The Day The Music Died

On this day in 1959, a plane crash killed some of music’s greatest rock & roll pioneers.

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, who were touring together at the time, were on a flight from Clear Lake, Iowa to Moorhead, Minnesota at 1:00 A.M. when the small Beechcraft Bonanza plane they were on went missing, and radio contact could not be made. The next morning, a pilot made the same intended route and discovered the wreckage of the aircraft in a cornfield about 5 miles northeast of the Clear Lake Airport. All four passengers, including pilot Roger Peterson, had been killed instantly on impact by what the county coroner declared as “gross trauma” to the brain. The cause of the crash: poor weather conditions and an unqualified pilot.

Ritchie Valens, whom had never rode on a small plane before, asked Holly’s remaining band member, Tommy Allsup, if he could have his seat, to which Allsup said, “I’ll flip ya for the remaining seat.” Valens won the coin toss, thus, sealing his own fate that night.

The late, great Waylon Jennings, who rose to prominence as bass player for Buddy Holly, was to be on this flight, but gave his seat up to Richardson due to Richardson having the flu. When Holly found out that Jennings was not going to be on the plane, he said to Jennings, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up”; speaking of the rickety tour bus they had been touring in that was ill prepared for the cold northern conditions. Jennings responded to Holly by saying, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.” The exchange between the two, though in humor, haunted Jennings the rest of his life.

Without the influence from these rock & roll pioneers, many of the great artists over all these years and the music we know and love and love to make would not exist. So remember your roots today and pour a little out for these legends and the music they made that changed the world forever.

- Cory Coleman [c]