Post by Rhonda on Feb 15, 2007 21:41:23 GMT -5
February 3, 1959
The Day the Music Died
1959’s "Winter Dance Party" tour boasted some of the eras most popular rock and rollers. Buddy Holly headlined; also on the bill were Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsop. The tour was scheduled to cover twenty-four cities in three weeks—a brutal schedule, made all the worst by transportation issues. Travel was via an old bus that had no heat and kept breaking down. By the middle of the tour everyone was cold, tired and fed up. Buddy Holly persuaded his band-mates to charter a plane together to fly to Fargo, North Dakota, the airport closest to their next performance, but the plane could only carry three people. Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to the sick Big Bopper, and Richie Valens and Tommy Allsup flipped a coin to decide who would get the last seat. The plane, carrying Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper, took off in a snowstorm from Mason City, Iowa at 1 a.m. It was never heard from again. The next morning, the wreckage was found in a corn-field only five miles from the Mason City airport. An inquest determined the crash had been caused by pilot inexperience. The tragic event was memorialized in Don Mclean’s 1971 song "American Pie", which first coined the phrase "the day the music died."
The Day the Music Died
1959’s "Winter Dance Party" tour boasted some of the eras most popular rock and rollers. Buddy Holly headlined; also on the bill were Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsop. The tour was scheduled to cover twenty-four cities in three weeks—a brutal schedule, made all the worst by transportation issues. Travel was via an old bus that had no heat and kept breaking down. By the middle of the tour everyone was cold, tired and fed up. Buddy Holly persuaded his band-mates to charter a plane together to fly to Fargo, North Dakota, the airport closest to their next performance, but the plane could only carry three people. Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to the sick Big Bopper, and Richie Valens and Tommy Allsup flipped a coin to decide who would get the last seat. The plane, carrying Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper, took off in a snowstorm from Mason City, Iowa at 1 a.m. It was never heard from again. The next morning, the wreckage was found in a corn-field only five miles from the Mason City airport. An inquest determined the crash had been caused by pilot inexperience. The tragic event was memorialized in Don Mclean’s 1971 song "American Pie", which first coined the phrase "the day the music died."