Photos Courtesy Universal Music Enterprises
The 66th Anniversary The Day The Music Died February 3, 1959 Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and Airplane Pilot
Roger Peterson Perish
Ritchie Valens Recreation Center In Pacoima Houses Victims of Southern California Wildfires;
La Bamba To Be Remade
Author Roger Steffens and musician Chris Darrow remember seeing Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens
By Harvey Kubernik © 2025
February 3, 2024 is the 66th anniversary of tragic airplane crash that subsequently became known as “The Day the Music Died,” sadly referenced in Don McLean’s song, “American Pie.” Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson aka The Big Bopper died along with pilot Roger Peterson.
After a February 2, 1959 “Winter Dance Party” show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson took off from the Mason City airport, in a three-passenger airplane that Holly chartered piloted by Roger Peterson during inclement weather. It crashed into a cornfield in nearby Macon City, Iowa, just minutes after take-off.
I will always remember the February 3, 1959 front page headline in The Los Angeles Times-Mirror, a daily newspaper who reported this accident.
Ritchie Valen’s death was a very big regional loss. He was from Pacoima, a suburb in Southern California. Ritchie’s records were very popular in Los Angeles and the surrounding communities. It was KFWB-AM deejay Gene Weed who first spun his music and the radio station held what seemed like an all-day shiva celebrating the life of Valens, whose record label, Del-Fi, was based in Hollywood.
I saw footage of Buddy Holly once on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and earlier, when Holly was on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. Holly’s records were also spun on Southern California AM radio station KFWB. “Chantilly Lace” by The Big Bopper was a national hit.
In my 1998 interview with Dick Clark, I asked who was the most requested recording artist for licensing?
“Buddy Holly. The irony there was that we once did a retrospective show for ABC, and I had an editor in from San Francisco who lost the Buddy Holly footage. Never found it. The only Buddy Holly footage we have of him doing ‘Peggy Sue’ is from The Arthur Murray Dance Party. I’m still a friend of Mrs. Murray and her former husband who passed on. I told her, ‘Let me have your tapes. You’ll own them always. We’ll just administrate them and we’ll take good care of them and store them in various formats so they won’t get lost.”
On February 3, 1999 I interviewed Keith Richards around a Rolling Stones concert in San Diego. We talked primarily about his just released Wingless Angels album.
However, it wasn’t lost on each of us that 42 years earlier, Buddy Holly, one of his musical heroes, passed. An early hit record of the Rolling Stones was “Not Fade Away,” produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, was the B-side to Buddy Holly’s 1957 chart hit “Oh Boy!”
In March 1958, 14-year old Mick Jagger saw his first rock concert in London at the Woolwich, Granada. “Not Fade Away” made a big impression.
Keith and I had a brief discussion how some music, like his Wingless Angeles endeavour or the sounds of the legendary Sun Records label, or anything by Holly and Eddie Cochran makes immediate impact and a connection on your soul, even decades after initial airplay or retail discovery.
“I think because it’s timeless music I call it ‘marrow music.’ Not even bone music. It strikes to the marrow. It’s like a faint echo . . . The body responds to it and I don’t know why…”
Photos Courtesy Universal Music Enterprises
The music and recorded catalogue of Buddy Holly never really died, and the sonic legacy of Ritchie Valens has continued. “Chantilly Lace” is constantly heard daily on oldies and classic rock radio stations. Humourist and songwriter J.P. Richardson, pka The Big Bopper, wrote “White Lighting” that George Jones recorded, and penned “Running Bear” for Johnny Horton. J.P. Richardson is in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Singer/songwriter McLean acknowledged the event in his 1971 hit tune “American Pie.”
Now, almost 40 years after its 1987 theatrical release, La Bamba, the biopic of Ritchie Valens, is getting a remake of the Luis Valdez written and directed film.
In 2023, Variety reported that Sony Pictures and Mucho Mas Media are in development of a new version. Oscar-nominated writer José Rivera, known for The Motorcycle Diaries and On the Road, will pen the script, and Valdez will serve as an executive producer.
In January 2025, as ongoing fires engulf and devastate the entire region of Southern California, the Ritchie Valens Recreation Center at the Ritchie Valens Park in Pacoima on 10736 Laurel Canyon Blvd. is serving as shelter and evacuation center for the now homeless victims affected by the wildfires.
In Southern California during 2017, a stretch of the Golden State (5) Freeway, is now called The Ritchie Valens Memorial Highway, located between the 170 and 118 freeways was named for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
Last decade I asked two friends of mine, author/music historian, Roger Steffens, and the late multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Chris Darrow, to share their concert memories of witnessing Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens perform.
Roger Steffens: At Christmas 1957 I went to my first rock and roll show, Alan Freed’s giant Christmas Jubilee of Stars at the Paramount Theater on Times Square. The run broke all attendance records, including the previous best, a Frank Sinatra tour in 1944.My friends and I had to lie to our parents, because they were sure we would be mugged if we went to a show where a lot of black kids were going to be.
“So, we told them we were going to Hackensack to see a movie, but got on the bus to the Port Authority instead and walked the few blocks to the Paramount, which had a line stretching three times around the block.
“The show included Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis (back to back), the teenage Everly Brothers, the Teenagers, Lee Andrews and the Hearts (with Questlove’s father), Danny and the Juniors, The Dubs (dear to my reggae soul) and eight others. Most of the second line performers got only one or two songs each, but Buddy Holly and the Crickets got five, because they were on the charts under both names at the time. They were all dressed in tuxedos, and played with a stand-up bass.
