Fifty years ago today a plane crashed in a corn field in Iowa, killing young rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. If you spent all of the late eighties watching Lou Diamond Phillips playing Valens in La Bamba then you know the story. While Valens’ music doesn’t do much for me and the Big Bopper’s Chantilly Lace is frankly a very irritating song, Buddy Holly’s eight top 40 hits were almost all very good, especially That’ll Be The Day and Peggy Sue and Oh Boy! and Rave On. Holly was only twenty-two when the plane crashed.
The accident, and all its meaningful cultural significance or whatever, were commemmorated in Don McLean’s American Pie, which is a terrible, terrible song that happened to be number one this week twenty-seven years ago.
The plane was on its way to Fargo, I guess. And actually they’re not that far apart…
Oh man, I’ve been lied to my whole life
No, it was Mason City, Iowa. Here’s an article about a monument they just put up there.
The plane crashed outside of Fargo, ND, which is not Iowa.