Today in History: February 3, 1959 The death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper”
Today in History: February 3, 1959 The death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper”
Posted on February 3, 2013 by Art
“The Day the Music Died”
On February 3, 1959, rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed, along with the pilot Roger Peterson, when their plane went down during a snowstorm shortly after takeoff near Mason City, Iowa. The aviation accident is often referred to as “The Day the Music Died”, dubbed so by Don McLean’s song “American Pie”.
Buddy Holly
The rockers were part of the Winter Dance Party, a three-week tour across the Midwest opening on January 23, 1959. The tour also included Dion and the Belmonts, and was to cover 24 Midwestern cities in as many days. A few days into the tour the performers started to become adversely affected by the distance between venues, the mid-west winter, and the poorly equipped, unheated tour buses. Cases of flu spread among the band members, and Holly’s drummer, Carl Bunch, was hospitalized in Ironwood, Michigan for severely frostbitten feet. On February 2, the tour arrived in Clear Lake, Iowa, where they were to play at the Surf Ballroom. The venue had not been a scheduled stop, but the tour promoters, hoping to fill an open date, called Surf Ballroom manager Carroll Anderson and offered him the show. He accepted and they set the show for Monday, February 2. By the time Holly arrived at the venue that Monday evening, he was frustrated by the conditions and decided to charter a plane to reach their next venue in Moorhead, Minnesota. Carroll Anderson, owner of the Surf Ballroom, chartered the plane from the Dwyer Flying Service. Originally, Holly and two members of his band, Tommy Allsup (guitar) and future country music legend Waylon Jennings (bass), were to take the flight to Moorhead, but Richardson, who was affected by the flu, swapped places with Waylon Jennings, taking his place on the plane. Tommy Allsup lost his place to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss. Dion DiMucci (of Dion and the Belmonts fame) was also offered a seat but decided not to board the plane since the $36 fare (approximately $270 in today’s money) equaled the monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment and he could not justify the indulgence. When Holly learned that Jennings was not going to fly, he said in jest, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes,” a humorous but ill-fated response that haunted Jennings for the rest of his life.
Photo of the plane wreckage that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. ‘Big Bopper’ Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson when it went down just outside Mason City, Iowa. Feb. 3, 1959
Ritchie Valens
When the show ended, Carroll Anderson drove Holly, Valens, and Richardson to the airport. The plane departed from the ramp and taxied to then-Runway 17 at around 12:55 am Central Time on Tuesday, February 3 and took off. The results of the CAB investigation suggest that, soon after takeoff, Peterson became disoriented due to the unfamiliar way the attitude indicator in the aircraft functioned, combined with an inability to find a point of visual reference on a starless night with no visible lights on the ground. He lost control of the plane when the tip of the right wing hit the ground. The aircraft tumbled across a bean field belonging to Albert Juhl. The Bonanza was at a slight downward angle and banked heavily to the right when it struck the ground at around 170 miles per hour. The plane tumbled and skidded another 570 feet across the frozen landscape before the crumpled wreckage came to rest against a wire fence at the edge of Juhl’s property.
Photo of the plane wreckage that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. ‘Big Bopper’ Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson when it went down just outside Mason City, Iowa on Feb. 3, 1959
J. P. ‘The Big Bopper’ Richardson
Hubert Dwyer, the owner of the plane and the flight service company, who had witnessed the takeoff, decided to establish radio contact, but all attempts were unsuccessful. The next morning, when Hector Airport in Fargo, North Dakota, had not heard from Peterson, Dwyer contacted authorities and reported the aircraft missing. Dwyer took off in his Cessna 180 and flew Peterson’s intended route. Within minutes he spotted the wreckage less than 6 miles northwest of the airport. The Sheriff’s office dispatched Deputy Bill McGill, who drove to the wreck site. The bodies of Holly and Valens lay near the plane. Richardson’s body was thrown over the fence and into the cornfield of Juhl’s neighbor Oscar Moffett. Peterson’s body was entangled in the plane’s wreckage. With the other participants on “The Winter Dance Party” en route to Moorhead, it fell to Surf Ballroom manager Carroll Anderson, who drove the musicians to the airport and witnessed the plane’s takeoff, to make positive identifications of the musicians. The county coroner Ralph Smiley declared that all four had died instantly from “gross trauma” to the brain.
Investigators look over the site of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Jp ‘Big Bopper’ Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson on Feb. 3, 1959
Buddy Holly’s wife of six months, María Elena who was also pregnant, watched the first reports of his death on television. She miscarried the next day, reportedly due to psychological trauma. Holly’s mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, collapsed. Because of María Elena’s miscarriage, the authorities, in the months following, implemented a policy against announcing victims’ names until after families are informed. María Elena Holly did not attend the funeral, and has never visited the gravesite. She later told the Avalanche-Journal: “In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn’t with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane.”
Monument to Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson at the crash site, September 16, 2003.
In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless steel monument that depicts a guitar and a set of three records that bear the names of each of the three performers. The monument is 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. A large plasma-cut-steel set of Wayfarer-style glasses, similar to those Holly wore, sits at the access point to the crash site. In February 2009, a new memorial made by Paquette for pilot Roger Peterson was unveiled at the crash site. A road originating near The Surf Ballroom and extending north past the west of the crash site is now known as Buddy Holly Place.
A roadside sign in the form of Buddy Holly’s glasses, located close to the location where he was killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959.