The Winter Dance Party Tour scheduled 24 concerts in 24 days visiting 24 mid-western cities. Though it started on January 23rd, it ended abruptly on February 3, 1959, when wintery weather caused a plane to crash shortly after take-off into a cornfield outside Clear Lake, Iowa.
Along with pilot Roger Peterson, everyone else on board died in that crash, including rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.
Don McLean named the day in the lyrics to his 1971 song “American Pie.” Not originally scheduled to be on the flight, the 28-year-old Big Bopper, who was suffering from a cold, hoped to skip the long cold bus ride to their next stop in Minnesota and traded places with Buddy Holly’s bass player, Waylon Jennings.
And Ritchie Valens, considered a pioneer in Chicano Rock, was just 17 when he snagged his seat on the plane with Buddy Holly by winning a coin toss with one of the other band members, Tommy Allsup.
Buddy Holly, inducted into the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, was 22. An annual memorial concert is held at Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom, which hosted the artists’ last performances.
