answer to a trivia question, part of a bizarre Celebrity Babylon coincidence: the guy who replaced Buddy Holly in The Crickets and wound up dying — the exact same way.

 

A dig, and not even too deep, reveals much more. As it turns out, David Box was a talent on par with Buddy Holly, cut short on the verge of success. Buddy made it to 22. David Box died at 21. His recorded legacy may have remained dead to the world, if not for one woman who’s spent more than fifty years making sure David Box’s music stays alive.

 

 

The first people to visit the Boxes were Buddy Holly’s parents….  

L.O. Holley said to Mr. Box: 

“People would tell you that time heals the pain, but it does not.”

 

“David’s style was so far ahead. His style was just so clean and so solid,” Rita Box Peek told us.

 

Rita is David Box’s kid sister. She came along five years after his birth. She was sixteen when he left this world. She’s seventy now.

 

“He and the way he presented himself musically was just solid, crisp, clean. Other musicians, serious musicians who really are naturally talented and gifted, recognize that. They can hear it — the ears tell the truth. And they can hear who David was and what he was all about. He was a star.”

Terry Allen agreed. The acclaimed outlaw country singer and conceptual artist was David Box’s high school pal. “David was the first person I knew who not only wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roller,  but was going to be one,” he said.  “He was the first person I met who was totally serious about writing songs, making music, performing and making it his life. In that sense, he was the first real artist… in the true sense of that word… I ever met.”

 

THE SPARK THAT RESONATED

 

Harold David Box was born to Virginia and Harold Box in Sulphur Springs in east Texas on August 11, 1943. Daddy was a self-taught Western swing fiddler, and not a bad one at that; good enough that when David was a baby, the family pulled up stakes and drove off toward Las Vegas. Daddy and four members of his band, The Dixie Ramblers, planned to find full-time work playing music in the show town. 

 

They made it clear across the state from Plano before stopping in Lubbock — impressive, but still about 850 miles short of Sin City. They planned to stay on long enough to earn some money for the rest of the trip. They stayed too long. They never left.

 

Harold “Boxy” Box and his buddies became the Sunshine Trio and performed five days a week on Lubbock’s radio station KFYO. It was good for the soul but not enough to pay the bills. “He had a real job,” Rita said. “And that was really difficult for him, because a musician’s mission is to do music all the time, not have to separate themselves from the joy of all that with the daily grind.”

 

Young David got the performing bug before he was three. It was a talent show at the Palace Theater on Main Street, broadcast on KSEL. David sang “New Jole Blon” and “If I Had A Nickel.” He won, with three curtain calls and $13 in tips.

He got his first guitar on his ninth birthday. Daddy helped teach him some chords. David took it from there. Rita remembers the time he spent noodling, inventing, coming up with new chords and rhythms. She remembers the calluses on his fingertips, and his pure tenor voice.

 

David Box and the Ravens

 

David wasn’t even in his teens when one of his Lubbock neighbors started making music, and noise, in town. Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, and his high school chum Bob Montgomery played country and bluegrass music on the radio and at outdoor venues as Buddy & Bob.  By the time David was a teenager, Buddy Holly was playing rock ‘n’ roll for the world.

 

“Here in Lubbock, Buddy Holly was just like the center of the universe with the young teenagers and David’s generation, and so David went immediately to rock n’ roll,” said Rita. “Buddy Holly was a catalyst that just snapped that spark that resonated in David and so many others.”

 

DON’T CHA KNOW

 

David was fifteen when Buddy Holly died in that plane crash. That same year, David got a Stratocaster guitar like Buddy’s and started his own bands: The Rhythm Kings, The Shamrocks, and most notably, The Ravens.

 

“When he formed The Ravens, that’s part of how Buddy’s life as a very successful musician affected David,” Rita said. “Other kids probably were very much on the same track, except they didn’t have the ability to take it as far as David did.”

 

“David wasn’t trying to be Buddy Holly at all,” she insisted. “Not at all. He wanted to be as successful as Buddy was musically, and he wanted to be successful businesswise. David took himself very seriously. He took what Buddy had accomplished as his example, but David had his own style developing.

