‘The day the music died...’

Today is the anniversary of "the day the music died."

It was on Feb. 3, 1959, that a small plane carrying rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed near Mason City. After playing the north Iowa gig in their Winter Dance Party tour, the trio was en route to Fargo.

The events of that night always have caused me to pause. And after they were immortalized in Don McLean's heartfelt "American Pie," who wouldn't they touch?

This year, however, those deaths ring a little more deeply with me. My wife and I just moved to Iowa and somehow being in the same state as where the crash occurred makes it all that more poignant.

I know the story of Buddy Holly's death almost by heart: How the Beechcraft Bonanza they flew on allegedly was named "American Pie," of how nobody knew the plane had crashed until the next morning when it didn't show up in Fargo, of how it was found on the Albert Juul farm, of how the plane dug a furrow through a cornfield's stubble before piling up against a fence.

I know these details because my mother told them to me every time she heard a Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens or Big Bopper song on the radio while I was growing up. She had watched them perform only a few days before when the Winter Dance Party played in Eau Claire, Wis.

A long, long time ago

By 1959, rock and roll was on the decline. Elvis was in the army. Record companies had domesticated the genre and were releasing music whose downbeat boasted Pat Boone.

Buddy Holly was trying to stay afloat in this musical quagmire. He'd just released "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," and that January began the Winter Dance Party Tour in Milwaukee with his cohorts.

On Jan. 26, the trio, along with Dion and the Belmonts, played the Fournier Ball-room in Eau Claire.

My mother was just a high school freshman that year, but when Buddy Holly came to town, there was no way she wasn't going to be anywhere but at that show. Even more challenging than her age was that the show was on a Monday - a school night.

Worse, it lasted until 10:30 p.m., which was curfew. Like Cinderella trying to beat the midnight chimes, how was she going to get home without missing part of the show?

Fortunately for her, her best friend had an older sister who had a boyfriend who had a car. The older sister struck a deal: Pay for my boyfriend and me to get in, and you've got a ride.

My mother said it was the best $1.25 she ever spent.

By today's standards, Buddy Holly looks cool because he's retro. But back then in his black horn-rim-med glasses, he was considered a geek.

What made him cool was the passion he put into his playing.

"Now do you believe in rock'n'roll?" McClean wrote a decade after the crash. "Can music save your mortal soul? And can you teach me how to dance real slow?"

Holly and Valens and Dion spoke to my mother, her friend, and all of the other teens at Fournier's that night. I can see them kicking off their shoes and digging those rhthym'n'blues.

Bad news on the door step

A couple of days after Eau Claire, the Winter Dance Party saw what a real Midwest winter is like. They were stranded in Appleton, Wis., on Feb. 1 when their bus broke down. With no heat, they burned newspapers in the aisle to keep warm. One of the band members suffered frostbite.

They made it to Green Bay that night, however, and played. Then they flew to Iowa and performed at the Surf Ballroom at Clear Lake on Feb. 2.

That evening - a Monday - Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper decided to fly ahead for a little rest and to get the musicians' costumes dry cleaned. The rest of the party would take the bus, which meant a long, cold ride across the wind-swept prairie.

Richie Valens won a coin toss to get a seat on the plane.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Feb. 3, the plane took off from Mason City Municipal Airport. Just a few miles later, it quickly lost altitude. The plane slammed into the ground at 170 miles per hour.

My mother didn't find out about Holly's death until she got home from school that night and turned on her radio. The local station was playing "That'll Be The Day," "La Bamba" and "Chantilly Lace" - her favorite songs - over and over. Her exuberance ended when the disc jockey told the unhappy news.

"The lovers cried and the poets dreamed. But not a word was spoken - the church bells all were broken."

Miss American Pie

I've never been to the cornfield where Buddy Holly lost his life. Maybe some day I will go. Each year a Winter Dance Party festival is held in Mason City, and mourners gather at the crash site to pay their respects.

And every year the newspapers and television stations in those towns where Holly performed that winter retell the story of what happened and show blurry black and white photographs of their sock hop. Whenever I see pictures from Eau Claire, I look for my mother in them.

I've never seen her, though she has a clipping from some years back that she says shows her friend's older sister. A smile brighter than a summer's dawn covers the girl's face as her hair whirls with her hips in beat to the song Holly belted out only a few feet away.

And each time I think of that face, I remember those immortal lines: "Do you recall what was revealed, the day the music died?"

(originally published Feb. 3, 2003)