Here is what friends say about the Stay All Night Project: "Stay All Night" demonstrates the wide variety of country music styles that Buddy Holly was directly exposed to as a young performer while growing up in West Texas in the 1940's and early 1950's. The styles highlighted here include western swing, honky-tonk, country blues, gospel, and old-time harmony singing. The album is a highly personal insight into Buddy Holly's country music roots, provided by several generations of the region's musicians, including Holly's brothers, his own musical friends and contemporaries, and later country artists who were influenced and inspired by him. Along with black blues and rhythm'n'blues, these country music styles were drawn upon by Holly to create his unique rock'n'roll style. This album preserves and documents Holly's West Texas musical upbringing, through performances by musicians who share that special heritage. John Goldrosen Author, Remembering Buddy The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly. “Stay All Night” captures the atmosphere of the Texas country music clubs and radio stations in the 1950s. Country music was infinitely more diverse in those days than it is now, and consequently was much more interesting than what we hear today on Top Forty Country radio formats. Stay All Night evokes the mood and sound of that particular phase of co\untry music history, and provides for all of us another dimension in our understanding of where Buddy Holly and his music came from. Bill Malone Author, Country Music USA; Don't Get Above Your Raisin' Liner Notes; Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music. Every person has to begin somewhere, and rock 'n' roller Buddy Holly began with country music. During the early 1950s, he teamed with Jack Neal performing on radio and television in Lubbock, Texas. "Stay All Night" demonstrates Buddys musical influences before he found the trail to rock 'n' roll. This CD is a treat, not just for showing the various types of music Buddy listened to and performed, but to actually hear his old soulmate Jack Neal performing today (as well as two original vintage tracks from 1953 with Buddy and Jack). You also get the bonus of hearing Buddy's brothers, Larry and Travis, plus others who either worked with or influenced Buddy. Bill Griggs Buddy Holly Historian Publisher, Rockin' 50s Magazine “Stay All Night” is a wonderful collection of country songs from Buddy's youth. Buddy loved all types of music, including West Texas Country. I really enjoyed listening to the songs that were Buddy's roots. It is terrific to hear musicians who played with Buddy together with a younger generation, sharing these West Texas Country songs. I know that Buddy would have been proud that his legacy is being passed down through generations. Maria Elena Holly Buddy Holly's Widow A Celebration Of Talent Buddy Holly took the world by storm when he broke out of Lubbock, Texas in 1957. His singing and playing was the freshest version of rock and roll to come down the line. It was as if his music had come out of a vacuum from somewhere in the middle of the proverbial nowhere. But locals knew better. Before there was Buddy Holly, the all-American rock and roll hero, there was Buddy Holly, the good ol' boy from the Hub City of the south plains know for his style of Western Bop. That was a nice way of saying that the hormone-addled nitro-fueled teenager played western, honky tonk, and western swing music with way too much energy and enthusiasm to pigeonhole him as plain old country. Countless hours of picking and singing went into polishing, honing, and embellishing his sound that would later become an international sensation. Stay All Night - Buddy Holly's Country Roots is the first historical accounting of how Holly got where he did, performed by those who knew Holly best: Buddy's bandmates; Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch, and Larry Welborn, and Buddy's earliest professional collaborator Jack Neal. They are joined by the Texas Playboys, that swinging big band led by Bob Wills from down the road in Turkey, Texas. Adding to the account are Buddy's brothers and mentors, Larry and Travis Holley, and his contemporaries Al Perkins and Billy Grammer. Featured also are a new generation of stars from Lubbock - the Flatlanders; Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock; and some Holly disciples from far beyond Lubbock including Robert Reynolds from the Mavericks, and blues masters Judy Luis-Watson and Paul Watson. Together these players weave the cultural heritage of West Texas through the thread of this music. Each and every song is an old familiar tune for those who grew up in Buddy Holly's place and time. Some are jukebox standards, others dancehall favorites. A few drifted in on static airwaves from faraway radio stations in Shreveport and Nashville. Two are previously unreleased tracks by Buddy Holly and Jack Neal as performed for their radio show on Lubbock station KDAV. Each and every track tells a piece of the story about how the torch was passed to the kid with horn-rimmed glasses, and how that torch has been passed on to others. Stay All Night is more than the name of a song. It's more than an album title for a collection of soulful, heartfelt songs that could have been made nowhere but Texas. Stay All Night is a celebration of a talent like no one before or since, the talent that nourished Buddy, and the talent he's inspired since, from Lubbock, Texas to the entire planet. Joe Nick Patoski – Texas Music Writer Joe has chronicled Texas music for over thirty years in Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone, No Depression, Austin Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Spin, and Country Music Magazine.