Though Buddy Holly's career lasted only two
short years, his impact on rock 'n' roll and pop culture is undeniable. Born Charles Hardin Holley to a musical family
in Lubbock, Texas, Holly spent his youth learning and playing music. In 1955, Holly, then just a teenager, opened
for Elvis. In 1957, he released his song "That'll Be
the Day" with his band, The Crickets. The song topped the charts and made the band
a hit, and soon after the group went on tour. In August of that year, they became the first
white act to take the stage at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. Holly also found love during this time in
his life. In 1958, he met Maria Santiago, a receptionist
at a music publishing company in New York. He asked Santiago to marry him on their first
date, and shortly after, the pair married in Texas. Sadly, Holly and the Crickets parted ways
soon after, apparently due to creative differences — it didn't help that Holly wanted to stay
in New York, either, while his bandmates wanted to return home. Now a solo artist, Holly reluctantly agreed
to perform on the Winter Dance Party Tour in the Midwest in early 1959. Maria wanted to join her husband on the road,
but because she was pregnant with their first child, Holly said no. By all accounts, conditions on the tour were
brutal and people were getting sick from the freezing Midwestern conditions. The bus was unheated and broke down frequently,
and, when the tour made its way into Iowa, Holly decided he was over it — so he chartered
a plane that would take him and his tour mates to Fargo, North Dakota. As the plane was small, however, they had
to figure out who would fly and who would continue the miserable journey on the bus. In the end, Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson boarded the ill-fated
flight. Valens and another guitarist actually flipped
a coin to see who would get a seat. Moreover, Richardson was suffering from the
flu and convinced Waylon Jennings, then Holly's band member, to give up his seat for him. In a remark that would haunt him for the rest
of his life, Jennings jokingly told Holly he hoped his plan would crash after Holly
said that he hoped the bus would freeze. "When you feel like, when you feel guilty
about it, and everything, you try and find reasons that you might have caused it, you
know?" After a successful show at the Surf Ballroom,
Holly and his colleagues headed to the nearby Mason City airport and departed sometime before
1 a.m. The plane crashed just a few miles into the
journey, killing Holly, Valens, Richardson, and their young pilot. The three singers had been ejected from the
aircraft in the crash, and Holly's body was found 20 feet away from the wreck. It was later determined that poor weather
conditions and pilot error were to blame for the accident. Holly was only 22 years old when he died. His autopsy report painted a gruesome picture
of the accident — it found that his skull had been split and that most of his brain
tissue was missing. Both of his ears were bleeding and his face
and scrotum were lacerated. His chest had been crushed, too, and he had
multiple fractures, including in his left forearm, right elbow, and his thighs and legs. Holly's wife, Maria, learned of his death
through the news and suffered a miscarriage shortly after. She refused to attend the funeral and has
never visited Holly's grave. She is still alive today, too, and owns all
the rights to his name, image, trademark, and intellectual property. In 1987, she helped enact the Buddy Holly
Bill, to prevent the families of dead celebrities from being exploited. In 2019, she told The Mirror that she thinks
about Holly "every day." Don McLean later commemorated the plane crash
in his 1971 song "American Pie" as the day the music died. Holly's music, however, did not fade away. The Texas native's legacy lives on in the
acts he influenced, from the Beatles to Bob Dylan and many, many more. Buddy Holly is buried in Lubbock, Texas. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about music
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