Sonny Curtis, a rock 'n' roll pioneer who played guitar in Buddy Holly's Crickets, wrote "I Fought the Law" in an afternoon and the theme for The Mary Tyler Moore Show based on a four-page description of the planned sitcom, has died. He was 88. Curtis' daughter, Sarah, posted on Facebook that he died Friday after a sudden illness, per the Hollywood Reporter. Curtis wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs, the AP reports, including Keith Whitley's country smash "I'm No Stranger to the Rain" and the Everly Brothers' "Walk Right Back. His work also was covered by Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen, and the Grateful Dead, per the AP.
"Sonny Curtis was a gentle, humble man who wrote extraordinary songs," said Kyle Young of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in a statement, per CBS News. Curtis' career included:
- Buddy Holly: The two met in Texas when Curtis was 15 formed a band that opened for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins, per Variety. After Holly was killed in a plane crash in 1959, Curtis rejoined the band as its frontman. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 with drummer Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan of the Crickets.
- "I Fought the Law": Curtis said he had no particular inspiration for the quickly written song with the now-familiar lament, "I fought the law—and the law won." It appeared on a Crickets album a year after Holly died but took years to become a hit; the Bobby Fuller Four hit the Top Ten with the song in 1966. Artists who have covered it include Hank Williams Jr. and the Clash. "It's my most important copyright," Curtis once said.
- "Love is All Around": He was writing jingles in 1970 when he was given a treatment to read "about a young girl who gets jilted in this small community in the Midwest and moves to the big city in Minneapolis and gets a job at a news station and rents an apartment she has a hard time affording," Curtis told CBS in 2022. "I homed in on the part that she rented an apartment she had a hard time affording and wrote, 'How will you make it on your own? … this world is awfully big, and this time you're on your own.'" Imagining Mary Richards' challenges, Curtis wrote and performed the theme for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The sitcom and the theme were hits. After the first season, he tweaked the lyrics for the next six, making them less tentative, per CBS. The producers asked Andy Williams to sing the theme, but he declined. Artists who have covered it include Sammy Davis Jr. and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
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