Posted on 02/03/2019 12:43:22 PM PST by CaliforniaCraftBeer
Buddy Holly, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Richie Valens plummeted to their deaths as their plane crashed in the fields of Clear Lake, Iowa. Eleven years later, a singer-songwriter in Cold Springs, New York, poignantly wrote about the tragedy in the intro to his magnum opus “American Pie,” dubbing it “The Day the Music Died.” A 13-year-old paperboy at the time of the plane crash (“But February made me shiver/With every paper I’d deliver”), Don McLean was devastated over Holly’s death; he later said that the fallout from the event “created a sense of grief that lived inside of me, until I was able to exorcize it with the opening verse of ‘American Pie.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
Were any of them gay?
Mustn’t have been much left of them.
There are people who treat this day as an almost religious observance. There’s a modest shrine at the crash site in a farm field, and a bigger shrine at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
Tommy Allsup ‘lost’ a coin flip to Ritchie Valens for a seat on the plane. Allsup lived to be 85.
buddy holly - well...all right
I’d never heard until yesterday that the difference in operation of the articicial horizon versus what he was used to did him in. I mean GEEZ, know you damn plane...
Waylon Jennings was Holly’s guitarist and gave up his seat to the Big Bopper....
The first time I heard “American Pie”, I was in the wet parking lot of a store. The song came on and I sat in the car until it finished.
I knew immediately that it was going to be a hit even tho I knew nothing of what it was about.
Waylon was a bass guitarist...
Holly was a remarkable talent. You can’t help but wonder what would have been...
To be clear, I am not in any way excusing or condoning the use of blackface in any era. It’s insensitive, horrific,”
Hell I was 11 when that son charted and it sounded for all the world to me like an Irish (or English) pub screamer .
The Big Bopper's son had no recollection of his father, and didn't find out that he'd been a nationally known showbiz figure until later in his life, because his mother never mentioned it. When the crash happened, in most of the country, the death of The Big Bopper (who was surely a nice person, but in showbiz, he was a one hit wonder, at best) was the headline. A few years back (more than a few probably) there was some kind of stink about how there had been a struggle for control of the plane (some tabloid-level nonsense) and the son had his father's body exhumed for an autopsy. As 99% of the world expected, the autopsy showed that pretty much every bone in his body had been broken, and he'd died instantly. And that's where the story gets a little too creepy to post. :^(
Ooops. Wrong quote.
I was a big Holly fan at 17 and sang and played my guitar to his hits. But when he was killed I was a college and ROTC senior and had no inclination to greive.
Larry
That plane with that pilot should have never taken off. The kid didn’t have the experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_65ewSOLYSI
The first time I heard “American Pie”, I was in the wet parking lot of a store. The song came on and I sat in the car until it finished.
I knew immediately that it was going to be a hit even tho I knew nothing of what it was about.
—
It is a great rock-n-roll ballad.
...The board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s unwise decision to embark on a flight which would necessitate flying solely by instruments when he was not properly certificated or qualified to do so.
Contributing factors were serious deficiencies in the weather briefing, and the pilot’s unfamiliarity with the instrument which determines the attitude of the aircraft...
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