Published: December 26, 2007 03:38 pm         

The day the music died

Documentary of Winter Dance Party on way

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.

Keith Matheson and his wife, who met at an Everly Brothers concert at the Kato Ballroom, both were in college when Buddy Holly came to town, and they both attended the concert Jan. 25.

Keith remembers being a bit disappointed that the original Crickets weren’t with Holly that night. There had been a falling out in the band, and Holly had replaced the original Crickets with new musicians.

While teenage fans like the Mathesons were coming to the Winter Dance Party concerts at ballrooms across the Midwest, making those wonderful memories, the musicians on the tour were having a less enjoyable time.

“They toured in a school bus without heat,” Garbedian said.

In fact, the night of the plane crash, the Crickets drummer Carl Bunch was in the hospital with serious frostbite on his feet.

Holly chartered a plane to take himself and the Crickets to Fargo because they wanted to sleep in a hotel rather than on the bus, and they wanted a chance to do laundry. According to reports about the tour, the musicians had performed and traveled in the same clothes for three days.

Ironically, none of the Crickets were on the plane when it took off. Richie Valens had challenged guitar player Tommy Allsup for his seat on the plane with a coin toss. The 17-year-old Valens won the seat on the plane.

Waylon Jennings, Holly’s bass player, ceded his seat on the plane to The Big Bopper, who had the flu. According to Garbedian, when Holly learned Jennings was not going to be on the plane, he chided him by telling him he hoped the bus froze up again.

Garbedian said Jennings retorted, “I hope your plane crashes.” That remark haunted Jennings to his death in 2002, Garbedian said.

These tidbits will be in the documentary, along with previously unseen photos and stories from fans.

Garbedian said the theories surrounding the plane crash also will be included, though not prominently. One theory says Holly accidentally fired a handgun he had with him while horsing around, and the bullet hit the pilot.

While it’s true Holly had a handgun, Garbedian said it was found inside his luggage and had not been fired. Most likely, he said, the pilot was inexperienced, the weather was bad and he may have been excited to be in a plane with his famous passengers.

Holly seemed to have a premonition that his life would be cut short, Garbedian said. He proposed to his wife on their first date, and the two were married two months later. The plane crash killed Holly when he was only 22. Both he and The Big Bopper left behind pregnant wives.

The music made popular by the three at the time of their deaths was music of an innocent era, before the turbulence of the 1960s hit. Holly had hits with “That’ll be the Day,” and “Oh Boy.” The Big Bopper’s hits included “Chantilly Lace,” and Valens had the first Latin Rock hit with “La Bamba.”

Larry Bowers — who has owned the Kato Ballroom (now called the Kato Entertainment Center) for 25 years — said the Winter Dance Party was the largest concert ever held there. About 2,400 people attended.

Keith Matheson’s friend, Gary Lindmeier, was not one of those people, and he still regrets it.

“I was grounded for missing curfew a few nights earlier,” Lindmeier said.

At home during his lunch period the day the news of the crash broke, his mother told him what had happened. His last chance to see Buddy Holly in concert had passed.



Anyone with photos or

memories to share can e-mail Garbedian at sevan1@

sympatico.ca or call (514) 931-6959.