Soon they enlisted vocalist Earl Sinks, who sang on ‘I Fought the Law’ and ‘Love’s Made a Fool of You’, two of the band’s best-known numbers, before leaving Lubbock for Nashville. Both songs were written by multi-talented Sonny Curtis, whose work was covered by the Clash, Bobby Vee, Leo Sayer and more – great songs that helped create a musical legacy that endures to this day.

My own personal favourite post-Buddy song by the Crickets is ‘Don’t Ever Change’, released in 1962. It’s an amazing record and now sounds like a prototype for the UK guitar groups headed by The Beatles that flooded into the charts a few months later.

By this time, the Crickets were sporadically featuring an amazing young piano player, whose CV went on to include work with Bing Crosby, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley – Glen D. Hardin.

In 1970, Elvis recruited him into his backing group the TCB Band, in which he played for the next six years. A high-profile gig that led to other wonderful opportunities, including production and arrangement work with a beautiful young country rock artist called Gram Parsons on GP and Grievous Angel, two of the most deeply important albums of the 1970s.

It was this collaboration that opened the pathway to Glen’s connection with Gram’s protégée Emmylou Harris. When Emmy began to put her own group together, she invited Glen to join James Burton, Rodney Crowell, Hank DeVito, Emory Gordy Jr. and John Ware in her famous and massively influential backing group the Hot Band. I introduced their live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977, when Emmy was touring her magnificent album Elite Hotel, and the level of musicianship that day was as good as anything I’ve ever heard.

Since then, Emmy has gone on to become one of the true greats of country music. She has elegantly respected the core values of the genre while pushing at the boundaries of where it can go. Her support of young emerging artists is one of countless demonstrations of her deep generosity as an artist and as a person, and she truly deserves the Grammy-winning success her glorious, enduring work has brought her. 

Bob Harris