>From the Rockabilly Hall of Fame website... Buddy Holly Lawsuit Update Buddy Holly's widow pleaded with MCA Records for decades to raise royalty payments from her husband's music before resorting to a lawsuit this month seeking millions for alleged underpayment. Maria Elena Holly and her lawyer told a news conference Wednesday she was stonewalled by the record company for most of the 40 years since Holly died in a 1959 plane crash at age 22. Holly joined the rock pioneer's sister and two brothers in filing the suit last week in Buddy's hometown of Lubbock, Texas. MCA Records is a unit of Universal Music Group, which owned by Seagram Co Ltd. "I have never given up, I have always had different lawyers approaching MCA... This is like David and Goliath. MCA laughs in everybody's face," said Holly, now in her late 50s. "They knew they were doing the wrong thing the whole time," she said. Holly recorded for just two years but was a major influence in history of rock, especially on Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Songs such as "Rave On" and "That'll Be the Day" are still recorded with regularity and Dylan closed his shows during his latest U.S. tour with Holly's "Not Fade Away." The lawsuit alleges that MCA underpaid royalties, used invalid or faked contracts from the 1950s, sold music without legal authority and failed to pay after reaching a negotiated settlement with the Holly survivors in January 1996. Universal Music Group has declined to comment on the legal action, saying it does not discuss pending suits in public. Maria Holly said MCA has continued paying the Holly survivors royalties at just 3 percent, far below today's rates. She said she asked MCA again and again to see the contracts it based its music rights on and has sought an accounting of where the company got material unreleased while Holly was alive and supposedly stored with Holly's parents. "She was stonewalled and lied to again and again and meanwhile things were happening and she couldn't keep up with them," said her attorney, Kevin Glasheen.