 

 

David Box plays with the Ravens

 

“It’s like an artist whose teacher is somebody like Rembrandt or Van Gogh. You’re naturally going to take on their tendencies and their techniques, but as you’re progressing and practicing, you’re moving along with your own talents. So you have good foundation. ”

 

By the time of his death, Buddy had left The Crickets behind and was performing as a solo act. Crickets’ drummer Jerry Allison and bassist Joe B. Mauldin left Lubbock for Los Angeles and carried on with Holly’s old friend Sonny Curtis on guitar and lead vocals.

 

“That is when there’s all kinds of destiny in play,” Rita said. “David’s drummer (Ernie Hall) lived across the street from Jerry Allison. And Jerry’s mother and Ernie’s mother were very close friends. That’s how Jerry found out about David, because David was going over to Ernie’s house and they would practice.

 

“And David and The Ravens had gone to a little studio — it really wasn’t a recording studio as it was a little spot in Lubbock where commercials were recorded — and they cut a couple of songs. One of them was a song that David wrote, ‘Don’t Cha Know.’ It was a little 45 demo, and when Jerry heard that, it was like, ‘We want to hear more of David singing.'”

 

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

 

As destiny would have it, the following year Sonny Curtis went off to the Army, but The Crickets were contractually obligated to deliver one more single to Coral Records.

 

“They needed someone, and David fit the bill, and not only that, they were just blown away by his voice at such a young age,” Rita said. “He recorded ‘Don’t Cha Know,’ which was the A side, and then the B side, Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue Got Married.’ David recorded that on his seventeenth birthday.”

 

The Crickets 45 featuring the David Box song.

 

After the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Ernie Hall went home to Lubbock. David Box stayed and toured with The Crickets for a few weeks. His career could have taken a different turn had not those weeks ended in September, and the start of David’s junior year of high school.

 

Rita said, “By the time Mother and Daddy and I drove from Lubbock to L.A. to pick him up,  they offered David a contract to be a Cricket. I was there when David was offered the contract in L.A. I was twelve years old. Daddy knew that he couldn’t read the contract the way a lawyer would be able to read and point out this is not good, or this whole thing stinks. It was just like, ‘Okay, here’s the contract sitting on the kitchen table, sign here. And it’ll be great, don’t worry.’  And our dad looked at the situation and said, ‘No.’ Because David was still a minor. Daddy had a very, very negative feeling about the whole situation. He understood that something wasn’t right. (Note: And something wasn’t right. Crickets Music, Inc., snuck a line into the recording contract that took ownership of David’s song for one dollar.)

 

“David was not broken up about not being involved anymore,” Rita recalled, firsthand. “He didn’t kick the cow, he didn’t pull hair, it was just like, ‘Well, that’s just the way it is.’ And when we came home, he said, ‘I’m done with bands.’ Well, that ought to tell you something. The fact that he already had the experience with The Crickets was not one of those ‘made in heaven’ kind of things. In fact, he didn’t want anything to do with the band any more after this.

 

“It’s just that he was a star. And he didn’t act like it, okay? Like BJ Thomas said about David, he was a very unassuming guy, but — and I quote, ‘there was something great there.’  He was very quiet, almost shy. But he wanted to call the shots on his own, one hundred percent. And when you’re in a band, that does not happen. If you’re the lead singer, somebody’s got you on a leash.

 

“He loved L.A. He was so glad that he had the experience, but he was also glad to be back home. Because the first thing he did when he arrived home, he bought himself the best briefcase that he could possibly buy. And that briefcase became his symbol for the serious business. He took his music seriously, and he took himself seriously.”

 

David Box at Lubbock High School

 

David Box went back to school.

 

“He had no business being in school,” Rita said she always knew. “He should’ve been on stage.  I mean, this is not the kind of person that you’d put in a classroom and say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna put you in a little slot here, and you’re gonna do this assignment or that.’ It’s like, ‘No, I’m gonna be over here singing and playing and–‘ It was one of those deals. But he really wanted his high school diploma.”

 

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE

 

David didn’t give up his musical ambitions. In fact, his father, who steered him away from a career as a Buddy Holly karaoke singer, helped move his career to a new level.

 

“Our dad knew Ben Hall, a Western swing musician here in Lubbock,” Rita said. “Ben was well known. In fact, Ben wrote ‘Blue Days, Black Nights,’ that Buddy Holly recorded (note: it was Buddy Holly’s first single). Ben had his own independent recording studio in Big Spring, Texas, a little over a hundred miles south of Lubbock. Ben Hall let David record in his studio, for free.  David would sing and play and Ben was basically financing the studio time. He was just giving him that, because we did not have the money. Period. You just cannot squeeze money out of a rock.”

