Podcasts about winter dance party

Dion Dimucci has been a Rock 'N' Roll pioneer since the late 1950's with his iconic band Dion and the Belmonts. They scored hit after hit including The Wanderer, Runaround Sue, A Teenager in Love and Abraham, Martin and John making them Rock 'N' Roll royalty. Dion co-wrote a stunningly gorgeous coffee table sized book with his pal Adam Jablin called Dion The Rock 'N' Roll Philosopher: Conversations on Life, Recovery, Faith and Music. There are one-of-a-kind photos in the book with music legends Pail Simon, Eric Clapton, Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen, Clive Davis, Lou Reed and more. We discuss: 1. How did you come up with the name Dion and the Belmonts? 2. How was it like growing up in Da Bronx being part of the gang the Fordham baldies? Thanks to you guys I have this beautiful coffee table sized book beautifying…my coffee table. Adam 3. How did Dion and Adam get hooked up with each other & what inspired the co-creation of this book? 4. What Dion feels are the reasons for his early success. 5. What gave him the self-confidence that he was a great singer & the ability to sing to millions of people? 6. As with many Rock Legends, Dion seemingly had it all from an outsider's perspective. The hit songs, the fame, the adulation, screaming girls, the power & money…did he feel he had it all and why does he think he turned to a debilitating addiction and what helped him to overcome it? 7. Paul Simon in the books Forward said they don't see each other often but their phone conversations can go on for an hour & usually drift into the spiritual. What does he mean by that? 8. Was there an Aha moment where all of a sudden he found God? How did his spirituality emerge and sustain over all these years? 9. Eric Clapton in the book's prologue says Dion has an essential ingredient: SOUL…buckets of it. How did this soul start & evolve? 10. In 2020 hindsight, what would Dion change if he had to do it all over again? 10. When did Dion first start wearing the berets he is iconically known for and why do you like that signature look? 11.On Feb. 2, 1959 at the Winter Dance Party, there were 4 groups on the bill. Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Big Bopper, Richie Valens & Dion & The Belmonts. The plane didn't make it home and some like Don Maclean called it "The Day the Music Died." What did those guys mean to Dion and why wasn't he on that fatal plane?

The plane crash and its aftermath. Go to the Rock and/or Roll feed to follow the entire tour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Armory. Moorhead, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Surf Ballroom. Clear Lake, Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Riverside Ballroom. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duluth Armory. Duluth, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laramar Ballroom. Fort Dodge, Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Capitol Theater. Davenport, Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Promenade Ballroom. St. Paul, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fiesta Ballroom. Montevideo, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fournier's Ballroom. Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Kato Ballroom. Mankato, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eagles Ballroom. Kenosha, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Devine's Miracle Ballroom. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The late Buddy Holly's glasses had been missing for more than 20 years when Iowa Sheriff Jerry Allen came upon them in a misfiled envelope. As a part of this episode, I spoke with Sheriff Allen's daughter Jennifer about that discovery and its aftermath. This episode serves as a prelude to what comes next: beginning on Thursday, January 23, we're going to go on that fateful tour with Buddy Holly and the others, with an episode per day from January 23rd to February 3rd, one for each show, as we follow those young pioneers of rock and roll on their ill-fated journey, a terribly planned criss-crossing tour of the Midwest: The Tour From Hell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The late Buddy Holly's glasses had been missing for more than 20 years when Iowa Sheriff Jerry Allen came upon them in a misfiled envelope. As a part of this episode, I spoke with Sheriff Allen's daughter Jennifer about that discovery and its aftermath. This episode serves as a prelude to what comes next: beginning on Thursday, January 23, we're going to go on that fateful tour with Buddy Holly and the others, with an episode per day from January 23rd to February 3rd, one for each show, as we follow those young pioneers of rock and roll on their ill-fated journey, a terribly planned criss-crossing tour of the Midwest: The Tour From Hell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Craig Pittman has a wish list of gifts he hopes Santa brings Florida's environment.Our guest this episode is poet, essayist, and professor of English at Florida State University David Kirby. His latest anthology of poems is titled "The Winter Dance Party."  In the episode, Craig quoted an Elizabeth Bishop poem you can read here.Thank you to all of our patrons at Patreon.com/WelcomeToFlorida. For $5 a month "Welcome to Florida" patrons receive exclusive access to bonus episodes, including our recent "Florida Holiday Traditions" episode, and Chadd Scott's weekly Florida conservation newsletter.

Send us a textI have decided to write a BOOK! Get all the details in this podcast from why and when! Hear the book summary and a recent zoom call with Coach RB aka "The Music Man" Randy Brown on our trip to Lubbock, Texas & Clovis, New Mexico to visit the sites and sounds of Buddy Holly & The Crickets.Links Listen to the Feb. 2023 Show-The Last Dance: https://www.beforethelightspod.com/beforethelights-episodes/um3qklge6olw99o34o1q8efpeydto2Watch the Book Summary:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jPw9WKWPUQWE00T9KXz2wSS5kHYf8omz/view?usp=sharing Visit Friends of Norman Petty Website: https://friendsofnormanpetty.com/Read My Blog "Reminiscing" https://friendsofnormanpetty.com/reminiscingBefore the Lights Links:Get Tommy a Glass of Vino: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/beforethelightsRATE & REVIEW THE SHOW! 5 STAR & NICE COMMENTS PLEASE!Before the Lights Website: https://www.beforethelightspod.com/Support the showFollow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforethelightspodcast/Follow the show on Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/beforethelightspodcast/Follow the show on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beforethelightspodcast?lang=enFollow Tommy on Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/tcanale3Rate & Review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-the-lights/id1501245041Email the host: beforethelightspod@gmail.com

Wegen einer tragischen Entscheidung kamen die berühmten Rock'n'Roll-Stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens und The Big Bopper während ihrer Tournee "Winter Dance Party 1959" ums Leben.

Où il est entre autre question de : [00:00:00] plancha burger et poker [00:24:02] la farandole des cons, et redevenir humain [00:51:55] Manor Lords [01:18:27] Comics et marchands de journaux [01:51:42] Fallout (série) [02:08:42] Eiyûden Chronicle : Hundred Heroes [02:30:20] Remerciements La page Patreon du Cosy Corner : https://www.patreon.com/lecosycorner -- Playlist -- - My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow - Placebo - Burger Queen - Pavement - Cut Your Hair - Eric Levi, Guy Protheroe - Enae Volare Mezzo (Les visiteurs II OST) - Alaska in Winter - Dance Party in the Balkans - The Ink Spots - I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire - ALB - Thankin' la Vida Loca (Cosy Corner 141 Special Thanks)

An electric school bus story, eat your brussel sprouts, Pete Stauber will run for re-election, Matt from Duluth Stove & Fireplace, more winter dance party music, Senator Ron Johnson, more Winter Dance Party celebration, and more border discussion...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are all kinds of lifers. There's the lifer that starts a band and then spends their life playing in that band. And that's great. Then there's the lifer that starts a band, watches that band fall apart, returns to the hometown scene that made him (in this case the wonderful and influential town of Champaign, Illinois), and then dedicates his life to giving back and cultivating the community around him. And in the process finds a life far richer and rewarding than he could've imagined — while simultaneously honoring the very ethos that made him start a band in the first place. Might as well stop being coy about this — we're talking about our ol' buddy Joel Spencer of the criminally (CRIMINALLY!) overlooked band Menthol. And his story has got us a bit sentimental and misty eyed over here. Sorry. On this episode we talk to Joel about reuniting a summer version of Menthol, the ‘90s Chicago music scene, the ‘90s Champaign music scene, Honcho Overload, Smoking Popes, Triplefastaction, Capitol Records, lasers shooting out of Louise Post's mouth, two versions of DANGER: ROCK SCIENCE, that infamous practice space on Broadway, the Winter Dance Party, and the indestructibility of Herb Rosen. This is a good one. We're glad we know you, Joel Spencer!

