Music history of the United States in the 1970s most successful singer-songwriter artists were Jackson Browne, Eric Carmen, Jim Croce, John Denver, Steve Goodman, Arlo Guthrie, Joel, Dave Mason, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Taylor and Neil Young. Some artists — including King, Kris Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot — had previously been primarily songwriters but began releasing albums and songs of their own. King's album "Tapestry" became one of the top-selling albums of the decade, and the song "It's Too Late" became one of the 1970s biggest songs. McLean's 1971 song "American Pie," inspired by the death of Buddy Holly, became one of popular music's most-recognized songs of
Buddy Holly and by Holly's friends and family, for its inaccuracies. This led Paul McCartney (whose MPL Communications by then controlled the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's song catalog) to produce and host his own documentary about Holly in 1985, titled "The Real Buddy Holly Story". This video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney, among others. In 1987, musician Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie "La Bamba", which depicts him performing at the Surf Ballroom and boarding the fatal airplane with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Crenshaw's version