Sonny Curtis, Crickets frontman and MTM theme writer, dies at 88

Sonny Curtis, the singer-songwriter who fronted Buddy Holly's backing band the Crickets, wrote the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme and penned rock and country standards including I Fought the Law and Walk Right Back, died Friday, Sept. 19, at age 88 after a sudden illness, his daughter Sarah Curtis said on Facebook. His wife, Louise Curtis, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.

Curtis’s career stretched from the formative years of rock and roll to television and country music. A childhood friend of Buddy Holly, he joined Holly and the Crickets in the late 1950s, returned to the group after Holly’s death in a 1959 plane crash and became the Crickets’ frontman. He wrote or co-wrote songs that later became hits for other artists and that have been covered across genres for decades.

Born May 9, 1937, in Meadow, Texas, Curtis grew up in a musical family; his uncles performed as one of Texas’s early bluegrass acts. He learned guitar as a child, met Holly at 15 and played on several early recordings. After a stint touring with Slim Whitman, Curtis rejoined the Crickets in late 1958. The group recorded I Fought the Law for their first post-Holly LP, In Style With the Crickets, in...