The Day The Music Died
It was 50 years ago today (3rd February 1959) that Buddy Holly was tragically killed in a plane crash at the age of 22. Buddy rapidly rose to fame and had only been recording for two years at the time of his death but he still had time to influence the world with such hits as “Oh Boy”, “Peggy Sue”, “True Love Ways and “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”
He was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock Texas on September 7th, 1936 and began his musical journey at the age of eleven with piano lessons. Oddly enough, after only nine months of lessons and being applauded by his teacher as one of her top students Buddy, without explanation quit. He told his parents he wanted to play the guitar, and even though they were struggling financially they found a way to grant his request.
During his teen years Buddy performed with close friend Bob Montgomery billing themselves as Buddy and Bob as they performed local events throughout Lubbock, Texas. It was only after opening a show for Elvis Presley at a local gig in 1955 that Buddy knew exactly what he wanted to do. Success, however, didn’t come until Holly formed his new group, the Crickets that consisted of Jerry Allison on drums, Niki Sullivan on guitar, and Joe Maudlin on bass. The Crickets recorded “That’ll Be The Day” in the Clovis, New Mexico studios of producer Norman Petty and the record hit the top of the charts in September of 1957.
in the fall of 1958, due to legal problems concerning royalty money, he split from the Crickets and Norman Petty. He married Maria Santiago and relocated to Greenwich Village in New York City.
In January of 1959, Buddy along with 17 year old Ritchie Valens, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and other acts embarked on what was billed as the winter dance party. From the very beginning, the tour was plagued with difficulty. The tour buses inability to stay running, a faulty heater, and the series of one-night shows caused many of the performers to display cold and flu symptoms. It was after a show in Clear Lake, Iowa that Buddy, tired of the miserable conditions, decided to charter a plane. He hoped that he and his sidemen Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup could wash their clothes and get a decent nights’ sleep before the next performance. The word quickly spread through the troop and soon both Jennings and Alsup were getting requests to give up their seats. J.P Richardson, the “Big Bopper” convinced Jennings to give up his seat stating that a man his size wasn’t able to put up with the cramped conditions on the bus. Ritchie Valens appealed to Allsups gambling side by proposing they flip a coin for the seat. Unfortunately for Valens, he won the toss.
Holly, Valens, and Richardson along with their pilot Roger Peterson took off from the Mason City airport on February 3rd at 12:40 A.M. All four men perished soon after when their four seat aircraft crashed after takeoff. The surviving members of the tour did not want to perform without their stars but soon succumbed to the pressures of the promoters and continued the final show. However, when Buddy’s band stepped on stage without their leader there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. It was a terrible tragedy that took the musical community many years to realize. As Don Mclean hauntingly put it in his 1971 hit, “The day the music died.”
