"That'll Be the Day" is a song written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison. It was first recorded by Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes in 1956 and was re-recorded in 1957 by Holly and his new band, the Crickets.
The 1957 recording achieved widespread success. Holly's producer, Norman Petty, was credited as a co-writer, although he did not contribute to the composition.
Many other versions have been recorded. It was the first song recorded (as a demonstration disc) by the Quarrymen, the skiffle group that evolved into the Beatles.
The 1957 recording was certified gold (for over a million US sales) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1969. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.
It was placed in the National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States", in 2005.
In June 1956, Holly, Allison and Sonny Curtis went to see the movie The Searchers, starring John Wayne, in which Wayne repeatedly used the phrase "that'll be the day". This line of dialogue inspired the young musicians.
The song was first recorded by Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes for Decca Records at Bradley’s Barn, in Nashville, on July 22, 1956. Decca, displeased with Holly's previous two singles, did not issue recordings from this session.
After the song was re-recorded by the Crickets in 1957 and became a hit, Decca released the original recording as a single (Decca D30434) on September 2, 1957, with "Rock Around with Ollie Vee" as the B-side.
It was also the title track of the 1958 album That'll Be the Day.
Despite Holly's newfound stardom, the single did not chart.
Holly's contract with Decca prohibited him from re-recording any of the songs recorded in the 1956 Nashville sessions for five years, even if Decca never released them.
To evade this restriction, the producer Norman Petty credited the Crickets as the artist on his re-recording of "That'll Be the Day" for Brunswick Records.
Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca. Once the cat was out of the bag, Decca re-signed Holly to another of its subsidiaries, Coral Records, so he ended up with two recording contracts.
Recordings with the Crickets were to be issued by Brunswick, and his solo recordings were to be on Coral.
The second recording of the song was made on February 25, 1957, seven months after the first, at the Norman Petty studios in Clovis, New Mexico, and issued by Brunswick on May 27, 1957.
This version is on the debut album by the Crickets, The "Chirping" Crickets, issued on November 27, 1957.
The Brunswick recording of "That'll Be the Day" is considered a classic of rock and roll. It was ranked number 39 on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
The final phrase of the song's lyrics -- predicting "that'll be the day-ay-ay when I die" -- seemed eerily prescient after Holly, then only 22, and fellow singers Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959, a tragically iconic event later memorialized as "The Day the Music Died".