February 3, 1959,
three musicians-- Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens,
JP Richardson, known best at the time as the Big Bopper-- on the cusp of rock
and roll legend hopped on a chartered
plane in an effort to avoid a hellish
bus ride through a brutal Midwestern snowstorm. Within minutes after
takeoff, the airplane crashed, killing
everyone onboard and changing the timeline
of pop music forever. Today we're going to find
out what actually happened the day the music died. But before we get
started, take a second to subscribe to the Weird
History Channel and let us know what musical stories
you would like to hear about. Now on to the early morning
of February 3, 1959, in Clear Lake, Iowa. The Winter Dance
Party Tour, headlined by Buddy Holly, who
had recently broke away from his band, The Crickets,
was seemingly doomed from the very beginning. It started on January 23,
1959 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and zigzagged through
Iowa and Minnesota with absolutely no
regard for logistics. Bill Griggs, a Buddy
Holly historian, said, "they didn't care. It was like they
threw darts at a map. The tour from hell-- that's what they named it. And it's not a bad name." To add to the crappy
conditions, the musicians were forced to travel
on reconditioned school buses not good enough
for schoolkids, according to Griggs. The buses were
unheated, and driving through the bitterly cold
winters of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and
Iowa over icy roads took its toll on the
vehicles and its passengers. Griggs estimates that
five separate buses were used in the first
11 days of the tour. Holly's guitarist on
the tour, Tommy Allsup, remembers driving
through Wisconsin. We had started up this incline. It was snowing real
bad, and the bus just started going slower and
slower, and the lights got dimmer and dimmer. And all of a sudden,
the bus stopped. The driver said,
the bus is frozen. The musicians huddled
together under blankets, burned newspapers in
the aisle of the bus, drank shots, and told
each other stories. It was so cold, Holly's
drummer, Carl Bunch, suffered frostbite in his
feet and subsequently missed the next tour
date, Holly's last. These hellish travel
conditions would be what drove Holly to
chartering an airplane on the night of February 3. For more than a week,
Holly, Richardson, Valens, and the rest of the
musicians on the tour traveled around the
Upper Midwest in a bus, facing one challenge
after another. The consensus was that
everyone on the bus was growing tired and bitter
due to the bad conditions. Not having any clean
clothes didn't help matters. Part of the reason why Holly
suggested skipping the bus ride after their
Fargo, North Dakota gig to Moorhead,
Minnesota was because he wanted to wash his clothes. He figured the 400-mile
flight from Fargo to Moorhead would buy him some spare
time to do laundry and sleep before having to take the
stage the following day. The other musicians agreed, and
Valens, Richardson, and Holly took everyone's dirty laundry
onboard with them when they set off from the airport. Ritchie Valens wasn't
originally supposed to board Holly's
chartered plane. Holly offered one of
the two spare seats to Dion Dimucci of
Dion and the Belmonts, the opener on the tour. The flight cost Holly $108,
so he offered Dion a spot on the plane for $36,
a third of the price. Dion remembers the
$36 offer because it was a significant
amount of money to him. When Buddy said
that will be $36, he hit the magic
number in my head. The rent for my parents'
apartment was $36. And they argued all my
[BLEEP] life over that $36, because my father
was a beautiful guy, but he was an
emotional 13-year-old, and he never worked. Ultimately, Dion thought
the $36 fare, which was equivalent to
well over $300 today, was too big of an
expense to justify, so he passed on Holly's offer. Holly then asked
his two bandmates if they wanted the seats. Guitarist Tommy Allsup and
bassist Waylon Jennings were all set to make
the flight, but things changed when Richardson's
flu, which he'd been battling for days, got worse. Jennings graciously gave the
ailing Big Bopper his seat. Valence, who famously
hated airplanes, was fighting a bad
cold himself and asked Allsup for the other seat. Allsup still remembers the
exchange he had with Valens after the singer said, are
you going to let me fly, guy? Allsup said, no, let's
flip a coin for it. I don't know why
I said we should flip for it, because I'd been
telling him no all evening. But I pulled a half
dollar out of my pocket. I've never understood
what made me. It just happened. I flipped the 50-cent
piece and said, call it. Richie said heads, and
it came down heads. Before he became an outlaw
country music badass, Waylon Jennings
played bass for Holly. When Holly told Jennings he
had reserved one of the seats for him, the future bad
boy of country music offered his spot
to the Big Bopper, who had been fighting a savage
flu throughout a good portion of the tour. Holly found it
funny that Jennings was going to spend another
cold night traveling on the road in a tour
bus and told him, I hope your damn bus
freezes up again. Jennings responded with a
zinger of his own, saying, well I hope your
old plane crashes. Those words came
to haunt Jennings. "God almighty, for years, I
thought I caused the crash." February 2, 1959 marked
the 11th stop of the tour at the Surf Ballroom
in Clear Lake, Iowa. But it should be pointed out
that this date wasn't even on the original tour itinerary. The second was supposed to be
a day off for the musicians, but the tour's booker called
ahead and found a venue to accommodate the lineup. After all, a day off
meant no earnings. The musicians performed two sets
at the Surt Ballroom, the last of which ended around midnight. After the sets, a
small group of fans followed Holly, Valens, and
Richardson to the airport and waved as the three
men boarded the plane. As snow blew through the air,
the small, four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza took off just after
12:30 AM on February 3. According to the Civil
Aeronautics Board's report, the aircraft took off toward
the south in a normal manner. After flying
approximately 5 miles, witnesses back at
the airport saw the plane's tail light
slowly descending before completely disappearing. Radio contact with the
aircraft disappeared as well. Aerial searches conducted the
next morning found the plane in a snow-covered farm field. With no witnesses,
it's difficult to say exactly what happened
to the plane carrying Valens, Richardson,
Holly, and Peterson, but experts estimate it hit the
ground at more than 170 miles per hour. Authorities believe the
tip of the right wing was the first part to make
contact with the ground, and all three musicians
were thrown from the craft as it flipped over
and tore apart before coming to stop
against a barbed wire fence. Holly and Valens were each found
about 17 feet from the plane, while authorities discovered
Richardson around 40 feet away. Peterson became
tangled in the plane, and police found him
inside the fuselage. The event was so
extreme, recovery crews discovered pieces
of the airplane as far as 540 feet away. Although bad weather
kept authorities from reaching the aircraft and
its passengers for 10 hours, corners believed all four
men perished upon impact. The official report by the
Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that Roger Peterson,
the 21-year-old pilot, was too inexperienced to
be flying in a snowstorm. Peterson had logged
711 flying hours and had been flying
for over 4 years. But since the plane
showed neither the engine nor other aircraft mechanics
malfunctioned and the landing gear was still in
the up position, officials said Peterson's
lack of experience flying in snowy weather
caused the crash. They also found
no evidence anyone told Peterson about two flash
advisories issued by the US Weather Bureau that
morning regarding an incoming blizzard that would
greatly reduce visibility. Although a seasoned
pilot could successfully fly through this
situation, they would need to rely on
their instrumentation to navigate since they wouldn't
be able to see the horizon line out the window. Ultimately, the Civil
Aeronautics Board concluded that Peterson didn't
have enough experience flying in this manner. It's also possible he may have
become confused at the plane's gyroscope, which operated in
the opposite way of other planes he piloted, meaning Peterson may
have believed he was ascending, but was actually flying the
plane towards the ground. What do you think
might have happened to the future of rock
and roll had Holly never chartered that airplane? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other music stories from our Weird History.
