50 Years Ago Today….

Contrary to the song, the music didn’t die, it lived and it played on and on and on.

50 years ago Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson (also known as the Big Bopper) died on a freezing cold snowy night when their plane crashed into a cornfield in Iowa. They had just finished a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. Holly and Richardson were in their twenties, Valens was seventeen.

The story goes that the bus was so cold that Holly, who was originally from Texas, couldn’t stand it anymore. He hired a plane to take him and his two musicians to the next stop on their tour. One of the guitarists was Waylen Jennings. He gave his seat to Richardson because he was sick. The other, Tommy Allsup, tossed a coin with Valens to see who got the seat. Valens won.

It still is sad and shocking when you think of those talented men dying so young and all the wonderful music they could have offered if they had lived longer.

But as horrible as this was, it made them legends and people who might never have listened to their music paid attention. Would you have listened to “Chantilly Lace” or heard of the Big Bopper if he had lived?

Not only that, but by dying young, it made them forever young. They never had to face the part of rock and roll that no one wants to admit happens: fading into obscurity. There is no guarantee that they would have kept writing and performing hits. There are times when an artist’s creativity is unstoppable and they think (and so does everyone else) that it will keep going. Unfortunately, sometimes it ends, never to return. Then they could spend the rest of their life hoping that their old fans remember them and are willing to pay to see them perform their old hits in lounges, supper clubs or just about any place that will have them. Needless to say, it’s very depressing.

Also, a cottage industry has strung from their deaths. People make a pilgrimage to Clear Lake to see reenactments of their final performance or they go to the cornfield to see where the plane crashed. They watch the movies based on Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and that horrendous song “American Pie” resurfaces very damn year at this time when it should have died out a long time ago.

Even with all that, you can’t take away the brilliance of Buddy Holly’s tunes like “True Love Ways”, “That”ll Be the Day”, “Fade Away”, “Rave On” (there are too many to mention) and Valens terrific interpretation of “La Bamba” and his song “Donna.” They have all made their way into the rock and roll hall of songs we all know.

Was it worth the trade off? Having their lives end early for immortality? I don’t know. But I do know that we don’t have a choice. When your time is up, it’s up. You can be living your dreams and everything is going your way and your life can change on a dime or on the toss of a coin. We were lucky to have them with us for as long as we did.

What can we learn from their deaths? Maybe it’s that if you really want to be forever famous, once you’ve written a couple hits, you should die in a ball of fire rather and ‘Not Fade Away.’

This entry was posted Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009, 3:20 am and is filed under About the music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. Comments are open. Pings are open. You can use this trackback URl.