On February 1st, 1959, Have Gun Will Travel broadcast an episode called “A Matter of Ethics.” The program's opening was a four-note motif composed and conducted by Bernard Herrmann. The show's closing song, "The Ballad of Paladin", was written by Johnny Western, Dick Boone, and program creator Sam Rolfe. Western played the song for the TV show. Paladin studied at West Point and emerged from the Civil War a mercenary with morals. His card had a simple message. It said: Have Gun, Will Travel/Wire Paladin/San Francisco. The only symbol on the card was a white chess knight—a Paladin. John Dehner approached the radio role as if Boone had never existed. He didn't imitate. The first set of scripts were all adapted from the second season of the TV show. The writers were paid no residuals. Norman Macdonell used the same Hollywood regulars he used for Gunsmoke. Jack Kruschen was often one of them. Perhaps you'd have listened to this episode in Clear Lake, Iowa with anticipation for the next evening's Winter Dance Party. If you'd gone, you'd have been witness to the last concert ever by Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. The morning hours of February 3rd, 1959 have since become known as “The Day The Music Died.” It's one of the most infamous moments in Rock-N-Roll history.

Welcome to February 3rd, 2023 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate healthy cake and saying good-bye with American Pie.  Carrot cake is one of those foods that seems odd on paper. Why on earth make a dessert out of something otherwise seen as healthy? Well, for starters, carrots actually have a pretty high sugar content for a vegetable. In Medieval Europe and the Middle East, sweets were not readily available. Sugar was not the everyday item that we have today, so people needed to get creative. They would boil the carrots, mash them up, add flour and butter, then serve the dish as a pudding or dessert. Eventually, that evolved into a cake. On National Carrot Cake Day, celebrate the chance to have your cake and eat your vegetables too. American Pie written by Don McLean memorializes the plane crash that claimed the lives of three of music's brightest young stars. In 1959, the Winter Dance Party tour was traveling across the Midwest, with Buddy Holly as one of the headliners. After several shows, he had grown tired of the long, cold drives via tour bus and chartered a plane for the next leg of the trip. Holly intended to travel with his 2 bandmates, Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. But neither went with him that fateful night. Instead Buddy Holly and Richie Valens joined Holly, and the news was immortalized in the lyrics “the day the music died.” The song topped the charts around the globe in 1972, which was unusual for a song that lasted almost 9 minutes. It held the record of longest songs to top the chart for more than 50 years. Have a listen and remember why we still call today National Day The Music Died Day.   I'm Anna Devere and I'm Marlo Anderson. Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Brian D. O'Leary Show February 3, 2023   Today's show brought to you by O'Leary Beef and Southside Market & Barbecue. Set up your “Big Game” party with pit-roasted meats from Texas delivered to your front door.   Fountain.FM Listen and support us at the same time over at Fountain.FM   A tragic day, but “the Music” continued The legendary rock ‘n' roller Buddy Holly headlined a package show in early 1959, known as the Winter Dance Party. The itinerary was bananas. It covered twenty-four Midwestern cities in twenty-four days—there were no off days. The tour schedule crisscrossed the upper Midwest with no apparent logic. Overnight jaunts of several hundred miles—all in sub-freezing temperatures—were commonplace. Holly historian Bill Griggs had this to say about General Artists Corporation (GAC)—the operation which booked the tour: "They didn't care. It was like they threw darts at a map… The tour from hell—that's what they named it—and it's not a bad name." On February 2nd, the show in Clear Lake, Iowa ended, and the tour headed about 400 miles northwest from Clear Lake to Morehead, Minnesota. Holly famously chartered a plane for his band prior to the show. Buddy was concerned with getting some rest and making a head start to take care of some much-needed laundry for him and his tour mates. Ultimately, only the headliners of the show took the charter. Waylon Jennings, then playing bass guitar in Holly's band, said he felt more comfortable riding on the tour bus and voluntarily gave up his seat to J.P. Richardson, the Beaumont, Texas disc jockey and tour co-headliner, known as The Big Bopper. Richardson felt ill and needed rest. The Winter Dance Party consisted of several contemporary and would-be stars. Yet the party ended on February 3, 1959, for the 22-year-old Holly and 28-year-old Big Bopper when the plane went down in a blizzard shortly after takeoff, five miles northwest of Mason City, Iowa. Also perishing in the infamous crash was 17-year-old Ritchie Valens of “La Bamba” fame. Yet the tour played on. Sadly, in retrospect. Future chart-topper Bobby Vee, then but 15-years-old, had Buddy Holly's material down cold. So, the Minnesota child filled in—in place of Holly—on February 3 in Morehead. Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Avalon, and Fabian ultimately finished the tour in the place of the deceased stars. Waylon couldn't get to Holly's funeral. GAC wouldn't let him leave the tour. To add insult to injury, venue managers regularly threatened non-payment for shows because the original headliners didn't appear. It didn't matter that they had perished in a tragedy. After the crash, Jennings continued for two more weeks on the tour with doo-wop stars Dion and the Belmonts amongst others. Lead singer Dion DiMucci is the last original headliner still alive today and is in his early 80s. Jennings returned to Lubbock, Texas after the tour ended. Holly's father looked after young Waylon. In Waylon: An Autobiography, Jennings wrote: “Mr. Holley wanted to promote me, because he said Buddy believed in me, but I had enough sense to know that wouldn't be right. He bought me clothes and things like Buddy would.” Waylon returned to the job that got him noticed by Buddy Holly in the first place, as a radio disc jockey. He bounced around west Texas and Arizona as a DJ for the better part of a decade before he reappeared in the public consciousness as a musician once again in the late 1960s. So, contrary to the schmaltz unleashed by Don McLean in 1971, “music" did not die that day. It is more than unsettling that American Pie, McLean's terrible—and entirely too long of a—song, is what the hacky news sites reference on a day like this, the anniversary of the plane crash. But never fear, it happens every February 3rd. Diving into the McLean biography is more than a little unsettling as well. To wit: after his second divorce (from his wife of nearly 30 years) with accusations of abuse hanging over him, the now 77-year-old McLean took up with a “model and reality star” 48 years his junior. McLean still lives off the reputation of that crappy half-century-plus old song. Unfortunately, in my early twenties, I purchased some McLean music, but it was because it was a double-album of McLean's and Jim Croce's music. Croce was good, if not great. He also died in a tragic airplane crash. We wrote about Croce a while ago. https://briandoleary.substack.com/p/if-i-could-save-time-in-a-bottle Anyway, this is all a long way of saying, rock out to some Buddy Holly today, or sing along with “La Bamba,” or get a little “Chantilly Lace” pumping through the airwaves. Perhaps go with a doo-wop session of Dion and the Belmonts. “The Wanderer” by Dion when he went solo is also a great tune. There is never a bad day to play Waylon Jennings music or play it loud. I already listened to the horrible American Pie today. I can confirm that it is as bad as I remember and I feel like less of a man for not trusting my memory.   Links: Winter Dance Party Tour Schedule, 1959 Buddy Holly The Big Bopper Ritchie Valens Waylon Jennings Dion DiMucci Don McLean, 76, steps out with his model girlfriend Paris Dylan, 28, ahead of his performance at Manchester Bridgewater Hall Why the Beatles owe their success to the Comanche Indians   For your premium meats: O'Leary Beef   For all the rest of it, go to BrianDOLeary.com for more information.

