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The Day The Music Died

K

kruser

Well-known Member
Didn't see it posted yesterday, but it was 60 years ago Sunday that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died in an airplane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
Our local paper had a pretty good story about how survivors and new members of the Winter Dance Party went on to immediately play in venues such as Peoria, Illinois. Band members included Bobby Vee, Fabion, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon and, of course, Waylon Jennings.

See the 2/3/19 online issue of the Peoria Journal Star for more details
 
I remember that day

https://www.pjstar.com/news/20190202/luciano-after-day-music-died-rock-n-roll-came-to-peoria
 
The plane was a Beechcraft Bonaza 35 V tail, an excellent and desirable aircraft even today. Nobody knows exactly what happened but the weather was terrible and worsening at the time. The pilot was 21 years old, it's easy to speculate he might not have been very experienced. He definitely was only VFR certified, and that IFR was necessary with the weather conditions. The plane never should have taken off that night, at least not with that pilot.
 
(quoted from post at 21:30:05 02/04/19) The plane was a Beechcraft Bonaza 35 V tail, an excellent and desirable aircraft even today. Nobody knows exactly what happened but the weather was terrible and worsening at the time. The pilot was 21 years old, it's easy to speculate he might not have been very experienced. He definitely was only VFR certified, and that IFR was necessary with the weather conditions. The plane never should have taken off that night, at least not with that pilot.
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Yeah, private aviation has not been very good to the music industry. Patsy Cline, this accident, Leonard Skinerd, and some lesser known.

This accident set the stage for the commercial rules on compensation. What a sad day for everyone.
 
A few others not mention are Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jim Croce,Otis Redding, John Denver and Gleen Miller.
 
(quoted from post at 11:24:01 02/05/19) More musicians have been killed in plane crashes then by drugs.
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Well Ricky Nelson was cooking drugs in the back and set the plane on fire. Pilots set it down and walked away.
 
The Winter Dance Party had played in my hometown (Fort Dodge, Iowa) and in my current town (Mankato, Minn.) within a week or so before the fatal plane crash. I remember sitting in the school bus waiting for the ride home when the bus radio had a news broadcast that Buddy Holly and the others had been killed. As a sixth-grader who was really a fan of the victims, I remember feeling stunned. In my youthful naivete I thought the radio stations would stop playing Holly's music out of respect. Of course, that didn't happen.
 
We were at the Surf that night, stayed around till they left for the airport, in a freezing drizzle. Hard to believe they would be gone before we got home.
 
No, Ricky Nelson was NOT cooking drugs on the plane. NTSB investigators dismissed that theory. May 29, 1987 LA Times article tells what the NTSB found. Read the story and get your facts straight. A faulty heater in the DC-3 was suspected to have caused the fire, it had malfunctioned after take off and during flight. The pilot and co-pilot both lied and tried to cover it up. I remember 20/20 or Primetime did a segment about the crash investigation and findings. Aerosol cans were found among the charred wreckage and the media jumped to the conclusion(WITH NO PROOF) that they were freebasing cocaine. trace amounts were found in Nelson's body according to autopsy report. The aerosol cans however were hairspray cans carried by the band members in their luggage.
 
Mr. Ozlander, with respect, you are wrong on both counts. Ricky Nelson's plane crashed in a meadow near Dekalb Texas. The plane
burned. There were no survivors. The plane was leaking some type of flammable liquid that was burning before it crashed. It would have
been gasoline or possibly diesel fuel that fired the heater. The previous poster is correct about a defective heater being the cause of the
crash. I was working in Ashdown Arkansas. My coworker and I saw the plane going over. It caught our attention by the fact it was flying
very low and it was an old airplane. We had no idea at the time what we were looking at. Steve Norwood. Banner Mississippi.
 
DC-3 pilots both survived. The gas heaters in these planes, and many similar planes have always been hokey. Most owners convert to passive hot-air ducted heating, and leave the gas heaters off.
 
Jim Reeves was VFR rated only and tried to fly thru a thunderstorm to reach the airport, Beach Debonaire.
 
(quoted from post at 21:30:05 02/04/19) The plane was a Beechcraft Bonaza 35 V tail, an excellent and desirable aircraft even today. Nobody knows exactly what happened but the weather was terrible and worsening at the time. The pilot was 21 years old, it's easy to speculate he might not have been very experienced. He definitely was only VFR certified, and that IFR was necessary with the weather conditions. The plane never should have taken off that night, at least not with that pilot.
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Sounds like the exact same thing with JFK jr. a VFR pilot in over his head in IFR conditions. Arrogance killed JFK jr.


I cant remember the exact statistics, but when a non instrument pilot gets in bad weather, it is something like 45 seconds before they become disoriented.

Gene
 
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