{"id":68645,"date":"2019-02-03T13:05:27","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T19:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=68645"},"modified":"2019-02-04T11:18:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T17:18:47","slug":"the-day-the-music-died-february-3-1959-remembering-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-on-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-day-the-music-died-february-3-1959-remembering-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-on-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day the Music Died: February 3, 1959 – Remembering Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper on the 60th Anniversary of the Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three musicians are huddled around one another with their\ncollars turned up in an attempt to appease the bitter cold wind that was\ncutting right through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clear Lake, Iowa,<\/strong>\nis an unforgiving environment in February. The warmth of the Surf Ballroom<\/strong>is behind them, as was the\nadmiration of the fans who turned out to see them perform on the latest stop of\n\u201cThe Winter Dance Party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flyer for the final performance of the “Winter Dance Party” in Clear Lake, Iowa, February 2, 1959.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Earlier that night, in a side room off the stage, a young\n17-year-old Californian singer and guitar player was dreading returning to a\nbroken-down tour bus with no heat for a 365-mile journey even farther North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word spread quickly that the Texan, whom most fans came\nout to see, was chartering a plane to avoid what was sure to be a frostbitten\ndrive. In 11 days of the tour, 5 separate buses had already been in use,\ncausing the gang of musicians to label this as the \u201ctour from hell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youngest member of the tour approached the veteran hired\nguitar player, who had been assured a seat on the flight for a price of $36,\nand asked if he could possibly have his seat. The flu was starting to work thru\nhis body, and he was feeling it. The singer\/songwriting DJ from Beaumont, Texas<\/strong>, had it as well, but\nhad been given his seat by another touring member of the band. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youngest member of the tour agreed to a game of chance.\nA coin toss. The plane would seat three plus pilot, and two of the spots were\nalready taken, so he accepted the odds, despite an innate fear of flying, and\nwith a simple flip of a coin, won the coveted last seat. The three cold and\ntired musicians climbed aboard the Beechcraft\nBonanza<\/strong> at Mason City Municipal\nAirport<\/strong> shortly before 1am and flew into the history books of rock and\nroll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A photograph of Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, and Tommy Allsup performing on the “Winter Dance Party” in January of 1959.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hubert Jerry Dwyer<\/strong>,\nthe owner of the plane, became concerned that morning when the pilot had not made\ncontact with him since takeoff. He embarked in another of his aircraft, to\nretrace the flight plan of the missing Bonanza. After seeing what he thought\nwas the plane, Dwyer contacted the sheriff\u2019s office. Deputy Bill McGill<\/strong> drove in his cruiser to a\nfield owned by Albert Juhl<\/strong> northwest\nof the airport where he found the mangled pile of metal and carnage that had\ncarried, at the time of its crash, three of the top-grossing musicians in the\ncountry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, 22-year-old Texan rockabilly hero Buddy Holly<\/strong>, 17-year-old Chicano singer Ritchie Valens,<\/strong> and 28-year-old DJ and songwriter, J.P. \u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d Richardson<\/strong> along with 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson<\/strong>, died in a frozen cornfield less than six miles from their departure in what came to be known as \u201cThe Day the Music Died,\u201d immortalized by the Don McLean <\/strong>1971 hit \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Buddy Holly.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This year marks the 60th anniversary of this tragic plane\ncrash that claimed the lives of three musicians with multiple number one hits\nto their name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valens, the youngest of the three, was fresh off his first\nappearance on Dick Clark<\/strong>\u2019s American\nBandstand<\/em><\/strong> and a role in DJ Alan\nFreed<\/strong>\u2019s movie Go, Johnny, Go!<\/em><\/strong> The year before his fateful joining of \u201cThe\nWinter Dance Party\u201d tour, Valens had a million-copy selling single with his\nballad \u201cDonna,\u201d penned for his girlfriend of the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holly\u2019s luck had seen a downturn after leaving his band The Crickets<\/strong>. Plagued with lawsuits\nfrom former promoters, owed royalties by his former manager, and being freshly\nmarried, Holly had but one chance to make some much needed money, and that was\nto do what all musicians do\u2014tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Richardson, who had a hit with his tongue-in-cheek song\n\u201cChantilly Lace,\u201d had just recently taken leave from his disc jockey duties to\ngo on the road for the first time to promote his new single.