60 Years Ago Today, The Music Died

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https://www.npr.org/2019/02/03/690798999/buddy-hollys-classmates-remember-the-pioneer-60-years-after-the-day-the-music-di

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On Feb. 3, 1959, at only 22 years old, Buddy Holly left this world as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll. Now, 60 years after the crash that killed Holly, Mexican-American star Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper — or "the day the music died" — Holly's high school classmates from Lubbock, Texas, remember the young musician in the years before his rise to fame.

In the early 1950s, Lubbock High School student Betty Dotts was into music. She sang with Buddy Holly in the school choir and knew he had grander ambitions. However, she was skeptical when she heard him play.

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"I thought 'Oh my goodness, that's not very good music,'" Dotts says.

George Nelson, another Lubbock High choir member, also enjoyed songwriting back in the day. "But I didn't have anywhere near the talent that Buddy had," Nelson remembers. "He was just innately endowed with it, and he could play."

In 1953, Nelson and Holly faced off in a song contest. Nelson's tune, "Someday You'll Pay," won. "It's the only thing that I've got in my life that I could brag about," Nelson says with a laugh.

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Rock and roll got an especially cold reception in Lubbock at the time. Nelson remembers preachers regularly smashing vinyl records or using cars to crush them. Local teenagers who wanted to listen to rock and roll would circle their cars out in cotton fields, blast the radio and dance. Nelson recalls that the conservative people in Lubbock "thought the young people were going to hell."

 

Edited February 3, 2019 by atomheartbevo

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https://www.lubbockonline.com/news/20190202/hollys-reputation-musical-accomplishments-shine-60-years-after-his-death

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Drummer Allison, Holly’s best friend, wishes it ‘could have lasted a little longer’

Sixty years ago today, Lubbock native and rock ‘n’ roll innovator Charles Hardin Holley -- known to fans worldwide as Buddy Holly, leader of an American band called the Crickets -- chartered a four-seat aircraft simply because he wanted to avoid the cold and have extra time to finish his laundry.

But mostly ... to avoid the freezing cold.

(Buddy Holley left his professional name Holly when it was misspelled on his recording contract.)

As fate would have it, Holly, 22, perished in the wee hours of Feb. 3, 1959, when he and three others -- musicians Ritchie Valens and J.P “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and pilot Roger A. Peterson -- were determined by coroner Ralph E. Smileyto have died instantly when their plane crashed minutes after takeoff in a field five and one-half miles north of Clear Lake, Iowa.

Had Holly survived, he already had plans to return to Lubbock in 1960, according to older brother Larry Holley and Jacqueline Bober, curator at the Buddy Holly Center and interim director of cultural facilities for the city of Lubbock.

Bober explained that only a few activities honoring the 60th anniversary of Holly’s death are planned today for two reasons. First, major events and a landmarks tour took place Saturday. Also, she explained, “Feb. 3 happens to be Super Bowl Sunday.

“Brooke (Witcher) told me the last time that Feb. 3 fell on a Super Bowl Sunday, there was a sum total of 10 people at the Buddy Holly Center, and five of them were staff.”

 

[atomheartbevo 90149]

Armybrat’s probably got stories, or his grandkids did.  

Amazing how much talent was in that little plane.  

[Parliament 14416]

Your move, Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Cold Play.

[Armybrat 41049]

13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Armybrat’s probably got stories, or his grandkids did.  

Amazing how much talent was in that little plane.  

My cousin Joanne lived in Mason City at the time. When the news got around, she said carloads of teenagers drove out to the crash site farm to gawk. Claimed she saw some bodies in the field by the wreckage. Her favorite on the plane was the Big Bopper (Chantilly Lace).

[TwiceHorn 31707]

1 minute ago, Armybrat said:

Big Bopper (Chantilly Lace).

Another Texan.

[Al_4_ISU 12553]

I grew up about 45 minutes from Clear Lake.  Never visited the crash site (seems unnecessaryil morbid), but the Surf was a huge part of my late teens/early 20’s.  It’s a great venue, and you can just feel the history when you walk through the door.  The significance of this event still hangs on that community in a way.

[MNLonghornFUKM 8921]

He was flying to play in my hometown at some winter dance. /csb

 

 

 

Kind of weird travel. Started in minnesota, went to iowa, back up to west central minnesota when he died then Illinois wisconsin etc. Shouldve started with us first??

[HouTex 1902]

Rock and Roll has been going downhill ever since.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

never realized he was only 22

[Underdog 28894]

15 hours ago, Parliament said:

Your move, Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Cold Play.

You can be the pilot. 

[MAROON 445]

thank goodness Waylon didn't get on that plane.

[pyrohornIII 4842]

I always loved to hear Cary Swinney talk about fellow Lubbockite musician, Holly.   He had heard a lot of stories from other musicians that never make it into print.  This is his tribute to BH.   From his "Martha" album.

Seventh of September
A tribute
It's the seventh of September
a visionary time

And I have come back from the future
I've come to see what once was mine

It's a solitary journey
when you're a ghost of rock-n-roll

And though my own hometown now claims me
they will never have my soul

So they gather in West Texas
you know, the place I chose to leave

Where they've encased my black rimmed glasses
I just stare in disbelief

You see for years I was forgotten
but now I am their favorite son

And on my birthday in September
they take the money and they run - see them run

I hear crickets in the evenin'
I wipe the sweat off of my brow

In a garage on thirty-seventh
 it's an illusion to me now,

Ain't it funny how things happen?
I mean once you're dead 'n gone

Seems now everybody knew me - and loved me
young and old now sing my songs

And Santiago smells the money
I should've seen that all along

Her new alliances with commerce - her lawsuits
my songs... my songs

I was once a young musician
a song writer, so they say

And though an aeroplane did take me
it seems I never fade away - not fade away

Lloyd Maines-pedal steel guitar
Cary Swinney-vocal, acoustic guitar