The Day the Music Died

In November 1958, Buddy Holly terminated his association with The Crickets. According to Paul Anka, Holly realized he needed to go back on tour again for two reasons: he needed cash because the Crickets' manager Norman Petty had apparently stolen money from him, and he wanted to raise funds to move to New York City to live with his new wife, María Elena Holly, who was pregnant.[3] Holly signed up with General Artists Corporation (GAC) because "he knew they were planning a British tour and he wanted to be in on that".[4]

For the start of the "Winter Dance Party" tour, Holly assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums), with the opening vocals of Frankie Sardo. The tour was set to cover twenty-four Midwestern cities in as many days—there were no off days. New hit artist Ritchie Valens, "The Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson, and the vocal group Dion and the Belmonts joined the tour to promote their recordings and make an extra profit.[5][6]

Winter Dance Party Tour schedule, 1959

The 1959 tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, with the performance in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2 being the eleventh of the twenty-four scheduled events. The amount of travel required soon became a serious problem. The distances between venues had not been properly considered when the performances were scheduled. Instead of systematically circling around the Midwest through a series of venues in close proximity to one another, the tour erratically zigzagged back and forth across the region, with distances between some tour stops exceeding 400 miles (640 km). As there were no off days, the bands had to travel most of each day, frequently for ten to twelve hours in freezing mid-winter temperatures. Most of the Interstate Highway System had not yet been built, so the routes between tour stops required far more driving time on narrow two-lane rural highways than would now be the case on modern expressways.

GAC-Super Productions, the organization that booked the tour,[7] received considerable criticism for their seemingly total disregard for the conditions they forced the touring musicians to endure:

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.

— Buddy Holly historian Bill Griggs[8]

The entire company of musicians traveled together in one bus, although the buses used for the tour were wholly inadequate, breaking down and being replaced frequently. Griggs estimates that five separate buses were used in the first eleven days of the tour—"reconditioned school buses, not good enough for school kids".[8] The artists themselves were responsible for loading and unloading equipment at each stop, as no road crew assisted them. Adding to the disarray, the buses were not equipped for the harsh weather, which consisted of waist-deep snow in several areas and varying temperatures from 20 °F (−7 °C) to as low as −36 °F (−38 °C). One bus had a heating system that malfunctioned shortly after the tour began, in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Richardson and Valens began experiencing flu-like symptoms and drummer Bunch was hospitalized for severely frostbitten feet after the tour bus stalled in the middle of the highway in subzero temperatures near Ironwood, Michigan. The musicians replaced that bus with another school bus and kept traveling.[9] As Holly's group had been the backing band for all of the acts, Holly, Valens and DiMucci took turns playing drums for each other at the performances in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Clear Lake, Iowa, with Holly playing drums for Dion, Dion playing drums for Ritchie, and Ritchie playing drums for Holly.[10]

On Monday, February 2, the tour arrived in Clear Lake, west of Mason City, having driven 350 miles (560 km) from the previous day's concert in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town in northern Iowa had not been a scheduled stop; tour promoters hoped to fill the open date and called the manager of the local Surf Ballroom, Carroll Anderson (1920–2006), and offered him the show. Anderson accepted and they set the show for that night. By the time Holly arrived at the venue that evening, he was frustrated with the ongoing problems with the bus. The next scheduled destination after Clear Lake was Moorhead, Minnesota, a 365-mile (590 km) drive north-northwest—and, as a reflection of the poor quality of the tour planning, a journey that would have taken them directly back through the two towns they had already played within the last week. No let-up after that was in sight, as the following day after having traveled from Iowa to Minnesota, they were scheduled to travel right back to Iowa, specifically almost directly south to Sioux City, a 325-mile (520 km) trip.

Holly chartered a plane to fly himself and his band to Fargo, North Dakota, which is adjacent to Moorhead. The rest of the party would have picked him up in Moorhead, saving him the journey in the bus and leaving him time to get some rest.[9] Their gig in Moorhead was to have been a radio performance at the station KFGO with disk jockey Charlie Boone.