The night American Youth was devastated when the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, JP Richardson (Big Bopper) were taken after an early morning plane crash on February 3, 1959 outside of Clear Lake, Iowa after they performed at the iconic Surf Ballroom.  This show will give you a look into:Surf Ballroom1959 Winter Dance Party schedule and conditionsTheir performance at Surf BallroomAll the details about who was on plane and how they were chosen.The Crash-What could have happened, and much more!Who were-Pilot Roger Peterson, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, & Buddy Holly. The conspiracies & the 2015 reexamination.SPECIAL THANK YOU to the following for making this show possible:Silhouette Music: The Day the Music Died LPDel Fi-Ritchie Valens Live at Pacoima Jr. HS with Bob KeaneRed Robinson for his interviews from The Day the Music Died and his podcast-LegendsABC NewsLondon Live at 5 in the UKLinks:Surf Ballroom: https://www.surfballroom.com/Buddy Holly Crash Site: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/12159 Photos:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Tdeb2VF7_raE8AtY-zgfIWT1oGX0MPSd?usp=sharingBefore the Lights:Become a BTL Member: https://www.beforethelightspod.com/supportTHE LIGHT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_cBUd3MLwoejlVpn5Vt9JAHire Tommy to Speak: https://www.beforethelightspod.com/public-speakingjeBuy Tommy a glass of vino here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/beforethelightsSupport the showFollow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforethelightspodcast/Follow the show on Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/beforethelightspodcast/Follow the show on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beforethelightspodcast?lang=enFollow Tommy on Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/tcanale3Rate & Review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-the-lights/id1501245041Email the host: beforethelightspod@gmail.com

