The Winter Dance Party Tour

The Day the Music Died

"Thank you for your music and inspiration.  Your influence has touched many generations, and have made us all the richer for it.  You have sacrificed so much, and pioneered our beloved Rockabilly Music." FattKatt & The VonZippers~ 

Special thanks to Dave & Carolyn Watson for contributing their personal photos  for this page. 

The crash of '59, claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson and the pilot, Roger Peterson.  The year was 1959 and the "The Winter Dance Party Tour" was under way.  They just finished performing at the Surf Ballroom on a cold winter's night in Clear Lake, Iowa.  They were bound for Moorhead, MN.  They never made it.

The tour bus developed heating problems. It was so cold onboard that reportedly one of the drummers developed frostbite riding in it. When they arrived at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, they were cold, tired and disgusted.  Buddy Holly had had enough of the unheated bus and decided to charter a plane for himself and his guys.

A young pilot named Roger Peterson, who worked for Jerry Dwyer's Flying Service, agreed to fly them. The weather was bad with flying advisories out.  Only instrument trained pilot could handle, but the Dwyer planes weren't licensed for instrument flying, plus Peterson had recently failed his instrument test. Buddy Holly called his wife in New York then left for the airfield.  At approximately 1:00 a.m., the Beechcraft Bonanza plane took off from the nearby Mason City airport. It crashed less than five minutes later, literally flown into the ground by a pilot blinded by bad weather. Dwyer's Flying Service, still in operation today, consisted basically of owner  Jerry Dwyer.

Waylon Jennings gave his seat up to Richardson, who was running a fever and had trouble fitting his stocky frame comfortably into the bus seats.  When Holly learned that Jennings wasn't going to fly, he said, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up." Jennings responded, "Well, I hope your plane crashes." This friendly banter of friends would haunt Jennings for years.  Allsup told Valens, I'll flip you for the remaining seat. On the toss of a coin, Valens won the seat and Allsup the rest of his life.

The plane crash claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson and the pilot, Roger Peterson. Three of Rock and Roll's most promising performers were gone.  Their tragedy was memorialized for generations to come by Don McLean in his classic music parable, American Pie "the day the music died."

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