A V-tailed Bonanza similar to N3794N, the accident aircraft

Anderson chartered a plane from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, to fly to Fargo's Hector Airport, the closest one to Moorhead;[11] the pilot was Roger Peterson, a 21-year-old married man who had "built his life around flying".[12]

The flying service charged a fee of $36 (~$472.00 in 2022) per passenger for the flight on the 1947 single-engined, V-tailed Beechcraft 35 Bonanza (registration N3794N[13]), which seated three passengers and the pilot.[14] A popular misconception, originating from Don McLean's song about the crash, was that the plane was called American Pie; no record exists of any name ever having been given to N3794N.[15]

The most widely accepted version of events was that Richardson had contracted the flu during the tour and asked Jennings for his seat on the plane.[16] When Holly learned that Jennings was not going to fly, he said in jest: "Well, I hope your damned bus freezes up." Jennings responded: "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes", a humorous but ill-fated response that haunted him for the rest of his life.[17] Valens, who once had a fear of flying, asked Allsup for his seat on the plane. The two agreed to toss a coin to decide.[11] Bob Hale, a disc jockey with Mason City's KRIB-AM, was emceeing the concert that night and flipped the coin in the ballroom's side-stage room shortly before the musicians departed for the airport. Valens won the coin toss for the seat on the flight. Valens is apocryphally said to have remarked, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life."

In contradiction to the testimony of Allsup and Jennings, Dion has since said that Holly approached him along with Valens and Richardson to join the flight, not Holly's bandmates. In a 2009 interview, Dion said that Holly called him, Valens, and Richardson into a vacant dressing room during Sardo's performance and said, "I've chartered a plane, we're the guys making the money [we should be the ones flying ahead]...the only problem is there are only two available seats." According to Dion, it was Valens, not Richardson, who had fallen ill, so Valens and Dion flipped a coin for the seat. In his interview, no mention is made of Jennings or Allsup being invited on the plane. Dion said he won the toss, but ultimately decided that since the $36 fare (equivalent to $360 in 2022) equaled the monthly rent his parents paid for his childhood apartment, he could not justify the indulgence.[18]

Mason City and Clear Lake, Iowa

After the show ended, Anderson drove Holly, Valens, and Richardson to nearby Mason City Municipal Airport,[19] where the elevation is 1,214 feet (370 m) AMSL. The weather at the time of departure was reported as light snow, a ceiling of 3,000 feet (900 m) AMSL with sky obscured, visibility six miles (10 km), and winds from 20 to 30 mph (8.9 to 13.4 m/s). Although deteriorating weather was reported along the planned route, the weather briefings Peterson received failed to relay the information.[20]

The plane took off normally from runway 17 (today's runway 18) at 00:55 (12:55 am) CST on Tuesday, February 3.[21] Hubert Jerry Dwyer, owner of the flying service, watched the southbound take-off from a platform outside the control tower. He was able to clearly see the aircraft's tail light for most of the brief flight, which started with an initial 180 degree left turn to pass east of the airport, climbing to approximately 800 feet (240 m) AGL. After an additional left turn to a northwesterly heading, the tail light was observed gradually descending until it disappeared. Around 1 am, when Peterson failed to make the expected radio contact, repeated attempts were made to establish radio contact, without success.[12]

Later that morning, Dwyer retraced Peterson's planned route by air, and around 9:35 am spotted the wreckage less than six miles (10 km) northwest of the airport.[12]

The Bonanza had impacted terrain at high speed, estimated to have been around 170 mph (270 km/h), banked 90° to the right and in a nose-down attitude. The right wing tip struck the ground first, gouging a 12'x2' deep furrow, crumpling then breaking off. The fuselage then hit the ground right-side down and bounced a few feet back into the air, traveling another 50 feet through the air, simultaneously rolling inverted due to the remaining left wing still generating lift. The plane struck the ground a final time, in an inverted, nose-down position, the nose hitting and flipping the plane over into a right-side up, tail-first position. The momentum of the heavy engine caused the fuselage, left wing remaining attached and intact to the end, to roll upon itself into a virtual ball, rolling nose-over-tail across the frozen field for 540 feet (160 m), before coming to rest tail-first against a wire fence.[12] The bodies of the performers had been ejected from the fuselage and lay near the plane's wreckage, while Peterson's body was entangled in the cockpit.[12] With the rest of the entourage en route to Minnesota, Anderson, who had driven the party to the airport and witnessed the plane's takeoff, had to identify the bodies of the musicians.[22] The county coroner, Ralph Smiley, reported that all four victims died instantly, the cause of death being "gross trauma to brain" for the three musicians and "brain damage" for the pilot.[23][24]

Concert poster for the ill-fated "Winter Dance Party" tour.

