COOPERSTOWN _ Jeff Katz, the deputy mayor of Cooperstown, loves music and writing and combines them in ``Maybe Baby (or, You know that it would be untrue),'' a new blog for rock 'n' roll lovers.
His concept can be boiled down to two words: what if?
What if, on Feb. 3, 1959, Buddy Holly hadn't climbed aboard that small plane in Clear Lake, Iowa? What if, instead, he'd insisted his bass player, Waylon Jennings, join Richie Valens and the Big Bopper on that ill-fated flight?
Ten years later, Holly, the late '50s phenomenon from Lubbock, Texas, might still have been playing concerts, but would the world have passed him by?
As Katz imagines Holly in 1969, when hair was long and the counter-culture was booming:
``It wasn't that he didn't like the new groups.
``Like many '50s stars, he had toured England in the early years of the decade, and he had met The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Nice boys, all of them. He loved The Beatles' version of his Words of Love.' It was a solid take, Liverpool, not Lubbock. The Stones' cover of Not Fade Away' was a bit sloppy, but Buddy thought it was exciting.
``But now he couldn't relate. Sgt. Pepper' what was that? It didn't rock, that's for sure, and you couldn't dance to it.''
In this rewriting of history, Jennings would have died at 21, never to create his own brand of outlaw country music. And Holly would have dwelled on how much was lost with his bass player's passing.
``Now he was dead, dead 10 years from that horrible crash. Buddy thought of Waylon every day,'' Katz writes, ``how he made him get on that plane to prove a point. "`Wichita Lineman' was playing. What would Waylon Jennings have done with country music?' Buddy wondered. He would have brought the Nashville establishment down to its knees. But he was dead.''
At the end story, Katz, 46, a former options trader, presents some facts and context for the reader.
``I've written 14 of these, and more are on the way,'' he said Friday. ``My goal is to have them collected and published, but this blog is a way to get them out there, see who likes them.''
A couple of weeks ago, Katz sent his first story _ an embellished account of how a young Paul McCartney joined John Lennon in 1957 _ to the Internet.
Comments so far have been gratifying, he said.
``I was wondering how to release these, and finally decided to post a new one every two weeks,'' he said.
Want to see what might have but never really happened? Tune your computer to: http://maybebabyoryouknowthatitwouldbeuntrue.blogspot.com/.
