February 3 is commemorated as “the day the music died,” referring to the tragic loss of musical talent in a plane crash on that day in 1959. This week, Tidbits profiles the musicians and the song that was written in tribute.
• Charles “Buddy” Holley was a Lubbock-born guitarist who brought us many hits, including “Peggy Sue” and “That’ll Be the Day.” When his name was misspelled on his first recording contract, he became Buddy Holly. Holly was discovered by a record company talent scout when he and his band were performing at a skating rink. Landing the chance to open for Elvis Presley in 1955 was the turning point for Holly’s career. He recorded “That’ll Be the Day” with his band, the Crickets, in 1957, and went on to hit the charts with seven Top 40 singles between August, 1957 and August, 1958.
• Holly left the Crickets, going out on his own in October, 1958. On tour with The Winter Dance Party in 1959, he joined other performers for a gig in Clear Lake, Iowa, on the night of February 2.
• Also on the tour was 17-year-old Ritchie Valens, who was eight months into his music career, and already had several hits, including “La Bamba” and “Donna.” Twenty-eight-year-old J.P. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper, the composer of hits “Chantilly Lace,” “Running Bear,” and “White Lightning,” was also part of the Dance Party.
• The Winter Dance Party tour was 24 cities, and the group of musicians traveled by bus between gigs. The tour began on January 23, 1959, and by February 2, the harsh winter weather, two bus breakdowns, fatigue, and a pile of dirty laundry had left the group discouraged.
• When the Clear Lake, Iowa gig ended after midnight, a 365-mile ((587-km) road trip to Moorhead, Minnesota lay ahead, so Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza plane to make the trip. Valens flipped a coin with the band’s guitar player for a seat on the plane and won the toss. Another available seat had been claimed by the band’s bass player, Waylon Jennings, but he gave it up to J.P. Richardson, who was suffering from the flu.
• The plane’s 21-year-old pilot had only flown five miles before the craft crashed at full throttle in an Iowa field, killing all aboard.
• Don McLean was a 13-year-old paperboy in 1959, and was folding papers the next morning when he saw the news on the front page. In 1971, McLean recorded “American Pie” in tribute to the deceased musicians. The line in the song “February made me shiver, with every paper I’d deliver, bad news on the doorstep” tells of that morning. He also wrote of “the three men I admire most.” The third verse of the 8 ½-minute classic reads “I can’t remember if I cried, when I read about his widowed bride” and speaks of Holly’s wife Maria, whom he had married five months earlier, less than two months after their first date. She was pregnant at the time of the crash, and suffered a miscarriage a few days later. (The Big Bopper’s son was born two months after the singer’s death.) The words “this’ll be the day that I die” found in the song’s chorus are a slight change to the words of Holly’s song, “That’ll be the day.” “American Pie” song was America’s number one hit for four weeks.