Born in Lubbock, Texas, on September 7, 1936, Charles Hardin  Holley (he later dropped the "e"), after both grandfathers    the fourth child of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley and Ella Pauline Drake.    older siblings were Larry, Travis, and Patricia Lou.    nicknamed Buddy from a young age, and it stuck with him throughout his life.    Oddly enough, the newspaper announcement claimed that Buddy was actually a little girl. “A daughter weighing 8.5 lbs”, the Lubbock evening journal wrote. He was also only 6.5 pounds. And a boy. Buddy's family was mainly of English and Welsh descent and had some native American ancestry. During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residences within Lubbock; 17 in all.    His father changed jobs several times.    The Holley family were a musical household.  Except for Buddy's father, all family members could play an instrument or sing. His older brothers frequently entered local talent shows, and one time, his brothers signed up and Buddy wanted to play violin with them. However, Buddy couldn't play the violin.  Not wanting to break little Buddy's heart, his older brothers greased up the strings so it wouldn't make a sound. Buddy started singing his heart out and the three ended up winning the contest!  When WWII started, the U.S. government called his brothers into service. His brother Larry brought back a guitar he bought from a shipmate, and that guitar set Buddy's off. At 11 years old, Buddy started taking piano lessons.  Nine months later, he quit piano lessons and switched to guitar after seeing a classmate playing and singing on the school bus.    His parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but Buddy insisted he wanted a guitar like his brothers. They bought him a guitar, a gold top Gibson acoustic, from a pawn shop, and his brother Travis taught him to play it.  By 15, Buddy was proficient on guitar, banjo, and mandolin. During his early childhood, Holley was influenced by Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family.  He started writing songs and working with his childhood friend Bob Montgomery. The two jammed together, practicing songs by the Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They frequently listened to Grand Ole Opry's radio programs on WSM, Louisiana Hayride on KWKH (which they once drove 600 miles to okay just to be turned away), and Big D Jamboree.  If you're not familiar with the Grand Ol Opry, it's a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on Clearchannel's WSM, which first hit the airwaves on October 5, 1925. Its the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history.    At the same time he was practicing with Bob, Holley played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison.    In 1952 Holley and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show.    After Neal left, he was replaced by his buddy Bob, and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob." By the mid-'50s, Buddy & Bob played their style of music called "western and bop ."    Holley was influenced by late-night radio stations that played the blues and rhythm and blues. Holley would sit in his car with Sonny Curtis and tune to distant “black” radio stations that could only be received at night when bigger stations turned off local transmissions.    Holley then changed his music by blending his earlier country and western influence with Rhythm and Blues. After seeing the legendary Elvis perform, Holly decided to pursue his career in music full-time once he graduated high school. By mid-1955, Buddy & Bob, who already worked with an upright bass player (played by Larry Welborn), added drummer Jerry Allison to their lineup. After seeing Elvis Presley performing live in Lubbock, who Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV booked, Buddy really wanted to get after it. In February, he opened for Elvis at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, then again in June at the Coliseum. Elvis significantly influenced the group to turn more towards Rock n Roll. Buddy and the king became friends, with Buddy even driving Elvis around when he was in town. Eventually, Bob Montgomery, who leaned toward a traditional country sound, left the group, though they continued writing and composing songs together. Holly kept pushing his music toward a straight-ahead rock & roll sound, working with Allison, Welborn, and other local musicians, including his pal and guitarist Sonny Curtis and bassist Don Guess. In October, Holly was booked as the opener for Bill Haley & His Comets (Rock Around the Clock), to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Obviously impressed, Eddie Crandall talked Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny into finding a recording contract for Holley. Pappy Stone sent Denny a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen. Cohen signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956.    In the contract, Decca accidentally misspelled Holley's surname as "Holly," From that point forward, he was known as "Buddy Holly." On January 26, 1956, Holly went to his first professional recording session with producer Owen Bradley. He was a part of two more sessions in Nashville.    the producer selected the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single and "Love Me" on the B-side.    "B-sides" were secondary songs that were sent out with single records. They were usually just added to have something on the flip side. Later they became songs that bands would either not release or wait to release.  Jim Denny added Holly on tour as the opening act for Faron Young. While on this tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones." Decca then called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes." The label released Holly's second single, "Modern Don Juan," along with "You Are My One Desire."    Unfortunately, neither one of these singles tickled anyone's fancy. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly that they wouldn't re-sign him and insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years. The same shit happened to Universal and me. A couple of classics, like "Midnight Shift" and "Rock Around with Ollie Vee," did come out of those Decca sessions, but nothing issued at the time went anywhere. It looked as though Holly had missed his shot at stardom.  Holly was disappointed with his time with Decca. inspired by Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You" he decided to visit Norman Petty, who produced and promoted both of those successful records.    Buddy, Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan pulled together and headed to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of the now-classic, "That'll Be the Day," which they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now rockin' that lead guitar, Holly finally achieved the sound he wanted. They got the song nailed down and recorded. Along with Petty's help, the group got it picked up by Murray Deutsch, a publishing associate of Petty's, and Murray got it to Bob Thiele, an executive at Coral Records. Thiele loved it. Ironically, Coral Records was a subsidiary of Decca, the company Holly had signed with before. On a side note, a subsidiary is a smaller label under the major label's umbrella. For instance, Universal signed my band to Republic, a subsidiary of Universal Music that dealt primarily with rock genres, like Godsmack. Norman Petty saw the potential in Buddy and became his manager. He sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Thiele saw the record as a potential hit, but there were some significant hurdles to overcome before it could be released.  According to author Philip Norman, in his book Rave On, Thiele would only get the most reluctant support from his record company. Decca had lucked out in 1954 when they'd signed Bill Haley & His Comets and saw their "Rock Around the Clock" top the charts. Still, very few of those in charge at Decca had a natural feel or appreciation for Rock & Roll, let alone any idea of where it might be heading or whether the label could (or should) follow it down that road. Also, remember that although Buddy had been dropped by Decca the year before, the contract that Holly signed explicitly forbade him from re-recording anything he had recorded for them, released or not, for five years. However, Coral was a subsidiary of Decca, and Decca's Nashville office could hold up the release and possibly even haul Holly into court.  "That'll Be the Day" was issued in May of 1957 mainly as an indulgence to Thiele, to "humor" him. The record was put out on the Brunswick label, more of jazz and R&B label, and credited to the Crickets. The group chose this name to prevent the suits at Decca -- and more importantly, Decca's Nashville office -- from finding out that this new release was from the guy they had just dropped. The name “The Crickets” was inspired by a band that Buddy and his group followed, called “the Spiders” and they initially thought about calling themselves “The Beetles”, with two E's, but Buddy said he was afraid people would want to “squash them.” So, they picked “The Crickets.” Petty also became the group's manager and producer, signing the Crickets, identified as Allison, Sullivan, and Mauldin, to a contract. Unfortunately, Holly wasn't listed as a member in the original document to keep his involvement with "That'll Be the Day" a secret. This ruse would later become the source of severe legal and financial problems for Buddy.    The song shot to #1 on the national charts that summer. But, of course, Decca knew Holly was in the band by then. So, with Thiele's persuasion and realizing they had a hit on their hands, the company agreed to release Holly from the five-year restriction on his old contract. This release left him free to sign any recording contract he wanted. While sorting out the ins and outs of Holly's legal situation, Thiele knew that Buddy was far more than a one-hit-wonder and that he could potentially write more and different types of hits. So, Holly found himself with two recording contracts, one with Brunswick as a member of the Crickets and the other with Coral Records as Buddy Holly, all thanks to Thiele's ingenious strategy to get the most out of Buddy and his abilities. By releasing two separate bodies of work, the Crickets could keep rockin' while allowing its apparent leader and "star" to break out on his own.    Petty, whose name seems fitting as we go through this, acted as their manager and producer. He handed out writing credits at random, gifting Niki Sullivan and Joe B. Mauldin (and himself) the co-authorship of the song, "I'm Gonna Love You Too," while leaving Holly's name off of "Peggy Sue." at first. The song title, “Peggy Sue” was named after Buddy's biggest fan. Petty usually added his own name to the credit line, something the managers and producers who wanted a more significant piece of the pie did back in the '50s. To be somewhat fair, Petty made some suggestions, which were vital in shaping certain Holly songs. However, he didn't contribute as much as all of his credits allow us to believe. Some confusion over songwriting was exacerbated by problems stemming from Holly's contracts in 1956. Petty had his own publishing company, Nor Va Jak Music, and Buddy signed a contract to publish his new songs. However, Holly had signed an exclusive agreement with another company the year before. To reduce his profile as a songwriter until a settlement could be made with Petty and convince the other publisher that they weren't losing too much in any compensation, buddy copyrighted many of his new songs under the pseudonym "Charles Hardin." So many names!   The dual recording contracts allowed Holly to record a crazy amount of songs during his short-lived 18 months of fame. Meanwhile, his band -- billed as Buddy Holly & the Crickets -- became one of the top attractions of the time. Holly was the frontman, singing lead and playing lead guitar, which was unusual for the era, and writing or co-writing many of their songs. But the Crickets were also a great band, creating a big and exciting sound (which is lost to history, aside from some live recordings from their 1958 British tour). Allison was a drummer ahead of his time and contributed to the songwriting more often than his colleagues, and Joe B. Mauldin and Niki Sullivan provided a solid rhythm section.   The group relied on originals for their singles, making them unique and years ahead of their time. In 1957-1958, songwriting wasn't considered a skill essential to a career in rock & Roll; the music business was still limping along the lines it had followed since the '20s. Songwriting was a specialized profession set on the publishing side of the industry and not connected to performing and recording. A performer might write a song or, even more rarely, like Duke Ellington (It Don't Mean A Thing), count composition among his key talents; however, this was generally left to the experts. Any rock & roller wanting to write songs would also have to get past the image of Elvis. He was set to become a millionaire at the young age of 22. He never wrote his songs, and the few songwriting credits he had resulted from business arrangements rather than writing anything.   Buddy Holly & the Crickets changed that seriously by hitting number one with a song they'd written and then reaching the Top Ten with originals like "Oh, Boy" and "Peggy Sue," They were regularly charging up the charts based on their songwriting. This ability wasn't appreciated by the public at the time and wouldn't be noticed widely until the '70s. Still, thousands of aspiring musicians, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, from some unknown band called "The Beatles," took note of their success, and some of them decided to try and tried to be like Buddy. Also unknown at the time, Holly and his crew changed the primary industry method of recording, which was to bring the artist into the label's studio, working on their timetable. If an artist were highly successful, they got a blank check in the studio, and any union rules were thrown out, but that was rare and only happened to the highest bar of musicians. Buddy Holly & the Crickets, however, did their thing, starting with "That'll Be the Day," in Clovis, New Mexico, at Petty's studio. They took their time and experimented until they got the sound they were looking for. No union told them when to stop or start their work, and they delivered terrific records; not to mention, they were albums that sounded different than anything out there. The results changed the history of rock music. The group worked out a new sound that gave shape to the next wave of rock & Roll. Most definitely influenced was British rock & Roll and the British Invasion beat, with the lead and rhythm guitars working together to create a fuller, more complex sound. On songs such as "Not Fade Away," "Everyday," "Listen to Me," "Oh Boy!," "Peggy Sue," "Maybe Baby," "Rave On," "Heartbeat," and "It's So Easy," Holly took rock & roll's range and sophistication and pushed it without abandoning its excitement and, most importantly, it's fun. Holly and the band weren't afraid to push the envelope and try new things, even on their singles. "Peggy Sue" used changes in volume and timbre on the guitar that was usually only used in instrumental albums. "Words of Love" was one of the earliest examples of double-tracked vocals in rock & Roll, and the Beatles would jump on that train the following decade. Buddy Holly & the Crickets were extremely popular in America. Still, in England, they were even more significant; their impact was compared to Elvis and, in some ways, was even bigger. This success was because they toured England; Elvis didn't. They spent a month there in 1958, playing a list of shows that were still talked about 30 years later. It also had to do with their sound and Holly's persona on stage. The group's heavy use of rhythm guitar fit right in with the sound of skiffle music, a mix of blues, folk, country, and jazz elements that most of the younger British were introduced to playing music and their first taste of rock & Roll. Also, Holly looked a lot less likely a rock & roll star than Elvis. He was tall, skinny, and wore glasses; he looked like an ordinary dude who was good at music. Part of Buddy's appeal as a rock star was how he didn't look like one. He inspired tens of thousands of British teenagers who couldn't compare themselves to Elvis or Gene Vincent. (Be Bop A Lula) In the '50s, British guitarist Hank Marvin of the Shadows owed his look and that he wore his glasses proudly on-stage to Holly, and it was brought into the '70s by Elvis Costello.  