February 3, 1959 – it was a tragic day in music history indeed. It was the day that music lost some of its shining, most earliest influential figures, men who opened the floodgates and created some of the blueprints that formed, shaped, and created rock and roll: Ritchie Valens, The “Big Bopper”, and the bespectacled skinny kid, who created rock and roll arrangements which still get used, drawn and quartered, becoming etching and drafting tools in a way for the entire schematic of that genre, Buddy Holly.
It was on February 3, 1959, near Clear Lake, Iowa, that the single engine 1947 Beechcraft airplane carrying the aforementioned musicians crashed during a past-midnight run in which there was rather inclement, icy conditions. The men had earlier been part of a Winter Party Dance Tour, which was making its way across the country. After finishing the gig, Holly had been frustrated with the conditions of a tour bus that he and his cohorts had been using, one which was not equipped for the cold winter weather which gripped the Midwest and Great Plains that year. He finally decided to rent an airplane to jettison himself and whoever wanted to accompany him, to the following gigs.
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