María Elena Holly learned of her husband's death via a television news report. A widow after only six months of marriage, she suffered a miscarriage shortly after, reportedly due to "psychological trauma". Holly's mother, on hearing the news on the radio at home in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed.[5]

Despite the tragedy, the "Winter Dance Party" tour continued. Fifteen-year-old Bobby Vee was given the task of filling in for Holly at the next scheduled performance in Moorhead, in part because he "knew all the words to all the songs".[25] Jennings and Allsup carried on for two more weeks, with Jennings taking Holly's place as lead singer.[26]

Meanwhile, funerals for the victims were held individually. Holly and Richardson were buried in Texas, Valens in California, and Peterson in Iowa. Holly's widow, María Elena, did not attend the funeral.[27] She said in an interview: "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."[28]

The official investigation was carried out by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB, precursor to the NTSB). It emerged that Peterson had over four years of flying experience, of which one was with Dwyer Flying Service, and had accumulated 711 flying hours, of which 128 were on Bonanzas. He had also logged 52 hours of instrument flight training, although he had passed only his written examination, and was not yet qualified to operate in weather that required flying solely by reference to instruments. Peterson and Dwyer Flying Service itself were certified to operate only under visual flight rules, which essentially require that the pilot must be able to see where the aircraft is going. On the night of the accident visual flight would have been virtually impossible due to the low clouds, the lack of a visible horizon, and the absence of ground lights over the sparsely populated area.[12]

A conventional artificial horizon: sky on top, ground at the bottom

A Sperry F3 attitude gyroscope: ground on top, sky at the bottom

Furthermore, Peterson, who had failed an instrument checkride nine months before the accident, had received his instrument training on airplanes equipped with a conventional artificial horizon as a source of aircraft attitude information, while N3794N was equipped with an older-type Sperry F3 attitude gyroscope. Crucially, the two types of instruments display the same aircraft pitch attitude information in graphically opposite ways.[12]

Another contributing factor was the "seriously inadequate" weather briefing provided to Peterson, which "failed to even mention adverse flying conditions which should have been highlighted".[12] The CAB concluded that the probable cause of the accident was "the pilot's unwise decision" to attempt a flight that required skills he did not have.[12]

On March 6, 2007, in Beaumont, Texas, Richardson's body was exhumed for reburial. Forest Lawn Cemetery moved Richardson's body to a more suitable area after plans were made to erect a bronze statue near his gravesite to accompany a newly received historical marker. As the body was to be placed in a new casket while above ground, the musician's son, Jay Perry Richardson, took the opportunity to have his father's body re-examined to verify the original coroner's findings and asked forensic anthropologist William M. Bass to carry out the procedure. A longstanding rumor surrounding the accident, which this re-examination sought to confirm or dispel, asserted that an accidental firearm discharge took place on board the aircraft and caused the crash. Another longstanding theory surmised that Richardson initially survived the crash and crawled out of the wreckage in search of help before succumbing to his injuries, prompted by the fact that his body was found farther from the plane than the other victims. Bass and his team took several X-rays of Richardson's body and eventually concluded that the musician had indeed died instantly from extensive, unsurvivable fractures to virtually every bone in his body. No traces of lead were found from any bullet, nor any indication that he had been shot. Coroner Smiley's original 1959 report was, therefore, confirmed as accurate.[29][30]

In March 2015, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) received a request to reopen the investigation into the accident.[31] The request was made by L. J. Coon, a retired pilot from New England who felt that the conclusion of the 1959 investigation was inaccurate. Coon suspected a possible failure of the right ruddervator, or a problem with the fuel system, as well as possible improper weight distribution. Coon argued that Peterson may have tried to land the plane and that his efforts should be recognized.[32][33] The NTSB declined the request in April 2015, saying that the evidence presented by Coon was insufficient to merit the reconsideration of the original findings.[34][35]

• List of music group or artist fatalities from aviation accidents
• Continued VFR into IMC

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Day the Music Died.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Aircraft Accident Report for Buddy Holly's crash

• Beechcraft Bonanza 35 Dwyer Flying Service, N3794N Clear Lake, Iowa February 3, 1959 - Federal Aviation Administration
• February 3, 1959 front page of the Mason City Globe-Gazette, via Newspapers.com
• fiftiesweb.com The Day the Music Died
• Bakotopia Magazine's 50th Anniversary memorial article
• 1959: Buddy Holly killed in air crash
• Voices of Oklahoma interview with Tommy Allsup. First person interview conducted with Tommy Allsup on September 8, 2011. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.
• The true Buddy Holly history, Dion DiMucci's recollections of the tour and the accident, at his YouTube channel