\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSonny Curtis, the singer and guitarist who played with Buddy Holly, fronted The Crickets and wrote and performed \u201cLove Is All Around,\u201d the indelible theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show<\/em>, has died. He was 88.<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis died Friday after a \u201csudden illness,\u201d his daughter, Sarah, announced on Facebook.<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis also wrote the rebellious \u201cI Fought the Law\u201d in 1958 and recorded it with The Crickets following the death of Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (\u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d) and pilot Roger Peterson in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Bobby Fuller Four took the song to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, and it also was memorably covered by The Clash, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams Jr., Green Day, the Dead Kennedys and dozens of other acts over the years.<\/p>\n \n\tHis songwriting credits also included \u201cWalk Right Back\u201d and \u201cMore Than I Can Say,\u201d top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 for The Everly Brothers and Leo Sayer in 1961 and 1980, respectively.<\/p>\n \n\tTo rectify an oversight, Curtis was inducted by special committee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 alongside three fellow Crickets: drummer Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan. (They were not inducted with Holly in 1986.)<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1970, Curtis wrote and performed \u201cLove Is All Around\u201d \u2014 known for such lyrics as \u201cWho can turn the world on with her smile?\u201d \u2014 which accompanied footage of Moore tossing her hat into the air in the middle of a busy Minneapolis intersection for her fabled CBS sitcom that ran from 1970-77.<\/p>\n \n\tHe had been given a four-page treatment of the show \u201cabout a young girl who gets jilted in this small community in the Midwest and moves to the big city in Minneapolis and gets a job at a news station and rents an apartment she has a hard time affording,\u201d he told Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning<\/em> in 2022.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI homed in on the part that she rented an apartment she had a hard time affording and wrote, \u2018How will you make it on your own? \u2026 this world is awfully big, and this time you\u2019re on your own.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe second youngest of six children, Curtis was born on May 9, 1937, in Meadow, Texas. His parents, Arthur and Violet, were cotton farmers. He learned to play the guitar when he was 4, inspired by his uncles, Edd, Herb and Smokey, who as The Mayfield Brothers were one of the first bluegrass outfits in Texas.<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis was 15 when he first met Holly, and they formed a band with Holly\u2019s high school friend Bob Montgomery. They performed on bills with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, and he played lead guitar on Holly\u2019s 1956 song \u201cBlue Days, Black Nights\u201d and on his own composition, \u201cRock Around With Ollie Vee.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter high school, Curtis left Holly to tour with Slim Whitman, then joined Buddy Holly & The Crickets in late 1958. He became the frontman after Holly\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Crickets recorded \u201cI Fought the Law\u201d for their first post-Holly album, 1960\u2019s In Style With the Crickets<\/em>, but it was not a hit for them. The LP also included \u201cMore Than I Can Say\u201d; written by Curtis and Allison, it was a hit for Bobby Vee in 1961 and for Sayer, who took it to No. 2 in 1980.<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis had been drafted into the U.S. Army in 1959, and during basic training in California, he wrote \u201cWalk Right Back\u201d and performed it for Allison, then the drummer for The Everlys. The singers recorded it and brought it to No. 7. (Anne Murray also had a hit with it in 1978.)<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis moved to Los Angeles after the service and wrote jingles for commercials. He also had a solo career while also playing with The Crickets until the death of Mauldin in 2015.<\/p>\n \n\tOther Curtis songs were recorded by the likes of Glen Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro (\u201cThe Straight Life\u201d), Keith Whitley (\u201cI\u2019m No Stranger to the Rain,\u201d named the Country Music Association\u2019s Single of the Year in 1989) and Andy Williams (\u201cA Fool Never Learns\u201d).<\/p>\n \n\tCurtis lived near Nashville was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991. Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Louise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sonny Curtis, the singer and guitarist who played with Buddy Holly, fronted The Crickets and wrote and performed \u201cLove Is All Around,\u201d the indelible theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died. He was 88. Curtis died Friday after a \u201csudden illness,\u201d his daughter, Sarah, announced on Facebook. Curtis also wrote the rebellious<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[10675,4213,2492,241,2778,2777,7122],"class_list":{"0":"post-22768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-mary","9":"tag-moore","10":"tag-performer","11":"tag-show","12":"tag-song","13":"tag-theme","14":"tag-tyler"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}