HENDERSONVILLE — “The Music of Buddy Holly” show served up a rockin’ blast from the past on Aug. 13 at Flat Rock Playhouse’s downtown Hendersonville venue.

The show built to a crescendo, with well-thought-out song selections, and ended with a bang. Alas, the band left the stage, but Holly’s best-known song hadn’t been played, so the revved-up crowd rose to its feet — en masse — to plead for an encore.

The FRP tribute group let the tension build just a little before eagerly returning to the stage and launching into a rollicking, joyful “That’ll Be the Day” — and the near-ecstatic audience erupted in cheers, as many sang and clapped along. The applause afterward was sustained.

Holly, along with his band the Crickets (of which Waylon Jennings was a member), is widely credited with defining a rock ‘n’ roll band as two guitars, a bass and drums.

What’s more, the death of Holly and two other teen icons — Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper — in an airplane crash on Feb. 3, 1959 (near Clear Lake, Iowa) was termed rock’s “first tragedy” and inspired the 1971 Don McLean mega-hit “American Pie.”

It was fitting, therefore, that the Holly tribute show started with Jeremy Sevelovitz and Christopher Fordinal singing a lyric fragment from “American Pie,” especially alluding to “the day ... the music ... died.”

Sevelovitz and Fordinal took turns singing  lead — or providing background vocals and harmonies for one another — on the unique songs of Holly, who was a true rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and icon.  On some songs, they rotated singing the lead. Sevelovitz played lead guitar, while Fordinal played rhythm. (The two men performed as Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, respectively, in the FRP’s recent production of “The Million Dollar Quartet.”)

The duo was backed by a house band that included Daniel Iannucci on slap bass and Paul Babelay on drums,. Alex Shields served as music director. The show ran Aug. 11-21.

Among the amusing and memorable stories shared by the FRP duo about Holly and the Crickets during the show concerned Holly’s huge 1957 hit, “Peggy Sue.”

Crickets’ drummer Jerry Allison was dating — and head-over-heals in love with — a woman named Peggy Sue, who was ambivalent as to how she felt about him. 

In the meantime, Holly had written a song that he was thinking about titling “Cindy Lou,” but, as the story goes, Allison prevailed on his friend — as a favor to him — to rename the song “Peggy Sue,” saying it would sway her to fall in love with him. 

Apparently, the song performed it’s musical magic, as Allison eventually married his beloved, real-life Peggy Sue Gerron. (Unfortunately, they were divorced 11 years later, but that detail was not revealed during the show.)

While the show focused on the songs of Holly, a few popular songs by other stars from that era were performed, including the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up, Little Susie” and “Bye, Bye Love,” Chuck Berry’s “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” and Ian & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange.” 

Before performing “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” the duo noted that Berry, who is black, originally had titled it “Brown-Skinned Handsome Man,” but renamed it after his record label pressured him to avoid possible racial blowback. 

Holly, born in 1936 into a musical family in Lubbock, Texas, was a skinny kid with black hair and a nerdy look, heightened by big black horn-rims (which he wore for looks). He wrote, recorded and produced his own material, starting in country music. He quickly shifted to rock ‘n’ roll, and did all of this by age 22.

 When he met secretary Maria Elena Santiago in a record company office, he immediately told her he was going to marry her — and a few months later, he did just that. Alas, he also made her a widow a few months later, when he died in the famous airplane crash.

The 90-minute show opened with “Rave On,” followed by “Come On, Let’s Go” and “Ready Teddy.” Other first-set songs included “Flower of My Heart,” “Heartbeat,” “Maybe Baby,” “Crying Waiting Hoping,”  “Oh, Boy!” and “You’re So Square.” 

Following a 15-minute break, the show kicked it up a notch with “Not Fade Away,” “It’s So Easy,” “Early in the Morning,” “True Love Ways,” “Words of Love,” “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” “I’m Changing All These Changes,” “Peggy Sue,” “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “Everyday” and “Think It Over.”