Special 60th anniversary of the ‘day the music died’
By Sergio Ariza
“A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died” (Don McLean,
American Pie).
The date was February 3,
1959, and no, the music did not die, but thousands of teenagers from half the
world felt as if it had. Rock & roll faced its biggest tragedy to date and
added to a long list of adversities that threatened to bury it. Its King, Elvis Presley, had been serving in the
military since March 24, 1958 and would not return until two years later, its Queen,
Little Richard, had abandoned rock &
roll for religion, its architect, Chuck Berry, had various problems with
the law, and its inheriting prince, Jerry
Lee Lewis, had seen his career crash after a scandalous marriage to his 13
year old cousin.
So it is not strange that
the plane crash that ended the life of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. McPherson (better known as The Big Bopper) was seen by some as the day that music, specifically
rock & roll, died. The charts would be occupied in the following years by
teenage idols like Bobby Vee, Fabian
and Paul Anka. It would not be until
some fans of Holly from Liverpool, England, stormed the charts, both English and
American, when rock & roll again felt the effervescence of its early years.
But let's set the scene
that led to that fateful day. Buddy Holly had just married, on August 15, 1958,
and had broken up with his lifelong producer, Norman Petty. The producer decided to play dirty and convinced the Crickets to stay with him and, what's
worse, froze Holly's accounts. The singer lived in an apartment in New York’s Greenwich
Village with his wife. There, in December '58, he wrote with his Gibson J200
some of the best songs of his career, such as Peggy Sue Got Married, Learning The Game, Crying Waiting Hoping and
What to Do. He would never see them
released.
Without cash, and with his
career far from the successes of 1957, he decided to return to the road, hired Tommy Allsup, a guitarist who had
already appeared on one of his recordings, Carl
Bunch on drums and a young countryman from Lubbock, Texas, who he had just
produced a single, as a bassist. This was Waylon
Jennings, the future country star, and he had not played the instrument in
his life. To complete the rest of the line up the agency had hired three other
big names to accompany him, Dion &
The Belmonts, The Big Bopper and the new sensation of the moment, the very
young Ritchie Valens of 17 years. The tour would be called The Winter Dance
Party.
Valens was a Chicano from
Los Angeles who was actually called Ricardo
Valenzuela. In the summer of 58 his first song had appeared, Come On Let's Go, which had become a hit
and he had just recorded one of the first singles in history with two A-sides, Donna and La Bamba. Ritchie was happy to be able to go on tour with Buddy
Holly, one of his idols. His dream was to be able to sell enough records to buy
his mother a new house and he had just achieved it. Before leaving for the
Winter Dance Party, his family organized a farewell party at the house he had
just bought for her mother. Donna Ludwig,
his girlfriend, could not attend the party because her father refused. So
Valens could not say goodbye to his muse.
On January 23 the tour began
at George Devine's Ballroom in Milwaukee. It was a public success but from the
first moment it could be seen that the person who had organized the tour had no
idea of geography. During the following days, they went tumbling in a zigzag
through a completely frozen Midwest in the middle of a cold spell with extreme
temperatures. In the school bus that transported them from one place to another
there was no heating and to top it all the seats were designed for children, and
poor Big Bopper barely fit. On January 31, they traveled 368 miles to reach
Duluth, Minnesotta, for their ninth concert in nine days. They were dirty,
tired and frozen, yet they gave another great performance. A 17-year-old who
was among the audience, called Robert
Zimmerman, remembers how Buddy Holly shone on stage. Bob Dylan would never tire of
telling how deeply that performance affected him.
In the bus camaraderie
reigned but tiredness, and the terrible cold, began to take its toll. When the
bus stopped frozen in the middle of nowhere everyone feared the worst; they set
fire to newspapers to keep warm and cuddled each other. Holly's drummer
screamed in pain, as he could not feel his feet. After a while they were
rescued by the police, but Bunch had
to be hospitalized and could not continue the tour. The temperature was 35
degrees below zero. All have their minds on the day of rest, on February 2, but
the organizers inform them that they have just organized another concert for
that day in Clear Lake. Again they climb onto another bus, depressed, and as McPherson has fever, the tour is
renamed by its protagonists as the Tour From Hell.
