It is a tragic irony that while Buddy Holly's professional career lasted a paltry 18 months before his untimely death, the musical tribute has been delighting audiences for more than 20 years.

In that brief career, the geeky innovative Texan mined a rich seam of music that has influenced so many future stars, such as the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Praise indeed that Paul McCartney reputedly went so far as to state that without Holly and the Crickets, there would have been no Beatles.

Watching Buddy at Dartford's Orchard Theatre recently, it was easy to see the appeal. Put a look-alike and sound-alike in the shape of Glen Joseph on stage with a rocking backing band and the great man lives again.

Charles Hardin Holley was just 22 when he made the fateful decision to charter a small plane from Clear Lake, Iowa, to get to the next stop on the tour when it crashed in a snow storm in February 1959. Holly, the Big Bopper J P Richardson (Steve Dorsett), Ritchie Valens (Miguel Angel) and the pilot were all killed. Valens had rashly persuaded bass player Waylon Jennings to give up his seat for him.

The day the music died, as Don McLean so cogently summed it up in American Pie, is handled tastefully in this jukebox show, with a single acoustic guitar left propped up in front of the house curtain.

Before the audience can get too maudlin, it is on with the music and the ground-breaking hits keep coming - Oh Boy, Peggy Sue, That'll Be The Day, Everyday, Not Fade Away, Words of Love, True Love Ways, Love Is Strange, Maybe Baby.

Holly is portrayed as something of a rebel who refuses to compromise in his quest to play his unique brand of rock 'n' roll and not trite, slash-your-wrist cowboy songs demanded by his manager and record companies.

While there is a strong supporting cast, the show is, of course, about the main character, infused with plenty of humour. Stand out scenes include the song name change from Cindy Lou to Peggy Sue so that the drummer could get some rumpy pumpy with his fiancee of the same name.

Another was the band's appearance at an all-black theatre in New York's Harlem, where a bunch of white boys are an incongruous site but instead of ducking missiles, to their amazement, go down a storm.

Melissa Keys and Miguel Angel, who doubles up as Valens, help to stoke the laughs and musical quality.

Joseph belies his Geordie roots with a fine Texan drawl and after the obligatory stomping encore to get us on our feet, he left us with a cautionary: "Y'all be careful driving home, it's blowing up a storm out there!"

Rave on indeed.