Buddy may have played several different kinds of guitars but, he was specifically responsible for popularizing the Fender Stratocaster, especially in England. For many wannabe rock & rollers in the UK, Holly's 1958 tour was the first chance they'd had to see or hear this iconic guitar in action, and it quickly became the guitar of choice for anyone wanting to be a guitarist in England. In fact, Marvin is said to have had the first Stratocaster ever brought into England.   The Crickets became a trio with Sullivan dipping out in late 1957, right after the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but a lot more would transpire over the next year or so. The group consolidated its success with the release of two L.P.s, The Chirping Crickets, and Buddy Holly. They had two successful international tours and performed more in the United States. Holly had also started to have different ideas and aspirations than Allison and Mauldin. They never thought of leaving Texas as their home, and they continued to base their lives there, while Buddy wanted to be in New York, not just to do business but to live. His marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist in Murray Deutsch's office, made the decision to move to New York that much easier. By this time, Holly's music had become more sophisticated and complex, and he passed off the lead guitar duties in the studio to session player Tommy Alsup. He had done several recordings in New York using session musicians such as King Curtis. It was around this time that the band started to see a slight decline in sales. Singles such as "Heartbeat" didn't sell nearly as well as the 45s of 1957 that had rolled out of stores. It's said that Buddy might even have advanced further than most of the band's audience was willing to accept in late 1958. Critics believe that the song "Well...All Right" was years ahead of its time.   Buddy split with the group -- and Petty -- in 1958. This departure left him free to chase some of those newer sounds, which also left him low on funds. In the course of the split, it became clear to Holly and everyone else that Petty had been fudging the numbers and probably taken a lot of the group's income for himself. Unfortunately, there was almost no way of proving his theft because he never seemed to finish his "accounting" of the money owed to anyone. His books were ultimately found to be so screwed up that when he came up with various low five-figure settlements to the folks he robbed, they took it.   Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock, TX, and hung out in Waylin Jennings's radio station in December 1958. With no money coming in from Petty, Holly decided to earn some quick cash by signing to play the Midwest's Winter Dance Party package tour. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (on bass), Tommy Allsup (on guitar), and Carl Bunch (on drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days before a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, the folks who organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to meet up with the rest of the band. The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created problems because whoever booked the tour dates didn't consider the distance between venues. On top of the scheduling conflicts, the unheated tour buses broke down twice in the freezing weather. In addition, Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes while aboard the bus, so Buddy looked for different transportation.  Buddy actually sat in on drums for the local bands while Richie Valenz played drums for Buddy.    On February 2, before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane for Jennings, Allsup, and himself, from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa, for $108.  Holly wanted to leave after the performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, through Fargo, North Dakota. This plan would allow them time to rest, wash their clothes and avoid being on that crappy bus. The Clear Lake Show ended just before midnight, and Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Richie Valens. Valens called heads, and when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life" On a side note, Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas called Heads Up, in memory of this statement. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper), who had the flu and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his stature. When Buddy heard Waylon wouldn't be flying with him, he jokingly said, “I hope your old bus freezes up!” Then Waylon responded, “well, I hope your old plane crashes!” The last thing he would ever say to his friend. Roger Peterson, the pilot and only 21, took off in pretty nasty weather, although he wasn't certified to fly by instruments alone, failing an instrument test the year before. He was a big fan of Buddy's and didn't want to disappoint, so he called a more seasoned pilot to fly the trio to their destination. “I'm more of a Lawrence Welk fan.”  Sadly, shortly after 12:55 am on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when the plane crashed into a frozen cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City, Iowa, airport shortly after takeoff. Buddy was in the front, next to the pilot. He loved flying and had been taking flying lessons. The three musicians were ejected from the plane upon impact, suffering severe head and chest injuries. Holly was 22 years old.   Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, TX. It was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who married the Hollys' just months earlier. Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis were pallbearers. Some sources say that Phil Everly, the one half of The Everly Brothers, was also the pallbearer, but he said at one time that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. In addition, Waylon Jennings was unable to participate because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was buried in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the city's eastern part. His headstone has the correct spelling of his last name (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. His wife, María Elena, had to see the first reports of her husband's death on T.V. She claimed she suffered a miscarriage the following day. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, the authorities implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until the families were informed. As a result, Mary did not attend the funeral and has never visited the gravesite. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."    The accident wasn't considered a significant piece of news at the time, although sad. Most news outlets were run by out-of-touch older men and didn't think rock & Roll was anything more than to be exploited to sell newspapers or grab viewing audiences. However, Holly was clean-cut and scandal-free, and with the news of his recent marriage, the story contained more misery than other music stars of the period. For the teens of the time, it was their first glimpse of a public tragedy like this, and the news was heartbreaking. Radio station D.J.s were also traumatized. The accident and sudden way it happened, along with Holly and Valens being just 22 and 17, made it even worse. Hank Williams Sr had died at 29, but he was a drug user and heavy drinker, causing some to believe his young death was inevitable. The blues guitarist Johnny Ace had passed in 1954 while backstage at a show. However, that tragedy came at his hand in a game of Russian roulette. Holly's death was different, almost more personal to the public.     Buddy left behind dozens of unfinished recordings — solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, and tapes with songs intended for other musicians. Buddy recorded his last six original songs in his apartment in late 1958 and were his most recent recordings. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of the songs with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and hired guns to emulate the Crickets sound. Since his death, the finished tracks became the first singles, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping." The new release was a success, and the fans and industry wanted more. As a result, all six songs were included in The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 in 1960 using the other Holly demos and the same studio personnel. The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so many tracks that his record label could release new Holly albums and singles for the next ten years. Norman Petty, the alleged swindler, produced most of these new songs, using unreleased studio masters, alternative takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (a few from 1954 with recorded with low-quality vocals). The final Buddy Holly album, "Giant," was released in 1969 with the single, "Love Is Strange," taking the lead.   These posthumous records did well in the U.S. but actually charted in England. New recordings of his music, like the Rolling Stones' rendition of "Not Fade Away" and the Beatles' rendition of "Words of Love," kept Buddy's name and music in the hearts and ears of a new generation of listeners. In the States, the struggle was a little more challenging. The rock & roll wave was constantly morphing, with new sounds, bands, and listeners continuously emerging, and the general public gradually forgot about Buddy and his short-lived legacy. Holly was a largely forgotten figure in his own country by the end of the '60s, except among older fans (then in their twenties) and hardcore oldies listeners. Things began to shift toward the end of the '60s with the start of the oldies boom. Holly's music was, of course, a part of this movement. But, as people listened, they also learned about the man behind the music. Even the highly respected rock zine Rolling Stone went out of its way to remind people who Buddy was. His posing images from 1957 and 1958, wearing his glasses, a jacket, and smiling, looked like a figure from another age. The way he died also set him apart from some of the deaths of rockers like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, musicians who, at the time, overindulged in the rock in roll lifestyle. Holly was different. He was eternally innocent in all aspects of his life. Don McLean, a relatively unknown singer/songwriter, who proudly considered himself a Buddy Holly fan, wrote and released a song called "American Pie," in 1971, catapulting him into the musical ethos. Although listeners assumed McLean wrote the song about President Kennedy, he let it be known publicly that he meant February 3, 1959, the day Holly died. Maclean was a holly fan and his death devastated him when he was only 11. The song's popularity led to Holly suddenly getting more press exposure than he'd ever had the chance to enjoy in his lifetime.     The tragic plane accident launched a few careers in the years after. Bobby Vee became a star when his band took over Holly's spot on the Winter Dance Party tour.  Holly's final single, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," hit the British charts in the wake of his death and rose to number one. Two years after the event, producer Joe Meek and singer Mike Berry got together to make "Tribute to Buddy Holly," a memorial single. But, unfortunately, rumor has it that Meek never entirely got over Holly's death, and he killed himself on the anniversary of the plane accident.   The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. Upon his induction, the Hall of Fame basked about the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career. Saying, "He made a major and lasting impact on popular music ." Calling him an "innovator" for writing his own material, experimenting with double-tracking, and using orchestration. He was also revered for having "pioneered and popularized" the use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986, saying his contributions "changed the face of Rock' n' Roll." Along with Petty, Holly developed techniques like overdubbing and reverb and other innovative instrumentation. As a result, according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.   Paul McCartney bought the rights to Buddy Holly's entire song catalog on July 1, 1976.   Lubbock TX's Walk of Fame has a statue honoring Buddy of him rocking his Fender, which Grant Speed sculpted in 1980. There are other memorials to Buddy Holly, including a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The Center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue.  There was a musical about Buddy. Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a “pioneering jukebox musical which worked his familiar hits into a narrative,” debuted in the West End in 1989. It ran until 2008, where it also appeared on Broadway, as well as in Australia and Germany, not to mention touring companies in the U.K. and U.S.   In 1994 "Buddy Holly" became a massive hit from the band Weezer, paying homage to the fallen rocker and is still played on the radio and whenever MTV decides to play videos on one of their side stations. Again, in ‘94, Holly's style also showed up in Quentin Tarantino's abstract and groundbreaking film Pulp Fiction, which featured Steve Buscemi playing a waiter impersonating Buddy.   In 1997, Buddy received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, as well. In 2010, Grant Speed's statue of Buddy and his guitar was taken down for repairs, and construction of a new Walk of Fame began. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. The same year, on why would be Buddy's 75th birthday, a star with his name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.   There were two tribute albums released in 2011: Verve Forecast's Listen to Me: Buddy Holly,  featuring Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, and Ringo Starr plus 13 other artists, and Fantasy/Concord's Rave on Buddy Holly, which had tracks from Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, the Black Keys, and Nick Lowe, among others.  Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens released his own Holly tribute album in 2009. Universal released True Love Ways, an album where original Holly recordings were overdubbed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2018, just in time for Christmas. That album debuted at number 10 on the U.K. charts. Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, to construct a new performing arts center in Lubbock, TX, dubbed the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a $153 million project in downtown Lubbock completed in 2020 located at 1300 Mac Davis Lane.   Recently, on May 5, 2019, an article on gearnews.com had a pretty cool story, if it's true.   The famous Fender Stratocaster played and owned by Buddy Holly that disappeared after his death in 1959 has been found, according to a new video documentary called "The '54".   Gill Matthews is an Australian drummer, producer, and collector of old Fender guitars. According to the documentary, he may have stumbled upon Buddy Holly's legendary guitar. The film is The '54 and tells the history of one particular 1954 Fender Stratocaster Gil purchased two decades after the plane crash that claimed Buddy's life. Experts cited in the film say there is a good chance that the guitar in Matthews' possession is indeed Buddy Holly's actual original '54 Fender Stratocaster. If this is true, it is possibly one of the most significant finds in guitar history. You can watch the video at gearnews.com and see all the evidence presented during the film.     Sources: A biography on allmusic.com written by Bruce Eder was the main source of information here with other info coming from the following Rave on: The Biography of Buddy Holly written by Phillip Norman   Buddy Holly : Rest In Peace by Don Mclean "Why Buddy Holly will never fade away" an article on The Telegraph website written by Phillip Norman   Various other articles were used and tidbits taken from wikipedia.   And Adam Moody   Consider becoming a producer of the show. www.accidentaldads.com www.iconsandoutlaws.com       