 

1961

 

David’s work with Ben Hall led to the offer of a songwriting, then a recording contract with a small local label called Joed Records. This time, Daddy signed the contract, which led David to a meeting with Roy Orbison.

 

 

 

 

“Roy was still living in Odessa,” said Rita. “Odessa’s not that far from Big Spring, and so they all knew the studio. And David and Roy struck up an immediate musician friendship, and friendship beyond that — good buddies and hang out together kind of thing. Here’s David, the fire has been struck with Buddy Holly and now he has Roy Orbison’s influence, not only musically, but in friendship. It was just really, really neat.”

 

Roy Orbison told people that David Box was the second-greatest guitarist he’d ever heard.  Roy, of course, considered himself to be the best. On April 4, 1962, while a senior at Lubbock High School, David Box was in RCA Studio B in Nashville to record two songs Roy Orbison had written with Joe Melson and Ray Rush. Backed by top session musicians including Floyd Kramer, Bob Moore and Hargus “Pig” Robbins, David recorded “I’ve Had My Moments” and “If You Can’t Say Something Nice.”

 

David Box graduated from Lubbock High School on June 1, 1962. Over the next two years, Joed released “If You Can’t Say Something Nice” and two more David Box singles. Even leasing out the tracks to a label in Los Angeles couldn’t get them to chart. David realized the record business might not pay off. The clean-cut kid with the briefcase also had a talent for drawing. He enrolled in a correspondence course with The School of American Art in Westport, Connecticut.

 

DEATH TAKES A PLANE RIDE

 

David returned to Nashville in 1963, did session work, learned about producing and toured the East Coast with Orbison, Dusty Springfield, The Everly Brothers, Bobby Vee, and The Searchers (the British invaders included a version of David’s “Don’t Cha Know” on their second album).  Back home, he began playing gigs with Houston’s top rock ‘n’ roll band, Buddy Grove & The Kings.

 

In August 1964, when he turned twenty-one, David got out of his contract with the small town record label. Buddy Holly’s former business manager Ray Rush helped him get signed to a major record label — as major as one could get: Elvis’ label, RCA Victor.

 

That same month, the five-piece Kings backed David Box at KILT Radio’s Back-To-School Spectacular at the 10,000-seat Sam Houston Memorial Coliseum. The lineup included Johnny Winter, Ray Stevens, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Everly Brothers (the following year, the Beatles would headline).

 

It was to be David Box’s final performance.

 

 David and Ray Rush planned to fly on Saturday, October 24, 1964 to Nashville, where the contract for David Box’s first RCA Victor LP was waiting to be signed. The day before, David, Buddy Groves and Kings bass player Carl Banks decided to take a quick flight to Houston in a rented Cessna 172 Skyhawk.

 

Buddy Groves’ pal Bill Daniels was a qualified pilot. As they all climbed in and crammed into the single-engine four-seater, maybe the guys joked, as many musicians have, about Buddy Holly’s fateful flight. There were four of them, just as there were in that Beechcraft Bonanza. At least they’d be safe. Coincidences like that don’t happen. Not twice. Not with two guys who sang with The Crickets.

 

They took off from Hull Field, a private airport in Sugar Land. The Cessna supposedly had enough fuel for a two-hour flight. About fifteen minutes in, the plane disappeared.

 

Glen Peters, a flight instructor from Houston, spotted the wreckage that Saturday morning.  The aircraft lay upside down in a field in north Houston, about three miles west of Highway 75. The plane had apparently nosedived into the ground and flipped on impact. There were no survivors.  Investigators would blame a defective fuel gauge.

 

“It was a pleasure flight,” Rita said. “He and some of his musician friends from Houston decided they wanted to go up and it just did not end the way it should have. And so fate stepped in. Death takes a plane ride and David, he’s gone.”

 

Rita was sixteen. “Right,” she said. “And I’m really not going to go there.”

 

David Box, Roland Pike, Rita Box and Ted Groebl.

 

She did agree to go back in time to that weekend, in the family home, after the crash was confirmed, and tell us the truth about a story that sounds too much like legend: that the first people to visit the Boxes were Buddy Holly’s parents, and that L.O. Holley said to Mr. Box: “People would tell you that time heals the pain, but it does not.”

