Tommy Allsup

Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Muskogee, OK

2005 Inductees

Tommy Allsup is perhaps best known as the second guitarist in the band organized by Buddy Holly after his split with the Crickets. Allsup was the first guitarist to play a solo on a Buddy Holly recording. He began his career in Claremore in 1949 with a high school band called the Oklahoma Swingbillies. In fact, the Swingbillies purchased an old bus used by Leon McAuliffe. In 1953, Allsup joined the Johnnie Lee Wills Band. He also had his own band, The Southernaires in Lawton. On a 1958 trip to New Mexico, Allsup met Buddy Holly and started playing lead guitar with The Crickets. It was Allsup who won – or lost – the coin toss in that ill-fated airplane trip one winter night that killed Holly and members of his band.

After Holly’s death, Allsup moved to California and joined Liberty Records as a session guitarist. At the studio, he made a quick rise and began producing and working with such greats as Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, Willie Nelson, Bobby Vee and Vickie Carr. He has produced records for Hank Thompson and Leon Rausch.

Paul McCartney calls him one of the finest guitar players in the world.