Download    Naming your band after insects or animals doesn’t really sound like a good idea, but sometimes it works out very well.  A few that come to mind are:  The Beatles, Adam and the Ants, White Snake, the Animals, the Eagles, Wasp,  the Bee Gees, Papa Roach, the Turtles,  and the group who recorded this song – Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  Why “crickets”?  Well, for some reason, Buddy wanted an insect-inspired name and he almost went with “The Beetles”.  In fact, some years later, John Lennon and Paul McCartney decided on “The Beatles” as an homage to Buddy Holly.

“It’s So Easy” was never a hit for Mr. Holly and his insect friends – didn’t even make the charts when they released it on Brunswick Records in 1958.  If it hadn’t been for Linda Ronstadt trotting it out in 1977, the song would have faded into obscurity.  It was the first cut off her hugely successful album Simple Dreams.  She also had a #1 hit the year before with a cover of another Buddy Holly tune “That’ll be the Day”.  That album also escorted Elvis off the number one country spot after ‘The King’ had held it for 15 consecutive weeks following his death in August.

We’ve always enjoyed doing this song – played it every night in the late 90s and never got tired of it.  The vocals were especially fun.  We use Ronstadt’s arrangement mostly because it has a little more “meat” to it than Holly’s.  My Yamaha keyboard has great distorted guitars, and I left the backup vocal track in (vocal oohs) so you “newbies” can see how they work against the lead line.  This one’s a blast from the past, but it’s worth an encore.