The Day the Music Died
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- This article is about the plane crash. For May 10, 1982, see WABC (AM). For June 3, 2005, see WCBS-FM.
The Day the Music Died (February 3, 1959), was the day of the plane crash that killed three popular American rock and roll musicians. Early that morning, at approximately 1:05 AM Central Standard Time, a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, crashed in a farmer's field en route to a concert near Fargo, North Dakota, killing all three performers as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson. The phrase "The Day The Music Died" was coined by Don McLean's 1971 song about the crash, "American Pie".
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[edit] Events leading to the crash
"The Winter Dance Party" was a tour that was set to cover 24 Midwest cities in three weeks. A logistical problem with the tour was the amount of travel, as the distance between venues was not a priority when scheduling each performance. For example, the tour would start at venue A, travel two hundred miles to venue B, and travel back one hundred seventy miles to venue C, which was only thirty miles from venue A. Adding to the disarray, the tour bus used to carry the musicians was ill-prepared for the weather; its heating system broke shortly after the tour began. One of the drummers may have developed frostbite while on the bus.
The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa was never intended to be a stop on the tour, but promoters, hoping to fill an open date, called the manager of the ballroom at the time and offered him the show. He accepted and the date of the show was set for February 2.
When Buddy Holly arrived at the ballroom that evening, he had had enough of the tour bus, and asked his band-mates that, once the show was over, they try to charter a plane to get to the next stop on the tour, which was the Moorhead, Minnesota Armory. The destination of the flight would be Hector Airport in nearby Fargo, ND, since Moorhead did not have an airport.
Flight arrangements were made with Roger Peterson, a local pilot who worked for Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. A fee of $36 per person was charged for the single engine Beechcraft Bonanza, which could seat three passengers in addition to the pilot.
Richardson had developed a case of the flu during the tour (erroneously thought to have been caused by riding on the unheated bus) and asked one of Holly's bandmates, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane; Jennings agreed to give up the seat. When Buddy heard about this, his reply to Waylon was "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up!", to which Waylon replied, "Well, I hope your plane crashes!" This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for many years afterward.
Ritchie Valens had never flown in a small plane before, and asked Buddy's remaining bandmate on the plane, Tommy Allsup, for the seat. Tommy said "I'll flip ya for the remaining seat". Contrary to what is seen in biographical movies, that coin toss did not happen at the airport shortly before takeoff, nor was Buddy Holly the one who tossed it. The toss happened at the ballroom shortly before departure to the airport, and the coin itself was tossed by a deejay who was working the show that night. On the toss of that coin, Ritchie won a seat on the plane.
Dion DiMucci of Dion & The Belmonts, who was the fourth headliner on the tour, was approached to join the flight as well; however, the price of $36 was too much. Dion had heard his parents argue for years over the $36 rent for their apartment and could not bring himself to pay an entire month's rent for a short plane ride.[1]
[edit] The Crash
At approximately 1:00 AM Central Time on February 3, the plane took off from Mason City Municipal Airport. Around 1:05, Jerry Dwyer, owner of Dwyer Flying Service, could see the lights of the plane start to descend from the sky to the ground. At the time, he thought it was an optical illusion because of the curvature of the earth and the horizon.
The pilot, Roger Peterson, was expected to file his flight plan once the plane was airborne, but Peterson never called the tower. Repeated attempts by Dwyer to contact his pilot failed. By 3:30 AM, when the airport at Fargo had not heard from Peterson, Dwyer contacted authorities and reported the aircraft missing. Around 9:15 in the morning, Dwyer took off in another small plane to fly Peterson's intended route. A short time later he spotted the wreckage in a cornfield about 5 miles northwest of the airport. The manager of the Surf Ballroom (who drove the performers to the airport, and also witnessed the plane taking off) made the positive identification of the performers.
The Bonanza was at a slight downward angle and banked to the right when it struck the ground at around 170 mph. The plane tumbled and skidded another 570 feet across the frozen landscape before the crumpled ball of wreckage piled against a wire fence at the edge of the property. The bodies of the three entertainers were thrown from the wreckage and lay nearby, while Peterson remained trapped inside. All four had died instantly from "gross trauma" to the brain, the County coroner declared.
Investigators came to the conclusion that the crash was due to a combination of poor weather conditions and pilot error. Peterson had done poorly on previous flight instrumentation tests and had not been rated for nighttime flight, when he would have to rely on his instruments rather than his own vision. It was also found that Peterson was not given an accurate advisory of the weather conditions of his route, which, given his known limitations, could have possibly deterred him from taking off that morning.
[edit] Memorial
In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. The monument is located on private farmland, about one quarter of a mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, five miles north of Clear Lake.
He also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians located outside the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens played on the night of February 1, 1959. This memorial was unveiled on July 17, 2003.
[edit] Trivia
- In the 1987 film La Bamba, Ritchie Valens, rather than the Big Bopper, is represented as the one who came down with the flu.
- When John Lennon was killed in December 1980, Time magazine put a portrait of him on the cover with the headline "When the Music Died."
- The crash of American Airlines Flight 320 occurred on the same day as the crash that killed Holly, the Big Bopper, and Valens.
- Eddie Cochran recorded the single Three Stars as a tribute to Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper. Cochran's voice broke during the lyrics about his close friend Holly. (Ironically, Cochran himself died in a tragic touring-related accident the very next year—a car crash in Chippenham, England.)
