He Was There The Day The Music Died
Forty Years Ago Today, Plane Crash Killed Holly, Valens And Big Bopper
 MINNEAPOLIS, Posted 11:30 a.m. February 3, 1999 -- Here we are, 40 years to the day the music died and we're still mourning something that lives. It was on the morning of Feb. 3, 1959 that a small charter plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and lesser-known members of Dion and the Belmonts and Frankie Sardo. The news spread like Holly's agile fingers across a Fender fret board . . . . . . All the way to Fargo, N.D., where afternoon disc jockey Charlie Boone was gearing up for a big-name concert just across the Red River inside the Moorhead, (Minn.) Armory, one of many stops on a grueling Holly-Bopper-Valens tour of the Upper Midwest. The headlines on the wire indicated that the concert's three headline acts -- whose songs were on heavy rotation at Boone's KFGO-AM radio station -- had died. "People were in such shock, it was so close to the tragedy," Boone recalled. "People couldn't quite believe it yet." Amid the disbelief and shock, Boone remembers being perplexed, for some unimportant reason, by news reports that mentioned Valens' name first, as if to suggest his death was most noteworthy. "There was consternation. What should we do? Should we cancel the concert? Should we go ahead? Well, the consensus was from listeners phoning in that we should go ahead -- that they would have wanted it that way." With three headliners not appearing, concert organizers put out the word that they were in need of some fill-in performers. Bobby Vee, then a mere 15 years old, his brother, Bill, and the rest of their ragtag band responded to the call. "People think it was their big break," said Boone, Vee's long-time friend who also helped Vee land his first recording deal. "He was in a garage band. He had been together with his brothers and some other guys for about a week -- and they sounded like it. They were not polished performers."  Vee told The Associated Press that it wasn't until the inevitable spotlight hit him, that he was overwhelmed at the thought of having to perform after such a tragedy. He says he had his own fears to deal with, the sadness and the shock of the singers' deaths. But the audience responded really well even though they didn't know who he and his band, "The Shadows," were. In the end, Vee says it was a great experience and he thinks of it as one of the major milestones in his life because that's how he launched his musical career. "In retrospect, I have a feeling that people were expecting a wake," Boone recalled of the concert that was but never would be. "In fact, some people said, 'Well, are the caskets going to be there?' "They were unbelieving when they came." Of course, no one knew how big a day it would turn out to be, certainly not Boone who, to this day, regrets not jotting down notes about that night's slate of performers, conversations and goings-on. No one certainly knew it would end the first golden era of rock and roll, or that it would go down in history as the musical genre's first monumental tragedy. "It may have been," Boone told Channel 4000. "It was huge at the time, because I remember several times a day we would play the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly. To have them all three perish -- that's pretty huge." Boone would soon move on to powerhouse AM station WCCO-Radio in Minneapolis. A legend in his own right, Boone recalled the historic event this morning for his long-time listeners on 830. Among the morbid twists and turns that still amazes Boone is Waylon Jennings' place in the bizzare sequence of events. Jennings, a friend of Holly, had agreed to be a fill-in bass guitarist for Holly's back-up band, The Crickets, during the tour.  Boone picks up the story from there. "[Jennings] was supposed to be on the plane with Buddy Holly, but the Big Bopper, J.P. Richardson, was so tired and said, 'Hey man, I've got to have a hotel room. I've got to have a good night's sleep. Hey, I'll trade with ya." Jennings, of course, agreed to give Bopper one of the few seats on the aircraft. To this day, Boone says, Jennings has regretted an off-the-cuff "I hope you crash" quip he made to the passengers and young pilot as they flew off. "He really carried that with him a long, long time." Tommy Allsup, who also was supposed to be aboard that plane, flipped a coin with Valens and lost. Valens, 17, Holly, 22, and the Big Bopper, 28, lost much more. 'The Day The Music Died' - VH1 is set to air "The Day the Music Died" tonight at 9 p.m., Eastern time. The documentary includes tributes from Don McLean, who coined that famous line in his hit song "American Pie," and actors Gary Busey and Lou Diamond Phillips, who won acclaim for their performances as Holly and Valens, respectively.
Ritchie Valens: Buddy Holly Big Bopper - Images, including one of the crash site.
Jay Maxwell, Channel 4000 Staff Writer
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