Feb. 2, 1959: the day the music died.

That was the day the plane

carrying Buddy Holly (born Charles Holley), The Big Bopper (born Jiles Perry Richardson) and Richie Valens (born Ricardo Valenzuela) crashed into Albert Juhl’s field near Mason City, Iowa. Just days before, on Jan. 25, the Winter Dance Party, as the tour was called, had played the Kato Ballroom in Mankato.

A documentary promising “lots of new revelations and surprises” is being prepared in time for the 50th anniversary of that tour in 2009. The filmmakers call The Winter Dance Party “the most significant tour in rock and roll history.”

Canadian Sevan Garbedian, Jim McCool of Madison, Wis., and Shawn Nagy of Duluth are researching the various stops of the tour, what it represented then, what it represents now and how things have changed since 1959.

At the Kato Ballroom, admission was $1.50 for teens and parents were welcomed free of charge.

Dianne Cory of Delavan remembers it well. She was living in Mankato at the time and was at the Winter Dance Party with a group of girlfriends.

“I was not old enough to drive,” she said.

Armed with her Brownie Camera, she talked The Big Bopper into stepping to the back door for a picture. She also collected autographs from the singers that night.

Cory heard about the plane crash in school and thought everyone on the tour had died. She rushed home that afternoon to hear Dick Clark explain what had happened.

“I cried for all of them,” said Cory, who has gone to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, for the past 20 years to attend the memorial of the Buddy Holly era. “It broke my heart.”

Garbedian said it was common for Holly and all the other stars on the bill, including Frankie Sardo and Dion and the Belmonts, to mingle with the crowd after each concert, signing autographs, posing for pictures and talking with people.

“Buddy Holly was a likable guy,” Garbedian said. “People identified with him.”

Garbedian is hoping to find some of those photos taken at the Kato Ballroom that night and talk with people who were in the crowd and interacted with Holly and the others. He’s hoping to include some of their memories in the film.

“There are such great memories,” he said.