Why did Norman Petty overdub The Fireballs instead of The Crickets on Buddys apartment recordings?
Understandably The Crickets have always felt that the Apartment recordings are somewhat sacred and shouldn’t be tampered with, thus they haven’t, nor will they, add “Crickets” overdubs to them. The Fireballs were Petty’s latest & greatest discovery at the time and since they were readily available, and The Crickets were not, he used The Fireballs. Petty also might have hoped they would have a hit out of the project somewhere (at the time they hadn’t hit the top of the charts yet). In all, there are 3 versions of the “Apartment Tapes”: the raw tapes (Buddy & acoustic); Jack Hansen overdubs (done first in New York with backup vocalists, mono); and then The Fireball/Petty overdubs (no backup vocals, done in Clovis, in stereo).
