It features an Academy Award-winning musical score, adapted by Joe Renzetti and Oscar-nominated lead performance by Gary Busey.

The film also stars Don Stroud, Charles Martin Smith, Conrad Janis, William Jordan, and Maria Richwine, who plays María Elena Holly.

In 1956, Buddy Holly and his friends, drummer Jesse Charles and bass player Ray Bob Simmons, regularly performed at a local roller rink in Lubbock, Texas, as The Crickets.

Turner's secretary, Maria Elena Santiago, catches Holly's eye but their budding romance is nearly ended when her strict aunt refuses to allow them to date.

After appearing on CBS TV on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jesse and Ray Bob return to Lubbock with the agreement that they will retain the Crickets name.

Busey, in particular, was noted for recording the soundtrack music live and for losing a considerable amount of weight in order to portray the skinny Holly.

The actor's accurate portrayal was aided by knowledge gained from a previous attempt to film part of the Holly life story, the ill-fated Three-Sided Coin, in which he played Crickets drummer Jerry Allison.

"[7] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "There are a lot of actors in 'The Buddy Holly Story' — some of them very nice — but the movie is really a one-man show.

It's Gary Busey's galvanizing solo performance that gives meaning to an otherwise shapeless and bland feature-length film about the American rock-and-roll star who was killed in a plane crash in 1959.

"[9] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The heart and soul and power of 'The Buddy Holly Story' is the uncanny, marrow-deep, robust, exhilarating, likable, superlative, overwhelmingly convincing portrayal by Gary Busey ... For once there is no lip-synching to someone else's voice, no feigning with the fingers to somebody else's strumming.

Being interviewed and involved in the production of director Richard Spence's documentary 'The Real Story of Buddy Holly', McCartney decided after seeing the film to make a more accurate account of what happened.

Busey was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Tex Rudloff, Joel Fein, Curly Thirlwell and Willie D. Burton for Best Sound.