Trying this for the second time:
1: Buddy Holly will go country by 1960 at the latest. His diary said so. This will alienate most of the Liverpool "Merseybeat" scene, causing them to go to skiffle, thus aborting 2/3 of the British Invasion, including the Beatles, though not the London Blues Rock scene of the Stones, the Who, Ten Years After, or Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac. Bob Dilyan will record either at Sun Records (resulting in a feud with Jerry Lee Lewis) or else under Holly, and either way, won't write any of the early songs he's famous for and won'd be credited with inventing Folk Rock, Neil Young will be instead.
To keep a hold of his crown as King of Rock and Roll, Elvis will be forced between late 1957 and 1960 to tour in Europe or watch his star fall back to normal. Nazi War Criminal "Col," well, Waffen
SS-Oberführer "Tom Parker" will be more thuroughly exposed to Interopl and/or Mossad and be picked up for trial, which can only have salutory effects on Mr. Presley's later health and career.
Under Holly's influence, Outlaw Country and Southern Rock will be even bigger and last longer, possibly even even into 1983, and only finally be eclipsed by the "New Countrypolitan" of George Strait et al and the first wave of Hair Metal of Quiet Riot and Motley Crue, respectively. In the Nineties, Holly will denounce Wheezer and possibly other Geek Rockers like They Might Be Giants and Post-
Out of Time REM as a bunch of "Frauds" and "Plagiarists" in much the same way that Joannie Mitchell has denounced the likes of Natalie Merchant, Dido, Allanis Morrisette, Fiona Apple, Michelle Branch, and even Gwen Stefani and Halley Williams, and John Lytton and Billy Strummer have denounced Green Day, Blink 193, Sum 41, and My Chemical Romance! Holly will also have some rather salty things to say about the Ninties "Young Country" of Garth Brooks, Wade Hayes, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tricia Yearwood, and Leanne Rimes.
2: Valens will fade out by 1965, but not before killing the final flowering of Acoustic Salsa, aborting Electric Salsa entirely, and significantly wounding Latin Jazz. On the other hand, he will have probably plowed the fields enough that the world is ready for Carlos Santanna thirty years early. And the first wave of Latin Metal will probably happen twenty years early, during the Classic Metal era of KISS, Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppellin, and Jethro Tull. Could this possibly butterfly
Saturday Night Fever into a turkey that sinks Travolta's career?
3: The Big Bopper was a one-hit wonder in the making, but something tells me he'll join Sha-Na-Na just in time for Woodstock, lending them both some musical historical credit it
still wouldn't deserve as he is a legitimate if tangential member of Rock's founding generation, and vice versa. He later ends up as a DJ on a Miami-area Oldies station. If the world is lucky, he becomes an East Coast "Dr. Demento," but I wouldn't hold my breath. More likely he starves onthe street or languishes in a nursing home after Clear Channel takes over "his" station and throws him out on his rear.