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assembled for this tour to back up the artists was a band\nconsisting of Waylon Jennings<\/strong>on bass,\nguitarist Tommy Allsup,<\/strong>and drummer Carl Bunch<\/strong>. The tour was set to cover\ntwenty-four Midwestern cities in as many days. It began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin<\/strong>, on January 23, 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount of travel soon became a logistical problem. The\ndistances between venues had not been properly considered when the performances\nwere scheduled, which led Holly to his fateful decision that night in Iowa, to\ncharter a plane and fly ahead to the next stop, to get some well-deserved rest\nbefore the next performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ritchie Valens.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The intended passengers that night were Holly and his band\nmembers, Jennings and Allsup, but Richardson was ill with the flu and Jennings\ngladly gave his seat to the boisterous son of a Texas oil field worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valens, who had a terrible fear of flying that stemmed from\na childhood friend\u2019s death, was on the verge of falling ill as well, and asked\nguitarist Allsup if he could have his seat on the warm plane. This led to the\nfabled toss of a coin and Valens, with a \u201cheads,\u201d assured his seat. Years later\nin his native Texas, Tommy Allsup, in honor of the 17-year-old rock pioneer,\nopened a restaurant he simply called The Heads Up Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Waylon Jennings and Buddy Holly in 1959.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are all kinds of misconceptions about that night. The\nmost common is that it was Waylon Jennings who flipped with Valens for that\nlast seat. Jennings holds a much darker and unfortunate distinction in this\nseries of events. When Holly learned that Jennings had given his seat to\nRichardson, Holly jokingly said \u201cWell I\nhope that ole bus freezes,\u201d <\/em>to which Jennings replied, \u201cYeah well I hope your plane crashes\u201d<\/em>\u2014astatement\nthat he would regret for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Civil Aeronautics\nBoard<\/strong>, which handled accidents like this before the formation of the National Transportation Safety Board<\/strong>, descended\non the cornfield in Iowa to start the investigation into how these three\nmusical heroes perished, while county coroner, Ralph Smiley<\/strong>, had the most of unfortunate jobs in determining the\nexact cause of death of the four young men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Buddy Holly plane crash site. 5 miles north of Clear Lake, Iowa, February 3, 1959. (Elwin Musser\/LEE NEWS SERVICE, The Globe Gazette)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Holly and Valens had both been ejected from the plane and\nlay nearby. Peterson, the 21-year-old pilot, was still in the twisted and\nbattered wreckage of the fuselage. Richardson\u2019s body had been thrown from the\nwreck and almost 100 feet across a fence and into a neighboring field. Smiley\nassessed that all four men died instantly from \u201cmassive brain and chest\ntrauma.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CAB investigators estimated that the Beechcraft Bonanza\nhad attempted to turn when the right wing clipped the ground, at 170mph,\ncausing the plane to cartwheel into the field for over 540 feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The young pilot had logged 711 hours of flight time with 128\non this particular type of aircraft, along with 52 hours of what is known as\n\u201cinstrumental flight.\u201d During this training, a pilot learns to fly and navigate\nusing only his aviation instruments and no sight, the kind of skills needed to\ncircumvent the conditions that night in 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A light snow was falling with a ceiling of 3,000 feet, sky\nobscured, and visibility was six miles with winds from 20 to 30 mph. Although\ndeteriorating weather was reported along the planned route, the weather\nbriefings Peterson received failed to report that. Despite his instrumental\ntraining, Peterson had not passed the needed written examination to be\ncertified in this discipline, and he was only licensed to fly under visual\nflight rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To further complicate the already doomed situation, the\ntraining he had received was on a different model Beechcraft, with an opposite\nset of instruments, including the more modern artificial horizon as a source of\naircraft attitude information, while the plane he was piloting that night was\nequipped with an older-type Sperry F3 attitude gyroscope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, the two types of instruments display the same\naircraft pitch attitude information in graphically opposite ways. In the cold\ndark of Clear Lake that night, with no ground lights for guidance in the\nsparsely populated farm areas, no visible horizon and low clouds, the young\npilot made a fateful decision to take to the skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath of the crash, news spread quickly of the\nstars\u2019 demise on the newswire. The headlineof the Mason City Globe Gazette<\/em> that day read \u201cFour Killed in Clear Lake\nPlane Crash.