 

“Yes, that is very true,” Rita confirmed. “There was also an Avalanche-Journal newspaper reporter. That’s our local newspaper. The AJ reporter was in the house. He was the first to arrive. And then there was knock on the door and it was Mr. and Mrs. Holley. They were the first visitors. And so there is a quote in the AJ newspaper of what Mr. Holley said to my dad.  I was standing right there when Mr. Holley walked in the door and embraced my dad and told him, ‘You know, people would tell you that time heals the pain, but it does not.’ And Mr. and Mrs. Holley stayed the evening and it was amazing.”

 

And was what he said true?  Does time not heal the pain?

 

“No,” Rita Box Peek said, fifty-four years after the fact. “It does not. It does not.”

 

SINGING THROUGH ETERNITY

 

“It’s very important that people understand that David was not a wannabe. That has been something that naturally is going to come back from time to time, from people who don’t know anything. And the first thing that comes to their mind: ‘Well, he sounds like Buddy Holly, well he sounds like Roy Orbison, well, he must be a copycat!’ Well, he is not!” Rita laughed at that notion.

 

David Box released four singles, eight songs in his brief career. From a cursory listen, one could write him off as a talented also-ran. It wasn’t until the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and the release of two “David Box Story” CD sets, that his talent and promise were made clear. The ninety-four recordings include just about David Box’s entire recorded output, and the compositions, arrangements and vocals recorded at Ben Hall’s Big Springs studios clearly show an artist pushing beyond the template left by Buddy Holly. In fact, the epiphanies among the run-throughs of some Holly songs aren’t that different than those found in similar early takes from the Beatles Anthology albums.

While others have profited from the collections, Rita Box Peek remains the keeper of David Box’s flame. She’s donated much of his material to the archives of Texas Tech University, arranged a fiftieth anniversary tribute at Lubbock’s Buddy Holly Center, and in 2014 helped produce a tribute album, “Out of The Box,” in which Lubbock musician Brian McRae performed solo jazz-inflected guitar versions of David Box originals (played on David Box’s Strat).

 

“I wanted to get David out of the Sixties, because he’s already played those songs his way.” Rita explained. “And knowing David, he would have gone beyond just the same notes over and over.  He would have gone into what Brian did, where he extended the songs and translated them into different melodies. Each of those melodies had far more potential than what 1960 would allow an artist to do, or a listener to appreciate.

 

“That was my inspiration, doing this David’s way, how I really know and believe that he would have done something like this. He would’ve wanted it this way.”

This month, “Out of The Box” is finally available through the CDBaby website. So is an album called “Just for You,” Rita Box Peek’s first jazz album.  The sublime collection was produced by McRae, more than fifty years after David’s death led Rita to give up her musical ambitions.

 

David’s sister Rita Box Peek

 

David Box would be seventy-five now, an age at which many of his contemporaries are still going strong, still creating.

 

“When David got killed, it had an effect on a lot of people,” BJ Thomas said. “The sadness of it, and the fact that he wouldn’t be able to present his music and we’d never see what he could have done.”

 

Glen Spreen, a member of Buddy Groves & The Kings who went on to arrange and produce for artists ranging from Elvis to Johnny Mathis, spoke of David Box shortly before his own death in 2016: “He was a disciplined and sensitive musician, confident and decisive while performing, whether it was live or recorded. I have worked with a very small number of singers who have impressed me as much as David.”

 

 

“I’ve thought about him a lot over the years, how short his life was, but how ambitious and focused he was on being a musician,” Terry Allen told us. “I had a friend who died young and at his funeral, his mother said, ‘Yes, he didn’t live very long… but he stayed up late.’  That’s how I think of David and a lot of those artists cut down too early. He made a lot of music in that little slot of time fate gave him. He made the time matter. He stayed up late.”

 

David Box is buried at Restlawn Cemetery in the city in which he was born.  His grave marker reads “I’ll sing through eternity” —  and he will, if his kid sister Rita has any say.   “David was a comet on fire on the edge of something great,” she said. “It’s true there will be a select few individuals in this world whose lives will deeply affect each one of us in mind, body, and spirit.  My brother David is that kind of soul.”

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BURT KEARNS & JEFF ABRAHAM have written a book about performers who died on stage.  THE SHOW WON’T GO ON will be published in 2019.