In 1979, The Complete Buddy Holly gathered up all known Buddy Holly recordings in a six-LP box set, setting the standard for archival rock & roll reissues in the pre-CD era. Perhaps if this box never existed, the wait for a CD incarnation of Holly’s complete recordings wouldn’t have seemed quite so long, but chances are it would: as the CD revolution waned in the early days of the new millennium, every one of his peers saw their work boxed up in complete sets, leaving Buddy to the bootleggers, notably Purple Chick, who delivered an exhaustive set that covered the same ground as the 1979 box, adding fragments, overdubs, demos, and live performances for good measure, plumping up the collection to nine discs -- just enough arcane material to make it of interest only to fanatics. The same can’t be said about Not Fade Away: The Complete Studio Recordings and More, the six-CD box Universal released in 2009, just after they managed to clear away whatever legal and logistical hurdles were standing in their way. To a certain extent, the excitement generated by this long-anticipated item is undercut slightly by Universal’s two previous 2009 releases, Memorial Collection and Down the Line: Rarities, which together offered five discs and 109 tracks of Buddy, including all major items, but as an overall experience, Not Fade Away easily eclipses any other Buddy Holly collection, offering the best presentation and sound, its bound hardcover book packaging lending it stature.
