If he had done nothing else in his career, Sonny Curtis, who has died of complications from pneumonia aged 88, would deserve a generous measure of rock’n’roll immortality for composing I Fought the Law. Originally released on the album In Style With the Crickets, when Curtis was singer and guitarist with the late Buddy Holly’s former backing band the Crickets, I Fought the Law was not a hit single for them, but would go on to enjoy an extended life of its own.
It became a US Top 10 hit for the Bobby Fuller Four in 1966, and would re-emerge in versions by the Dead Kennedys, Hank Williams Jr, Sam Neely, Green Day and Status Quo. The Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen frequently performed it live, while actor Colin Farrell recorded a version for the film Intermission (2003).
Most famous of all was the storming version by the Clash in 1979. Though not a huge chart hit (it just scraped into the UK Top 30), it helped the Clash to break through to the American audience. The song’s tale of an outlaw life and its harsh consequences – “Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun / I fought the law and the law won”– chimed perfectly with the band’s rebel-rocker image. It went on to be included on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, and Curtis appreciated the royalties it brought in. He reckoned it only took him 15 minutes to write, yet “It’s my most important copyright.”
Curtis wrote hundreds of songs in his career, and many of them were performed by high-profile artists including Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, JJ Cale, Andy Williams and the country singer Keith Whitley. In 1961, the Everly Brothers reached No 7 on the US chart with Curtis’s Walk Right Back. The dreamy ballad More Than I Can Say, which he co-wrote with the Crickets’ drummer Jerry Allison, was later recorded by Bobby Vee and Leo Sayer. Sayer’s version reached No 2 on both the UK and US charts.
Another benchmark in his career was his composition of Love Is All Around – not to be confused with the similarly named 1967 hit by The Troggs, but the theme song to TV’s Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), which he also sang. Its friendly melody and cheerfully affirmative message (“You’re going to make it after all”) were a perfect fit for the show’s theme of a young single woman pursuing a media career in Minneapolis.
Curtis recorded a country-flavoured version of the song for his 1980 solo album, also called Love Is All Around, which reached No 29 on the country music chart. Again it was a song that prompted numerous cover versions, by artists including Joan Jett, Sammy Davis Jr and the Minnesota band Hüsker Dü.
Sonny was born in Meadow, Texas, during the years of the Great Depression. He was the second-youngest of the six children of cotton farmers Violet (nee Moore) and Arthur Curtis. Music ran in the family, and Sonny was taught to play guitar from a young age by his uncles, Edward, Herb and Smokey Mayfield, who had formed the bluegrass band the Mayfield Brothers. Sonny later launched his own bluegrass group with his older brothers, Pete and Dean. He would recall how driving a tractor around the acres of the family farm meant that “you have plenty of time to write a song”.
He was still in his teens when he was introduced to Buddy Holly, a native of nearby Lubbock, Texas (a remarkably musical city that has also been home to Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines and her musician-father Lloyd). Curtis, who had played shows as the opening act for Elvis Presley before Elvis rocketed to superstardom, played guitar on Holly’s album That’ll Be the Day, whose title track was a No 1 hit in the US and the UK in 1957. In 1958 Curtis joined the Crickets, but in February of the following year Holly was killed in an air crash, aged 22. Curtis subsequently became the Crickets’ lead singer as well as their lead guitarist.
Curtis continued to perform with the Crickets intermittently for several decades, making his last recordings with them on the album The Crickets and their Buddies (2004). This was a selection of the group’s hits, remade featuring guest stars including Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, Nanci Griffith and Waylon Jennings. One of the tracks was The Real Buddy Holly Story, which Curtis wrote to set the record straight after seeing the movie The Buddy Holly Story (1978). “I just came down to see The Buddy Holly Story / I guess it don’t matter none but they told it wrong,” he sang. He recorded a total of eight solo albums, from 1964’s Beatles Hits Flamenco Style Guitar (featuring flamenco versions of Beatle songs) to Sonny Curtis (2007).
Curtis was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991, the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2007, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Crickets (2012), and the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame (2013).
He is survived by his wife, Louise Halverson, whom he married in 1970, their daughter, Sarah, three granddaughters and his sister, Alene. Sarah’s book about her father, Daughter of a Song, is due to be published next month.
• Sonny Curtis, musician, singer and songwriter, born 9 May 1937; died 19 September 2025
