One of the students killed was Ritchie's best friend. Horribly, three students were killed and ninety others injured. The scene created a ghastly paradox of childhood innocence and untimely death. The school ground resembled a battlefield, with pieces of contorted, burning metal intermixed with playground equipment. Ironically, the crash site was the playground of Ritchie's school, Paicoma Junior High School. Almost like children searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Valenzuela family found the wreckage of the doomed aircraft. Quickly, the family members jumped into a car and followed in the general direction of the now crimson sky. When Ritchie and his older brother Bob Morales looked into the heavens, they saw a plane plummeting from the sky totally engulfed in flames. Shortly after the family returned to the Valenzuela home, a deafening explosion shook the earth. Ritchie had missed school that day to attend the funeral service.

This day was the funeral of Ritchie's grandfather. That horrible fear began on January 31, 1957. He just had a horrible fear of small planes, and planes in general. Donna Fox, subject of Ritchie Valens's hit song 'Donna,' recalled, 'He would have nightmares about that. In one hallucination he told of foreseeing his own death, later reporting that 'the other side wasn't that bad.'įor Ritchie Valens, the very thought of flying was terrifying. During the sleepless marathon he had begun to hallucinate.

Finally, after setting a new record of 122 hours and eight minutes (just over five days) without sleep and constantly being on the air, the Big Bopper was carried out of the station by an ambulance. Cold towels, hot coffee mixed with adrenaline, and an iron will kept the Big Bopper continuing his spectacular sleepless production. P., I think you are.' During the course of the day several breaks were arranged to help refresh the DJ and keep him going just a little longer. Richardson asked, 'Jer, you think I'm going to die?' And Boynton replied, 'J. Jerry Boynton, who served as radio announcer for KTRM, remembered the Disc-A-Thon and a near-exhausted Richardson who had been awake for slightly more than three straight days. Curious onlookers would rush to the studio to watch the radio personality and silently wonder how long he could possibly last until he succumbed to exhaustion. The Disc-A-Thon was a popular gimmick that required the station DJ to stay awake and on the air for as many days as possible playing record after record until he collapsed from the terrible weariness. As a DJ, the Bopper's zany radio antics included a sleepless Disc-A-Thon in 1957. The Big Bopper had served as a DJ for radio station KTRM in Beaumont, Texas, as he continued to develop his rock and roll career both as a songwriter and performer. Several documented accounts have stated that all three performers had some sort of premonition of the calamity that would befall them. Many rumors, as well as conspiracy theories, have continued to swirl about the events that have now defined rock and roll's first great catastrophe, in some ways painting a mental image much like the squall that encased the downed Beechcraft Bonanza in a light shroud of freshly fallen snow as the splintered aircraft lay broken and embedded in the frozen earth just nine miles outside Clear Lake, Iowa. Today, more than forty years since the crash, the events of that terrible night and the strange sequence of coincidences that have followed have become the very substance of urban legend. These three young musicians were not the first to be sacrificed upon the altar of musical stardom, but such a cataclysmic loss of life at such an early age foreshadowed countless others who would follow in their tragic path. Richardson, 'The Big Bopper,' twenty-eight and Ritchie Valens, seventeen. When the solemn news quickly spread across AM radio airwaves, the victims were identified as Buddy Holly, twenty-two J.

Eastern time, during what was considered to be a routine flight, three of the brightest stars in the rock and roll heavens came plunging back to the earth in a comet of fire and distorted, twisted metal. The snow was snowing, the wind was blowing when the world said, 'Good-bye, Buddy.'įebruary 3, 1959, will forever be known as 'The Day the Music Died.' Shortly after 1:00 A.M. May be incomplete or contain other coding. Gary Patterson.īibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalogĬopyrighted sample text provided by the publisher and used with permission. Sample text for Library of Congress control number 2004047197 Sample text for Take a walk on the dark side : rock and roll myths, legends, and curses / R.

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