Rick Jervis

USA TODAY

LUBBOCK, Texas – One of the great perks of driving through Texas is that you never know what gleaming nugget of history or Texas lore you might stumble upon.

In Waco, I discovered the corner drugstore where Dr. Pepper was first concocted. San Antonio has one of the earliest Catholic communities in the countries (circa 1731). And I once stayed at the Fort Worth hotel where John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline spent their last night together.

In Lubbock, it's all about Buddy Holly.

I was in town for another story: a statue being erected for an exonerated inmate wrongly convicted of rape, who later died in prison. But I quickly discovered this is also Holly's hometown, where the rock 'n' roll pioneer was born and raised and wrote some of his most important songs.

I didn't know much about Holly as I drove up U.S. 84 into town. I knew the band Weezer had written a song named after him. I knew he wore dark-rimmed glasses. I knew he died young and tragically in the plane crash that also claimed the lives of fellow rockers Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson Jr, better known as the Big Bopper. Beyond that, not much.

What stunned me the most as I toured the Buddy Holly Center here, was the enormous reach of his influence during a very short career. He only recorded for 18 months, putting out more than 60 records – 25 of them hits – including such songs as That'll be the Day and Peggy Sue. But what he accomplished in that short span shook the annals of rock, influencing everyone from the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to the Beatles.

A pair of enormous Hollyesque glasses greet visitors to the center here, a museum and collection of memorabilia including the rocker's glasses recovered from the crash site and the Fender Stratocaster guitar he used in his final performance. Other surprising Holly tidbits:

Holly and the Crickets were one of the first white rock 'n' roll acts to tour the United Kingdom. One of his televised concerts there had a profound impact on teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who began mimicking his playing style and chord selection. Their insect-themed band, the Beatles, was in part a homage to Holly's Crickets.

A 17-year-old Dylan saw Holly play one of his last shows in Duluth, Minn., in 1959, and began modeling his singing voice after him.

Bruce Springsteen has said he plays a Buddy Holly tune each time he's about to go onstage, "to keep me honest."

So how did all this musical ingenuity come out of Lubbock, a flat, windswept place known for Texas Tech University, good chicken-fried steak and not much else?

"What better place than Lubbock?" Jacqueline Bober, curator at the Buddy Holly Center, said to me. "There's not much else to do here."

Lubbock's wide open spaces and lack of distraction made it ideal for creating, she says, especially in the days before smartphones, iPads and Twitter feeds.

In fact, Bober says, Holly had bought a plot of land here and planned to build a home and studio on it, start his own label and help record local musicians. He was touring to raise money for this dream when he boarded the four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft on a snowy night in Iowa on Feb. 3, 1959. He was 22.

If he had built his Lubbock studio, Bober says, the epicenter of American music may have shifted to West Texas, and Lubbock could have become the cradle of rock 'n' roll.

As it stands, we'll never know.

Jervis is an Austin-based reporter for USA TODAY.