Keith Allison

For the first time in many years, original and post-Buddy Crickets reunite with an Everly brother

For the first time in many years, original and post-Buddy Crickets reunite with an Everly Brother. The Buddy Holly Educational Foundation was honored and thrilled to build two unique guitars for Donald Everly and Keith Allison.

The videos depicts the wonderful artists who attended the presentations on Friday 6th November 2015 in The Musicians Hall Of Fame, Nashville.

Virtuoso musician Waddy Wachtel presented Donald with “Loves Made A Fool Of You” and original Cricket JI Allison presented his cousin Keith Allison with “I’m Looking For Someone To Love”. Grateful thanks also to country music legend David Frizzell for emceeing this special event on behalf of TBHEF. Welcome into TBHEF family Donald and Keith.

Keith is from the same family tree as Cricket’s drummer Jerry ‘JI’ Allison and became something of a pin-up in the 1960s through his passing resemblance to Paul McCartney.

Some years Keith would play with the Crickets for a while.

In 1965 Keith released his version of Little Richard’s The Girl Can’t Help backed by Jerry Allison, Leon Russell and James Burton, and went on to record a couple of singles with Mark Lindsay and Steve Alaimo as the Unknowns in 1966 and the following year released his version of Freddy Cannon’s Action, Action, Action., having become a regular fixture on the TV series Where the Action Is. He played harmonica on the Monkees debut album and three more of their albums, and in 1967 cut his own album, Keith Allison in Action.

In 1968 Keith became the bass player with Paul Revere and the Raiders, featuring on the album Something Happening and touring with the band when they supported the Beach Boys tour of Europe in 1969. While in Germany, Allison played bass as Paul Revere and co recorded two songs for the major German TV show, Beat Club as the group shortened its name to The Raiders. He also played on their 1970 album Collage and wrote Freeborn Man with singer Mark Lindsay, the song becoming a country rock standard. The Raiders also had a big hit with Indian Reservation which went to No.1 and prove to be Columbia’s biggest-selling single for almost a decade. There was also an album, not surprisingly, taking its name from the chart-topper, and a follow-up single, Birds of a Feather. In 1972 Allison was still on board as the group released the album Country Wine. There were more singles, but frontman Mark Lindsay left the band early in 1975, followed by Keith Allison in April of the same year. He also played with the Rick Danko Band as well as working with such artists as Ronnie Hawkins, Tommy Roe, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Rivers. Allison also appeared in the film Gods and Generals. Keith Allison has remained a member of the Waddy Wachtel Band for many years. In 2016 he played with the Crickets at Clear Lake Iowa on what would be their very last gig.

The guitar was presented to Keith in Nashville by Jerry ‘JI’ Allison at the same time that Don Everly received his guitar from Waddy Wachtell.