PLEASE download the episode before listening to help us achieve our sponsorship goals:)The late rock 'n' roller died 60 years ago on February 1959 in a plane crash along with The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens while on the disastrous national tour, the Winter Dance Party.But there is a legendary curse surrounding the singer hinged on some seriously spooky coincidences.Follow us on Instagram @thebeyondduo*Let us get to know you! Send us an email and let's be friends;) Also Any Feedback or Episode Requests- thebeyondduopodcast@gmail.com**Two New Episodes released weekly**True Crime Tuesdays & Freaky Fridays 

"A long, long time ago, I can still remember..." February 3rd, 1959. Three of the brightest stars in the rock 'n roll galaxy - Buddy Holly, the bespectacled frontman of the Crickets; Ritchie Valens, the first crossover Latino artist in rock; and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson, a famous DJ making waves with his first hit records - boarded a small plane after the eleventh show on the Winter Dance Party tour to skip an arduous 400 mile journey between performance stops and escape the bitter Midwestern winter cold.They would not reach their destination.The day of the plane crash that killed some of rock's most promising players would come to be known as "The Day the Music Died", and would change music history for all time. This episode we dive into the careers of Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper, what got them on that airplane that fateful winter night, and the horrifying crash that snuffed out their lives forever...but would prove unable to eliminate their legacy, one that can be felt even today.Thanks to the fabulous STATIC ERA RECORDS for sponsoring this episode - find them at www.staticerarecords.com!________________________________________Connect with us on social media:Facebook: www.facebook.com/aintitscaryTwitter: @aintitscaryInstagram: @aintitscaryPatreon: www.patreon.com/aintitscary___________________________________________Thank you to our sponsors:BetterHelp - Special offer for Ain't it Scary? listeners: Get 10% off your first month at www.betterhelp.com/aintitscaryAudible - Get a FREE audiobook and 30-Day Free Trial at www.audibletrial.com/aintitscaryBarkBox - Enjoy a FREE month of BarkBox on us when you sign up for a 6 or 12-month BarkBox subscription! Visit www.barkbox.com/aintitscary for more detailsHunt a Killer - Receive 20% off your first Hunt a Killer subscription box at www.huntakiller.com with the code SCARYSQUAD at checkout!

