“THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED” -   FEBRUARY 3rd                                                  

                                             ã  RIC  POLANSKY

 

Buddy Holly

 He grew up on the dusty, windswept forlorn plains of the Western Texas panhandle.  About as far away imaginable from upbeat music centers or downbeat metropolitan cultural cores. The setting was pure country conservative and he would remain that way his entire short lived life. 

Born in 1936, not just in the thick of the Bible belt but in the “BUCKLE OF THE BELT”, as the locals liked to joke, his parents christened him Charles Hardin but in the good old town “the city of churches” Lubbock, Texas, his friends just called him Buddy. Ironically he lived just six blocks from my Aunt Mary, although she had never heard of him until his death.

The surrounding countryside wasn´t any friendlier, it wasn´t  just desert sand, lonesome, arid and bone dry to look at but even harder to swallow, as Lubbock was also religiously dry-- you´d  have to drive for over a hundred miles to get a cold beer.

Buddy had no contact with the black sound of the day either, in fact Lubbock was one of the racially unintegrated cities of the south. Life in Lubbock was either black or white. For duty one went to church and for fun one listened to the radio. The City was bombarded by crosswinds of radio waves that blew in from such unconceivable energized hubs as Nashville, Shreveport and Dallas.   If you weren´t in the pews you´d be out listenin´ to the sweet sounds of the Grand Ole Opry, the Louisiana Hayride and the Big D Jamboree.

But Buddy´s sound was his own. It was new, rebellious, had an inventive beat and rhymed with the times: Rock-a-Billy had almost been born. His best friends formed a backup group called the Crickets and from their very first recording Buddy Holly & the Crickets were an instant success.

Just about every 10 years somebody re-records one of Buddy´s songs and he comes sweeping back into the charts to remind us of his unique style and our sudden loss. His untimely death is still honored in that uncanny tune that was top of the charts in America for some 16 weeks back in ´71--´72  but everyone remembers the melody and most of all the words.  Don Maclean´s homespun ditty couldn´t have been more aptly named; “American Pie”  for that was Buddy, (even tho his name was never mentioned):

A long, long time ago,/  I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile./   And I knew if I had the chance,/  that I could make those people dance,/   And maybe they´d be happy for a while./    But February made me shiver,/  With every  paper I´d deliver,/   Bad news on the doorstep.../   I couldn´t   take one more step./  I can´t remember if I cried,/  

When I  read about his widowed bride,/  But something touched

me deep inside, the day the music died.

Some wonder if he wouldn´t be as popular today if he hadn´t died, while others say that the Holly image has remained constant and will continue to attract the juvenile buyer because his “young sound” stays the same.

“His influence was immense”,  once said the hit writing duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  “At least the first 40 songs we wrote were Buddy Holly influenced.” Lennon drew a personal lesson from Holly,  he wrote to a fan:  “He made it O.K. to wear glasses - I was Buddy Holly”.

The first recording Lennon and McCartney ever made, in their pre- Beatles days as the Quarrymen, was a version of “THAT´LL BE THE DAY”.  The name of the Beatles was coined by John Lennon in 1959 - the example of the Crickets had brought other insect names to mind.

A 1974 Newsweek feature article on Bob Dylan´s music quoted him as saying:  “The music of the late 50´s and early 60´s, when music was at the root level, for me, is meaningful music.  The singers and musicians I grew up with transcend nostalgia - - Buddy Holly and Johnny Ace are just as valid to me  today as then.”

In those few years between 1956 and his death Holly played with everybody and went everywhere.   His music reads like the Who´s Who of early Rock ´n Roll.    Chuck Berry,  Paul Anka, The Drifters, The Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis,  Bill Hayley and The Comets, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darren, Deon and The Belmonts, The Coasters, Ritchie Valens and lastly The Big Bopper.

Ritchie Valens

Rock was young in those days and the only way to make it grow was to roll it to the masses.   A bus tour was arranged in the winter of ´58 - ´59; it played in such memorable places as Kenosha, Wisconsin;  Mankato, Minnesota;  Fort Dodge, Iowa;  Green Bay, Wisconsin but all the books will tell you that it ended in Mason City, Iowa where I grew up. Close, but no cigar. His last venue was at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, just nine miles down the road.

