February 3rd 1959: The Day The Music Died

On this day in music, February 3, 1959, tragedy struck when Buddy Holly (aged 22), The Big Bopper (aged 28), and Ritchie Valens (aged 17) all lost their lives in a plane crash on their way to the next date of their Winter Party Dance Tour. After experiencing heating problems on his tour bus, Holly hired a private plane to take the three men from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Moorhead, Minnesota. The event, which also took the life of pilot Roger Peterson, later became known as “The Day the Music Died,” after Don McLean’s reference to the tragedy in his 1971 song, “American Pie.” Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom, where the musicians each played their final concerts, hosts an annual memorial show.

Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, also on the tour, are spared by sheer luck: Allsup lost a coin flip for a seat on the plane to Valens, and Jennings let Richardson have the other seat.

Losing these musical luminaries drastically alters the rock and roll landscape; the “rock era” had begun about four years earlier, and with Elvis Presley in the Army, there are few stars to propel it forward (the British Invasion would revive the genre). Holly, the headliner on the tour, was a rising star with a #1 hit under his belt (“That’ll Be The Day“). Valens, was one of the hottest new artists at the time, with the song “Donna” on the charts.

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Don McLean, who was a teenager at the time, would call it “The Day the Music Died” in his 1971 hit “American Pie.”

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