Welcome to February 3rd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate vegetables for dessert and an odd twist of fate.  Carrot cake is one of those foods that seems odd on paper. Why on earth make a dessert out of something otherwise seen as healthy? Well, for starters, carrots actually have a pretty high sugar content for a vegetable. In Medieval Europe and the Middle East, sweets were not readily available. Sugar was not the everyday item that we have today, so people needed to get creative. They'd boil the carrots, mash them up, add flour and butter, then serve the dish as a pudding. Eventually, that evolved into a cake. On National Carrot Cake Day, celebrate the chance to eat your vegetables and get dessert at the same time.  On this day 63 years ago, a plane crash claimed 3 of music's brightest young stars. The Winter Dance Party tour was traveling across the Midwest, with Buddy Holly as one of the headliners. After several shows, he had grown tired of the long, cold drives via tour bus and chartered a plane for the next leg of the trip. Holly intended to travel with his 2 bandmates, Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. But neither traveled with him that fateful night. Before they parted ways, Holly teased Jennings and told him, “I hope your bus freezes up again.” Jennings replied, “Well, I hope your plane crashes.” Waylon Jennings was haunted by this comment for years. On National Day The Music Died Day, we celebrate Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper and those who dance with us through this thing called life.   I'm Anna Devere and I'm Marlo Anderson. Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we hear about Bess Streeter Aldrich house events and the Winter Dance Party in Scottsbluff.

This week, we hear about Bess Streeter Aldrich house events and the Winter Dance Party in Scottsbluff.

Rich and Dan tell the story of "the day the music died," February 3, 1959, when an airplane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson crashed in Clear Lake, Iowa killing all aboard. Offering music from all three, they discuss the legacy of the musicians and the moment, and talk about what could have been.