\u201d News stations and reporters flocked to the crash site. Journalism\nin 1959 was not policed by the guidelines that we adhere to in this day and\nage, regarding deaths and releasing the names of the victims until next of kin\nhas been notified by law enforcement first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New York City<\/strong>,\nHolly\u2019s bride of only six months, Mar\u00eda\nElena<\/strong> learned of his death on a breaking news report, breaking down and\nsuffering a miscarriage upon hearing of Holly\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bob Morales<\/strong>,\nValens\u2019 older brother was working on a car a few blocks away from his mother\u2019s\nhouse, when a local DJ broke in with the news of the crash. Bob ran to the\nhouse, not wanting to believe what he had heard. As he opened the door, his\nworst fear had come true as he saw two of Ritchie\u2019s friends on either side of their\nmother, holding her up. \u201cBobby, we lost\nyour brother<\/em>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrienne Joy\nRichardson<\/strong>, 7 months pregnant, with her 5-year-old daughter in tow, was\nattempting to get the days grocery shopping done when she was approached by a\nfriend in the market wanting to express her deepest sympathies in her husbands\npassing, of which she had no knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CAB investigation determined in due time that the cause\nof the crash was “the pilot’s unwise decision” to fly in those\nconditions that night, without proper training, leading directly to the crash.\nFunerals were held for Holly in Texas, Valens was buried in California, and\nRichardson was laid to rest in Beaumont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Buddy Holly.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Holly\u2019s widow, Mar\u00eda, did not attend his funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donna Ludwig, the 16-year-old blonde high school student who\nwas the muse for Valens\u2019 million selling single \u201cDonna,\u201d mourned her first and\ntrue love.Donna and Valens had met at a garage party where Ritchie was playing.\nIt was love at first sight. They shared two and a half years of memories before\nhis untimely passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two months after the crash, Adrienne Richardson gave birth\nto her and JP\u2019s second child, a boy, named Jay\nPerry Richardson<\/strong> in honor of his father. The world mourned in unison for\nthe loss of these song and dance men, who all had so much more music to share\nwith an eager audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day after the crash in New Rochelle, New York<\/strong>, a 13-year-old music fan folded his papers\nto be delivered that crisp morning and learned of his idols passing and like\nthe rest of the country, it was an event that would set itself deep into his\nmemory as turning point in his own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie” album which memorialized “The Day the Music Died” in the title track.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1971, the now 26-year-old musician, Don McLean wrote and\nrecorded what was to be his opus in the song \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201dIn his touching\ntribute to his heroes, McLean exorcised the pain of the memory from that February\nmorning 12 years prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething touched me\ndeep inside, the day the music died,\u201d<\/em> and with that lyrical turn, he gave a\nname to the tragedy which is still attached to it some 60 years later and\nturned an entirely new generation onto the music of the three rock stars\ndepicted in his ode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been six decades since the day the music died. In\nthose long years, the lives of those pioneers of rock, rockabilly, and country\nhave been immortalized in many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1978 actor Gary\nBusey<\/strong> gave an Oscar-nominated portrayal of Holly in TheBuddy Holly Story<\/em>. Valens was paid tribute to in the Golden\nGlobe for Best Drama award-winning film La\nBamba<\/em> staring Lou Diamond Phillips<\/strong>\nand featuring music from fellow Chicano rockers and Valens contemporaries Los Lobos<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are numerous tributes and monuments to the trio within\ntheir hometowns, with streets and highways named for them and at the crash\nsight there is an even a plasma-cut steel set of Wayfarer-style glasses like\nthose Holly wore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Countless musicians from John Lennon<\/strong> and Paul\nMcCartney<\/strong>to Dwight Yoakam<\/strong> and Los Lonely Boys<\/strong>, all count Holly,\nValens, and Richardson as influences and inspirations of theirs. When the Rock\nand Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, inducted its first group of\nperformers, Holly was among those tributed, and in 2001 Valens was recognized\nas an inductee as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A monument at the crash site featuring Buddy Holly’s trademark glasses.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Richardson, despite penning country legend George Jones<\/strong>\u2019 first number one smash\n\u201cWhite Lightning\u201d and the Sonny James hit \u201cRunning Bear\u201d along with his own top\nten hits and with being credited as making the first music video ever in 1958\nfor \u201cChantilly Lace\u201d has been snubbed by the Rock Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people today know the crash and those involved, from the movies, songs and Broadway plays based on their short but meteoric rise to fame, but keeping their memories alive, in any shape or fashion, assures us that the next generation of children who pick up a guitar will never forget the trio of musicians who paved the way for so many us to pursue that ever consuming passion that we call music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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