This week in Texas music history: The Big Bopper Records ‘Chantilly Lace’

In August 1958, one half of a Beaumont man’s phone call stormed the charts.

By Jason Mellard, The Center for Texas Music History at Texas State UniversityAugust 6, 2025 8:00 am, ,

From KUTX:

This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio.

On August 4, 1958, rockabilly pioneer the Big Bopper recorded the song “Chantilly Lace.”

Born Jiles Perry Richardson Jr., in Sabine Pass in 1930, J. P. spent his youth in Beaumont, where he started working on the radio station KTRM as a teenager. In the 1950s, he became a beacon for Golden Triangle rock ‘n’ roll, and crossed over from disc jockey to singer by decade’s end.

In August 1958, Richardson traveled to Houston’s Gold Star Studios to record for Pappy Daily’s D Records. The goal was to make a song mashing together a few current novelty hits titled “Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor.”

They got a hit, but it was actually the B-side to their Purple People Eater knock-off. “Chantilly Lace” used the same humorous dialogue style, written as one side of a telephone conversation with the Big Bopper’s girlfriend.

The song would go multi-platinum as a key track of the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll. In addition to “Chantilly Lace,” Richardson’s songwriting also launched hits for Johnny Preston with “Running Bear” and a young George Jones with “White Lightning.”

By November 1958, the success of “Chantilly Lace” led Richardson to tour extensively. It was a whirlwind year as early rock promoters tried to squeeze the most out of what they considered to be a flash-in-the pan youth genre.

Consequently, in early 1959 the Big Bopper found himself on the grueling Winter Dance Party tour with Richie Valens and Buddy Holly. The bands had been crawling from town to town by bus in the freezing Midwest, leading some artists to charter a plane from Iowa to North Dakota.

Like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper was not initially one of the intended passengers. But, he was feeling under the weather, and a sympathetic Waylon Jennings gave up his seat, sealing a tragic moment in early rock history.

Sources:

Alan Lee Haworth and Laurie E. Jasinski in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.

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