What he sang about is largely unimportant. He took two strains of ethnic American music - R and B/ Country. And quite successfully fused them. Rather like Ashley Hutchings did with English folk music and rock music.

Buddy Holly is a big hitter - his influence was bigger than Ashley's. You can't pretend you never heard Buddy Holly. If you try to exclude his music from your own - you make you make your own music odd sounding and perverse. because Buddy and his contemporaries set the trend - they got into everybody's soul.