Buddy Holly: Biography Read Online Free PDF Page A

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. ” Despite the white-supremacist, homophobic society he grew up in, he cleansed himself of racial prejudice and macho snobberies and began to embrace people who were different from him, notably blacks, Hispanics, and gays.
    Along with the Gospel of John, he always kept a copy of the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” handy. Like Hank Williams, he loved hymns and was fascinated by “What a Friend,” in which the composers Joseph Scriven and Charles C. Converse describe a way to turn over worries and achieve inner peace. According to Scriven and Converse, all anxieties and guilts can be unburdened regularly on God, who is better equipped to dispose of them than human beings. Peace of mind comes from devoting a portion of each day to meditation or prayer, according to the wise old hymn. Buddy discovered that when he turned his trials, temptations, troubles, sorrows, weaknesses, and pain over to his higher power, as prescribed in the song, even if he had to do so over and over, they went away. The hymn gave him a powerful weapon for dealing with a life that would be anything but easy. As Scriven and Converse put it, “Take it to the Lord in prayer, in His arms He’ll take and shield thee, thou wilt find a solace there.”
    Not long after his sexual initiation, Buddy told Tinker Carlen, “I think I’m going to get baptized. I’ve been putting it off since I was twelve.” The fact that he considered it carefully and discussed it with a friend shows Buddy knew exactly what he was doing. Despite his differences with Tabernacle Baptist, he felt good enough spiritually to want to declare in public that he believed in and trusted his higher power. And that was all he intended by his baptism—he wasn’t about to give up the newly discovered pleasures of sex. “I’m ashamed of a lot of the stuff we do, but it’s not going to stop me,” Buddy said. “I like girls and like to git out and be noticed.”
    “Hell, we may be wilder than a peach-orchard boar, but we know there’s a God and a hereafter,” said his friend.
    “Yeah, looks like ever’ time you screw up, God is there to put His arms around you and say, ‘Let’s get goin’ again,’” Buddy said.
    Buddy was baptized by Ben D. Johnson at the old Tabernacle Baptist Church that was located at Fifteenth and N Streets before moving in 1955 to its present location at 1911 Thirty-fourth Street. A schoolmate of Buddy’s, Ken Johnson (no relation to pastor Ben D. Johnson), was baptized around the same time. The baptistry, Ken remembered, was behind the pulpit and the choir, in full view of the congregation. Buddy’s favorite Biblical author was St. John, who wrote of baptism, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.”
    According to Ken, who later became a minister, baptism means that “you are dead to sin, buried in the watery grave, and raised to walk in newness of life. That is a walk that portrays the Christian teaching of the New Testament.” Like Hank Williams, whose “I Saw the Light” is one of his finest recordings, the influence of the Lord and Jesus, as well as the sound of gospel, would influence Buddy’s music.
    In the months and years after his baptism, Buddy often rose from his pew during the “Invitation” at the close of the church service, as the congregation sang, “Just as I am, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!” He would go down to the altar and face the congregation, often with his family. “Their lives in serving the Lord in the church this way was always very open and conspicuous,” explains Ken. “Many times in revival meetings or just a regular church service on Sunday morning the Holleys would become burdened about doing more for the Lord and would openly or publicly dedicate themselves to do more for the Lord.”
    The unity and dynamism the family displayed at