by Bruce EderBobby Vee first rose to fame by stepping in to take over playing a gig that Buddy Holly was to have played on February 3, 1959, following Holly's death; ever since, Vee's had a close association with Holly's music to varying degrees, a connection helped in part by their similar voices and Vee's link-up musically with producer Snuff Garrett, who deliberately chose to give Vee's early records a sound that followed on from the pop/rock that Holly was doing in those final weeks of his life. So the original 12-song LP version of I Remember Buddy Holly was an almost inevitable development -- that it holds up as well as it does is a tribute to Vee's underrated vocal ability and Garrett's killer production work, which successfully encompasses pop/rock, rockabilly, straight-ahead rock & roll, and some surprisingly sophisticated balladry. The original 12 songs have been almost doubled up, the extra material comprised of relevant single sides and other rare artifacts from Vee's discography plus a brace of outtakes, all of them first-rate. Vee's own style was naturally similar to Holly's, so the repertory comes naturally to him in terms of how it fits, and he adds enough of his own attributes that the record or the CD aren't a case of grave-robbing but a genuine celebration of a sound and the man behind it.