Where Were You the Day the Music Died?

[Sam White R.I.P.]

I was 23 and I remember it very well.I was a great Country Music fan and I'm still a country music fan and Steel Guitar,Lap Steel, and Dobro player. Not the greatest but I can save myself.
Sam White

[Donny Hinson]

I think it may have just been the area I was in back then (Baltimore), but Buddy, Bopper, and Ritchie just weren't the sensation there that they were in other places.

[Dave Hopping]

Deke Dickerson has just now posted on Facebook that Crickets bassist Joe B.Mauldin has passed away.

[James Jacoby]

I was at home in my parent's house, listening to the radio, when the news flash came on. A few years ago, my family, and I were traveling, and we decided to stop in Lubbock to see the Buddy Holly museum, where, amazingly enough, they had his glasses displayed. They had survived the plane crash, unscathed! After we finished looking over the many artifacts, we decided to visit his grave site. We found that the gravestone had a Stratocaster engraved in it! I remember it was quiet, and peaceful in the Lubbock cemetery, and I remarked that when my time came, I hoped they would put me in a peaceful place, like that. Just then, a train came roaring by, blowing it's horn so loud, it almost raised us up off the ground! There were train tracks, hidden just behind a row of trees, at the edge of the cemetery! -Jake-

[Charlie McDonald]

The cemetery is indeed a nice quiet place until the train goes by; Buddy Holly's grave is still an attraction,
for Lubbock's most favorite son.

On the third, trolleys were running folks from the Buddy Holly Museum around to places he'd been,
to see the statue by the Civic Center, his/my high school, the cemetery. I didn't take the ride; full bus schedule.

Next door to the museum is the house of Cricket Jerry Allison, moved onto the site, complete with drum set
in the room where Peggy Sue was written. It's not a shrine, just an ordinary house somewhat out of place on 19th Street;
but the museum is a treat--guitars, photos, those nerdy glasses.... They're an enduring icon and a symbol of
uncertain teen years and the songs that came out of them, and a guy who could wear them and sing about love
and all the things that made us who we were, and are.

I've never thought the music died as long as the songs were still around; ars longa, vita brevis.
He was a positive image, respectful and clean-looking, someone a coach would want to be on his team,
and he decided he'd play music. Good on him forever.

[Barry Blackwood]

[Ray Montee (RIP)]

A look at YOU TUBE under Buddy's names will display for you several different video clips of the wreckage of the Beechcraft Bonanza in which the three musicians were riding at the time of this tragedy. It was obviously extremely cold with snow and ice on the ground.

The plane had rolled up into a ball of shredded metal near a wire fence in a farmer's field. Only one of the three friends was tossed from the aircraft during the crash.

Do any of you know which popular country artist had been scheduled to fly on that horrible trip but because he lost a bet his seat was given to one of three that died.

[Charlie McDonald]

I think it was Waylon Jennings.

If memory serves me, he came from Muleshoe, an hour up the highway to Clovis from Lubbock.

I heard they used to leave Lubbock going fast enough to cross the New Mexico line and arrive before they left.

[Kelly Hydorn]

I had a morning paper route then, and was deep into "Rock & Roll" not the later stuff they call rock and roll. I was reading the paper as I delivered the same and the back of the front page section showed the pictures of the three who were killed in the plane crash. And I distinctly remember being bummed out for the next few days. Especially at school, where nobody seemed to give a rip.........

[Alan Brookes]

Very shortly after his death, Coral Records rushed out the Buddy Holly Story LP, followed by a volume 2. I bought them the day they came out and played them so much that I eventually had to buy new copies.

Ironically, if Buddy had lived, the majority of his work that's available today would never have been issued, because the majority of the tracks were taken from demo recordings or Buddy's own home recordings, to which backing was later added. In fact, since the originals without backing are available I've often thought of adding my own backing to some of them.

Whereas Buddy had been performing with Bob Montgomery on their radio show for some time, there is comparatively little material available of Ritchie Valens, why had barely left school when he died, or JP Richardson, who spent most of his career as a disk jockey.

[Herb Steiner]

I was present when the Big Bopper was posthumously inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, and the award was accepted by his son, JP Richardson, Jr. Who looks just like his daddy, incidentally, only shorter.

This is an interesting "rest of the story..." the Big Bopper's autopsy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAd3gYTR2-E