Buddy Holly is crushed when
he arrived at Clear Lake because when he asked the owners of the place where
they played, the Surf Ballroom, if there is a laundry nearby where they can
wash their clothes - as, like the other tour members, they had not been able to
do it since the day they left – he is told there is none. Consequently he decides
to ask the owner to book him a private plane flight to the next stop; clean
clothes and a bed is the closest thing to Paradise that he can think of.
The Surf Ballroom is
overflowing with more than 1,300 crazy people before the arrival of their
idols, two days before Donna has reached
third place in the charts and La Bamba is also in the top forty. The only other
artist capable of having two songs in the week’s Top 40 is the absent Elvis Presley; making Ritchie Valens the most important
emerging star of the day. The Big Bopper opens the performance with Chantilly Lace, and despite his high
fever, completes his performance as always, with fake phone and leopard skin
jacket included. Next on is Ritchie Valens, and madness takes over the room
when Donna sounds. After some calm
the storm is unleashed with La Bamba
and Come On Let's Go. Then it's the
turn of Dion & The Belmonts, with Buddy on drums. When the concert comes to
an end, Dion introduces the band and at the end says "our new drummer, Buddy Holly!". Then Buddy, who had been
in gloom, gets up and starts to play Gotta
Travel On before the delirium of those who fill the Surf Ballroom. Then he
joins the rest of the band and they play all their hits, including the portentous
That'll Be The Day. For the end of
the gig, Valens and Bopper (sweating with fever) join them on stage to sing
together, once more, La Bamba.
The concert is a tremendous
success, and at the end the owner tells Holly that the plane is ready, but
there are only three seats so Holly offers them to the rest of his band, Allsup
and Jennings. But while they wait McPherson approaches Jennings and asks for
his seat, and Jennings, seeing the state he is in, gives it to him cavalierly.
Ritchie, who is signing autographs to his fans, approaches Allsup and asks for
the other seat. The guitarist refuses but Valens begs him, and tired of
listening to him, Allsup takes out a coin and asks "heads or tails",
Valens chooses heads and ‘luck’ smiles at him. The teenager cannot believe it, "this is the first time I have won
something in my life", he says.
Before leaving to the
airport, Holly approaches Jennings and says "I
heard you are not coming on the plane with us". Waylon confirms it and
Buddy with a smile makes a joke "well,
I hope your old bus freezes." To which Jennings replies: "and I hope your old plane crashes".
That phrase was to torment him for the rest of his life ... we all know how
that trip ended.
The news of his death was
broadcast on the radio before anyone took the trouble to notify their families.
So Niki Sullivan, the Crickets’
guitarist, decided to call Buddy's mother and ask "is it true what they say about Buddy on the radio?" to which
his mother quietly replied "I do not
know, what do they say on the radio about Buddy?" There was no turning
back, Buddy Holly's mother ended up fainting when she received the news. It was
not much better in Ritchie's case, his sister was approached by two boys at
school who said "your brother is
dead", she shouted "you
only say that because you are jealous" but when she got home and saw
all the people who were there she knew that it was true. Soon Donna appeared
and the two cried inconsolably. But the worst was when Maria Elena, Holly's young wife, heard the news on the radio. She
was pregnant and the next day she had a miscarriage. She was unable to attend
the funeral. Afterwards the authorities took note and the protocol was
established by which it was prohibited to give the name of the victims before
their relatives were consulted.
On February 5 Eddie Cochran, Holly's great friend,
entered the recording studio and recorded Three
Stars dedicated to the deceased. When he got to Holly’s part his voice
broke at that moment and he said "Well,
you're singing for God now, in his choir in the sky, Buddy Holly, I'll always
remember you, with tears in my eyes". Still with tears in his eyes he
entered the recording booth and told his manager that if he released that song
while he was alive he would not record again. Unfortunately, everyone did not
have to wait much longer, as a year later Cochran died in a car accident in
England.
But the most remembered
tribute would not come until over until 10 years later, when the music of
Buddy, Ritchie and JP had fallen into oblivion. It was written by a boy who on
February 3, 1959, worked as a newspaper deliveryman and could not contain his
tears when he saw the news on the front cover. This boy was Don McLean and in
1971 he recorded the song that would name the tragedy, American Pie; the song about the day that music died. But we all
know that music did not die that sad day. That day died Buddy Holly, Ritchie
Valens and The Big Bopper but their music continued to live on and 60 years
later we keep remembering them and thinking - like the plaque that still presides
over the Surf Ballroom - "The music
lives on, welcome rock and roll fans to the legendary Surf Ballroom."