“The audience went wild for Buddy, clapping along with his rhythms, and singing along with his parade of hits. I remember watching Alan Freed’s 5-6 pm Rock and Roll Party TV show on WABD, Channel 5, in New York City.
“He interviewed Buddy about the national tour they had done together in 1956, during which they flew in a small plane to get to a gig, and encountered severe turbulence. Buddy recalled the ‘woop-woop’ as the plane fell and climbed and fell again. What a premonition!
“It was one of the saddest days of my youth when we learned of that terrible crash that took his life, and the first time I cried over the loss of a performer. Odd that one of the final releases during his short lifetime was ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.’”
Chris Darrow: I saw Ritchie Valens a month before his death in Pomona at the Rainbow Gardens, an all-wooden building, with a low ceiling that was just south of the YMCA in Pomona, California. It later was to burn to the ground.
“I was from a mixed race white and Hispanic neighborhood in Claremont, called Arbol Verde. My best friend Roger Palos was Mexican, and he and I were both learning to play guitar and we would sing together a lot. The songs that we learned that were not from the folk music genre, were popular songs mainly by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens. For some reason our favorite song of Ritchie’s was not ‘La Bamba’ or ‘Oh, Donna’ but ‘Hi – Tone.’ We just loved that song.
“I was 15 and in the ninth grade and was not allowed to go out many places by myself at night. I was attending a private school in Claremont, called Webb, which had sons of famous people in my class. Chris Mitchum, son of Robert, Chris Reynolds, his father owned the L.A. Angels professional baseball team, Tom Mitchell, whose father invented the Mitchell 35mm movie camera and Bob Washburn, whose dad was the head of 7UP.
“Since I wasn’t driving yet, it took a lot for my folks to let me go into the dark part of Pomona to see a rock ‘n’ roll show in 1959. My parents weren’t square but my mom always worried about me.
‘“I went with Roger Palos and Jon Dearborn to the concert, and it was kind of a pilgrimage for us. Since I really identified with the Mexican culture and wasn’t afraid, I couldn’t wait to see one of my main men, Ritchie Valens. After all he was only 17 and not much older than Roger and me. I wore my bright, red corduroy coat with silver buttons that my Grandma Darrow had made for me that Christmas. I also wore white bucks, white pants and red argyle socks. I looked sharp!
“I’m not sure who the house band was, but it could have been Manual and the Renegades, or the Mixtures, for they both used to be regulars at the Rainbow Gardens. I was very excited and hadn’t been to too many concerts before this.
“I listened to a lot of radio at the time and because of the heavy Mexican influence in my life, I got turned on to KDAY with Art Laboe, who would broadcast live from Scribner’s Drive-In, and Ol’ HH -Hunter Hancock- who had a great show called Harlem Matinee. These were the guys that the Mexicans listened to on the radio. I was also into KFWB, with Al Jarvis, Bill Balance and Ted Quillan, and Dick Hugg ‘Huggy Boy’ on KGFJ. He was on so late at night that I would have to listen to him under the covers of my bed in my room. So what is now called Doo-Wop was big with me, as well as the white dominated music so prevalent on major radio stations of the time. The Oldies but Goodies albums by Laboe on Original Sound were right up my alley.
“I was really into dancing at the time and had a chance to dance a few numbers with some strangers at the show. The opening act for Ritchie was Jan & Dean; possibly really Jan & Arnie. In those days no one had their own bands and acts would use house bands as their own. Either the band didn’t like Jan & Dean or they just didn’t care. Before they could get through the first song, which sounded awful, Jan stopped, ran off the stage followed by Dean, and plowed through the locked stage door and out into the night. Jan just kicked it open like some thug in a movie. I was so shocked and dumbstruck by this. They never came back.
“After the commotion died down and it was time for Ritchie to come on. He whirled in, probably from some other gig earlier that night, and I went right up next to the edge of the stage. He was a pretty big guy and loomed on-stage with a graceful power. He was not overtly hard core in his presentation but was very soulful and I ate it up. There was a tenderness and sweetness about him, even as he rocked. The house band knew his stuff and did a great job on the songs. He did ‘La Bamba’ and ‘Oh, Donna’ and even played my favorite song, ‘Hi-Tone.’
“I liken Ritchie to another L.A. guy, Eddie Cochran. Both had the soul and drive of the Sun /Clovis, New Mexico records, but they were from our own backyard. As soon as Ritchie finished, he was whisked off in a flash. There was no chance to say ‘hello’ or offer a handshake, but I was ecstatic over the event.
“The house band played on to people doing The Stomp and I was awarded a prize for being one of the five best- dressed guys of the night. A perfect end to a perfect evening.
“I read somewhere that Frank Zappa saw Ritchie in Pomona, so he was probably there, too. A month after the gig I was at school and heard about the deaths of Ritchie, Buddy and The Big Bopper. I was crushed and went off by myself and cried like a baby. It was the first time I remember crying for someone who had died. Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly were like gods to me at the time and could do no wrong. It was one of the great losses in rock and roll history.”
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books. He is currently writing Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries & Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) for 2025 publication. During 2006 Harvey spoke at the special hearings initiated by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 Kubernik appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series).
