© 2024
Prairie Public NewsRoom
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Day the Music Died

2/3/2011:

A small plane on its way to Fargo, North Dakota crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa on this date in 1959. Carrying three of America’s most promising rock and roll performers, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson, the single-engine plane was originally chartered by the musicians to their next gig in Moorhead, Minnesota. The day remains memorialized in Don McLean’s iconic song “American Pie,” where it’s referred to as “the day the music died.”

The musicians were together as part of “The Winter Dance Party Tour,” planned and organized by Holly. Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup came along as Holly’s bandmates, and Dion and the Belmonts rounded out the tour, which was to cover twenty-four Midwestern cities in three weeks. Given the tight schedule, a series of mishaps and inconveniences had already occurred by the night of February 2. The heater in the group’s large tour bus had broken a few days earlier. Holly’s drummer actually suffered from frost-bite while traveling on the bus and had to be hospitalized. No performances were scheduled for February 2, which would have given the group time to rest and travel to Moorhead. However, promoters called the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and booked the show at the last minute. Holly, frustrated with the freezing conditions on the bus and a lack of clean laundry, decided to book a charter plane to Fargo’s Hector Airport to save time and give his bandmates a rest.

Jennings offered his seat to Richardson at the last minute, knowing the singer was coming down with a fever. Richardson, known by his stage name “The Big Bopper,” gladly accepted. The other seat was reserved for Allsup, but Valens, having never flown on a small plane, asked Allsup for his spot. Allsup and Valens flipped a coin and Valens won, securing him a seat on the ill-fated flight. The three musicians took off from the Clear Lake airfield just before 1 a.m. on the morning of February 3. Fargo’s airport contacted authorities around 3:30 to report the missing plane.

A pilot discovered the crash in a cornfield the following morning, only five miles from the departure airport. All three musicians and the young pilot were killed. The pilot’s inexperience combined with the blinding weather conditions are believed to have led to the tragedy.

Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job

Sources:
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/crash.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died
http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/h/Buddy%20Holly/buddy_holly.htm