On the way the concert bus broke down twice.  It was so cold in fact that fires were actually created in the bus to keep the performers warm. They arrived at 6 p.m. in Clear Lake to do the performance that was to start at 8 p.m. With no sleep, a quick decision was made by Buddy to rent an airplane from the Mason City Airport and fly that night to Mankato to try to get some sleep and rest before the next day´s show. Also scheduled on the plane was current Country and Western super-star Waylon Jennings and Tommy Aulsop.   But during the course of the evening both were talked out of their seats by J.P. Richardson the “Big Bopper”, and finally on the flip of a coin, won by Ricardo Valenzuela (Ritchie Valens) who was the hottest sensation in the states with his Tex-Mex sound, and who was then topping the charts with his mega hit “DONNA”  and on the flip side the never forgotten “LA BAMBA”. The “Big Bopper´s”  “CHANTILLY LACE” had been on the charts for 6 months, but everybody came to see Buddy, Buddy Holly.  

Local D.J.,  Bob Hale, called it the biggest crowd that he had ever seen in the Surf Ballroom.   “We had people as far away as St. Paul, Illinois and Minnesota.  The place was filled to the rafters”.

The show went off well. Contrary to musical folklore the song “That´ll  be the Day (when I die)” was not sung even tho’ it had been released just two weeks before. Following the last gig the other artist returned to Mason City but the three stars left for the airport.

Owner of the fated plane Jerry Dwyer expressed his surprise later when meeting the 3 musicians.  “I thought all entertainers got drunk.  But they hadn´t been drinking;  they were just really nice kids.”

Roger Peterson, the pilot, was a 21 year old who had 4 years´ flying experience but had not been certified for instrument flying.   In fact he had failed his first instrument check a year before, when he had difficulty holding at the required altitude. Peterson had checked the weather forecast several times during the evening.  Conditions were acceptable and all stations en route reported visibility of 10 miles or more.  But Air Traffic Controllers did not inform Peterson of two special Weather Bureau advisories;  one predicting lower visibility in snow and fog over an area including Iowa and the other reporting bad snow moving southward through Minnesota and North Dakota, both in the face of his intended flight pattern. It was one A.M. when the single engine aircraft moved down the south runway and took off, leveling at about 2,000 feet it made slow 180º turn left and headed north. Below, the thinly populated countryside, with but a few scattered farmhouses became obliterated by the snow. No lights or landmarks were visible and Peterson was immediately forced to depend upon his instruments.

From the Airport Tower, Jerry Dwyer watched the plane´s white tail-light recede in the distance.   When the plane was about 4 miles from the airport Dwyer saw the plane descend slowly, until it was out of sight.   He later stated, “I thought at the time that probably it was an optical illusion due to the plane going away from us at an angle.”   Dwyer was disturbed though, by Peterson´s failure to file a flight plan immediately after takeoff.   Attempts were made to contact the plane by radio but there was no answer.

Dwyer couldn´t sleep that night and early the next morning he took off to follow the intended route that his plane would have taken.   At  approximately 9.35 A.M. on February third, 1959 the crash site was located. Tangled wreckage of a small plane strewn across a field of white snow. No sound could be heard. The Music had died. Buddy Holly had lived just 22 years.

Following his death both albums “The Buddy Holly Story Vol. 1 & 2” were million hit sellers as had been such hit singles as “PEGGY  SUE”,  “EVERY DAY”, “LISTEN TO ME”,  “RAVE ON”,  AND “MAYBE BABY.”    

In 1965 “WORDS OF LOVE” appeared on the Beatles VI Album,  “IT DOESN´T MATTER ANY MORE” was recorded by Freddie and the Dreamers, “HEARTBEAT” was sung by Herman´s Hermits and most notably “TRUE LOVE´S WAYS” became a top 10 hit for Peter & Gordon.

But February “always makes me shiver, from all the papers I´ve delivered” and February reminds me of my favorite song of Buddy´s:    

“The sun is out,  the sky is blue,   there´s not a cloud, 

to spoil  the view /     but it´s raining...raining in my heart.”