BECOME A PRODUCER! http://www.patreon.com/themidnighttrainpodcast   Find The Midnight Train Podcast: www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com www.facebook.com/themidnighttrainpodcast www.twitter.com/themidnighttrainpc www.instagram.com/themidnighttrainpodcast www.discord.com/themidnighttrainpodcast www.tiktok.com/themidnighttrainp   And wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.   Subscribe to our official YouTube channel: OUR YOUTUBE   Support our sponsors www.themidnighttraintrainpodcast.com/sponsors   Ep. 112 Haunted Venues   On today's episode we're going on tour!!! That's right Moody and myself are heading back out on the road and this time we're bringing Logan to carry our shit instead of us lugging everyone else's shit! Why are we heading out on tour you ask? Well it's because we are doing a tour of haunted music and theater venues throughout the world! This is an episode we've been wanting to do for a while especially because we've been to quite a few of these places! There's even one in our home town! Like we have at that certain Cleveland venue, we're sure some of our listeners have spent a ton of their time at some of the venues on the list. This is gonna be a fun one for us so hopefully you guys love it too! First up we've got a big one that will be on every list of haunted venues. The House Of Blues in Chicago. So the history of the building took a bit to find because every search for the house of blues in any city comes up with the main house of blues page but with a little digging we found some info on the building's history. The House of Blues is part of a complex called The Marina City complex. The Marina complex is also known as the Corn cob apparently, and looking at it… You can see why. If you're listening in Chicago and are like "what the fuck, nobody calls it that", will remember our mantra.. Don't blame us, blame the internet… Although we did find that reference in a couple spots. The Marina is a mix of residential condos and commercial buildings built between 1961-1968. The complex consists of two 587-foot, 65-story apartment towers, a 10-story office building which is now a hotel, and a saddle-shaped auditorium building originally used as a cinema. When finished, the two towers were both the tallest residential buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world. The complex was built as a "city within a city", featuring numerous on-site facilities including a theater, gym, swimming pool, ice rink, bowling alley, stores, restaurants, and, of course, a marina. WLS-TV (ABC Channel 7) transmitted from an antenna atop Marina City until the Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower) was completed. Marina City was the first post-war urban high-rise residential complex in the United States and is widely credited with beginning the residential renaissance of American inner cities. These days the complex is home to the Hotel Chicago, 10pin bowling lounge, and several restaurants including… You fucking guessed it... Dick's Last Resort bitches!!! Oh and also the complex is home to the house of blues. The house of blues was built in the shell of the cinema which was out of use for quite some time. The story is that the hob is haunted by the spirit of a little girl that died due to an illness. There are many reports of weird things happening. The most circulated story seems to be that of a little boy who was playing with some of his toys toys. As he was playing he stepped away for a moment and when he came back he saw a little girl playing with his toys. She asked him if he'd like to play with her. FUCK THAT SHIT!!!! The little boy screamed and the girl vanished. Oddly enough, I did find a comment on one website from a man named Skyler seeming to corroborate this story. The comment reads as follows:              " This can not be… no way… I have performed there 2 times. once was in 2013, and there was a boy in the back playing with his cars. a few minutes after he screamed and started to cry. I was feeling bad,, but this can't be him… also know that in 2015 in march i had another performance and all the lights turned off. This is too creepy."   Was this the same boy that the story is referring too? Who knows. We also found several comments from people staying in what we assume is the hotel Chicago as it's in the complex and pretty much right next to the house of blues. There's comment also claim the hotel is haunted. One of the claims says this:            "It's haunted!!! I saw a middle aged/older woman (dressed in clothing from a period long ago) in my room when I stayed there in 1999/2000. I woke in the early morning to see a woman staring at me. I went through a rational thought process of it being my female business colleague (who stayed in a separate room) and I thought, oh well she can sleep in the other bed (it was a double room & I was in the bed furthest away from the front door) and then quickly snapped out of it and said to myself she has her own room why would she be in my room, I opened my eyes again and that's when I could see it was a woman clearly (w/ angry face) staring at me. I then thought this is a stranger/intruder in my room – I laid there with my eyes just open enough to see – she was there staring at me & she still didn't look happy. I laid there thinking of what to do – I decided I was going to reach and turn the light on and then charge her or run after her when she ran for the door (fortunately, there was a switch right next to the bed). HOWEVER, when I reached for the light and turned it on she was gone. This is what makes this story interesting — I called the front desk and simply asked, ‘had anything significant ever happened at the site of the hotel' (b/c as the person above points out, its not an old or historic looking building (e.g. PreWar). I asked another question that any tourist could have just asked (I don't recall what it was right now). She said immediatley, “No, why did you see a ghost?” My response was, yea, I saw a ghost, I'm in my twenties and not some nut job.” I asked if anyone else had ever reported seeing a ghost and she said, “No.” Anyway, when I met up with my colleague, she could tell I was shaken up and I was pretty pale (like “I had seen a host.”). My story has never changed in all this time. I did stay at the hotel 1 other time after (not in the same room) & didn't see anything – but I slept with the bathroom light on… Scary & Cool experience for sure!"   Sounds spooky!    Next on our list of haunted venues we are heading to Milwaukee! Which is actually pronounced meely waukay, which is Algonquin for the good land. Now the Rave is amazing for several reasons: first it's the location of one of Moody's favorite tour stories which also involves Jon and our friend Brad from Voudoux.  2: it's huge and creepy as shit. 3: the pool... The Rave/Eagles Club is a 180,000 square foot, seven-level, live entertainment complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The building contains eight independent clubs with capacities ranging from 400 to 3500. The Eagles Ballroom is the building's showpiece, featuring a 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) oval wooden dance floor, originally installed when the building was constructed, in addition to a large, old-fashioned domed ceiling and a stage on one side. Originally a ballroom, it has hosted everything from boxing matches to concerts to ethnic dances. The ballroom head hosted huge acts ranging from Bob Dylan to Green day, from the grateful dead to slayer and of course none other than Lil Pump.    Along with the eagles ballroom, the building houses the Rave hall, The eagles hall, the Rave bar, The Rave craft beer lounge, The penthouse lounge, and the eagles club.  Since its construction in 1926, the Eagles Club has known several incarnations. Prominently among them, it housed the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, a notable organization whose considerable impacts on America's cultural landscape remain in effect today.   In 1939, the idea of using the building for music presentations took hold, reinventing its purpose. The grand ballroom became a popular venue for big band music, such as band leaders Guy Lombardo and Glen Miller and their orchestras. Soon, other types of music, theatre and performing arts also offered shows and concerts in the large, elegant ballroom; from 1939 through the mid-sixties. Comedians like Bob Hope and Red Skeleton did stand-up comedy. In 1959, people who bought a $1.50 ticket to the Winter Dance Party, were treated to the music of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Big Bopper, Dion and the Belmonts, and Richie Valens. This would be the last show for buddy Holly before he died. In 1964, The Eagles Club had its first rock concert, with the Dave Clark Five performing on the ballroom stage. The 1970s brought even more famous groups and people, such as Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills and Nash and other rising rock stars.When the Athletic Club was closed, a homeless men's shelter opened up temporarily in the basement area, providing shelter for the destitute which is life-saving during the freezing winter months. By the late 1980s, The Eagles Club was in a state of disrepair and The Eagle Club put it out on the real estate market, after getting it listed on The National Register of Historic Places, in 1986.  In late 1992, the Eagles Club was rescued when it was bought by Wauwatosa businessman Anthony J. Balestrieri and his wife, Marjorie, who performed in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. They began the long process of restoring the historic beauty of the elegant ballroom and interior art, as well as the outside facade. They also restored and renovated other areas turning the building into the multi venue building it is today.    We wanted to include this history because: A. We love the history of places like this and B. It shows how many things this building way used for and how many people have passed through the building. We all know where there tons of history there tends to be ghost stories!    Let's get into the spooky shit! Remember the pool we mentioned earlier… Well at one point a 17 year old boy had a fucking heart attack and died in the pool. Later, at least two more children would die in the pool. This would ultimately cause the closure of the athletic club.  Also the man who ran the homeless shelter was said to be extremely cruel and abusive to the men staying there.    The basement area which is the home of the former men's shelter, is one of the more haunted areas. The shelter manager mentioned earlier is thought to be the reason behind the heavy negative energy felt there. Cold spots are often felt by staff in the late hours after closing. Shadow people have often been reported by staff as well as band members packing up after a show.    Next is the pool area, which we've seen and it's fucking creepy. A little girl is said to roam around the area. People have heard her laughter and have said her presence can bring a sense of dread. Staff have said they have heard shuffling footsteps and have smelled a strong odor of bleach in the pool area.    In the boiler room under the pool, a former employee still hangs and he doesn't like people in his area. "Jack" was once recorded telling a group on a ghost hunt to "get out, get out now" Apparently, you can find a video of this on YouTube, we'll try and find it to post on our page.   The ballroom has had its share of apparitions hanging around during sound checks and after shows when everyone has left. An employee told a story of when he was standing on the floor of The Eagles Ballroom, making sure that the people going to the roof patio didn't “get lost” and go into the Eagles Ballroom by design.  He said that one of his fellow workers had seen what they thought was a man, standing in one of the second floor boxes located above the Eagles Ballroom. He called security and when they approached this person, he ran down the aisle but disappeared before the staff person that was behind him and the security person cutting off his escape could try to grab him.    One other common theme is people hearing either happy laughing children or sad crying children. Some staff have stated they've seen entities of children playing in groups.    We've been here.. This place is awesome. Also another fun tidbit… not to far away from the Rave is the ambassador hotel. Which of you're up on your serial killers, you know is the place where Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim in Milwaukee. Steven Tuomi was Jeffrey Dahmer's first victim in Milwaukee. Dahmer met Tuomi in September of 1987. At the time, Dahmer was out on probation after molestation charges of a minor. The two men spent the night together drinking heavily and visiting multiple bars. Later that night, they ended up in a room together in the Ambassador, room 507, which is a room some Dahmer historians have requested to stay in. Dahmer killed Toumi while he was in a drunken stupor. Upon waking up to find Tuomi dead, Dahmer put the body in a suitcase and took it to his grandmother's house where he was living. In the basement, he acted out necrophiliac desires and then dismembered the body. Supposedly when Dahmer awoke to find Tuomi dead, the body was in an awkward position hanging off the side of the bed. Some visitors have reported instances of waking up to discover their partner in a similarly awkward position.   Visitors to room 507 have reported a variety of experiences, such as a heaviness to the room that they can't quite explain. Some people get woken up in the middle of the night by odd circumstances. There's an extra little bit for ya!!!   Info on the Hauntings and most of the historical facts on the Rave was taken from an excellent article on hauntedhouses.com   Next up we're gonna head across the pond, so to speak. We're heading to London and the famous Royal Albert Hall! This place has a long and rich history behind it. The Royal Albert Hall was built on what was once the Gore estate, at the centre of which stood Gore House. The three acre estate was occupied by political reformer William Wilberforce between 1808-1828 and subsequently occupied between 1836-1849 by the Countess of Blessington and Count D'Orsay.   After the couple left for Paris in May 1851, the house was opened as the ‘Universal Symposium of All Nations', a restaurant run by the first celebrity chef, Alexis Soyer, who planned to cater for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.   After the exhibition and following the advice of Prince Albert, Gore House and its grounds were bought by the Exhibition's Royal Commission to create the cultural quarter known as Albertopolis. A complex of public Victorian buildings were developed to house exhibits from the Great Exhibition and to further the study of art, science and industry. On May 20, 1867 7,000 people gathered under a purpose-built marquee to watch Queen Victoria lay the Hall's red Aberdeen granite foundation stone, which today can be found underneath K stalls, row 11, seat 87 in the main auditorium. The Queen announced that “It is my wish that this Hall should bear his name to whom it will have owed its existence and be called The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences”, as a 21 gun salute was heard from Hyde Park and a trumpet fanfare from HM Life Guards sounded. By December 1870 construction of the Hall had moved on so much that HM Queen Victoria and her daughter Princess Beatrice visited the Hall to listen to the acoustics.   Almost three months later, on 25 February 1871, the Hall's first concert was held to an audience for 7,000 people comprising the workmen and their families, various officials and the invited public. Amateur orchestra, The Wandering Minstrels, played to test the acoustics from all areas of the auditorium.    This place has been running as a venue for 150 years! Again… History breeds ghosts and Hauntings! There's so much history in this building that we are not going to be able to include but please check out the official website for the royal Albert Hall to really drive into the history of this place. You won't be sorry you did. We gave you the beginnings to show how long this place has been around. We're gonna get right into the spooky shit though!    On 13 July 1930 the Spiritualist Association rented the Royal Albert Hall for a seance for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, following the death of the Sherlock author on 7 July.   Conan Doyle was a spiritualist and believed in the existence beyond the grave. Upon his death 10,000 people gathered expectantly in the Hall to watch a medium take to the stage, hoping to witness some supernatural activity and hear a message from Conan Doyle from the other side…          Lady Doyle: “Although I have not spoken to Arthur since he passed, I am certain that in his own time and his own way he will send a message to us” Time Magazine, 21 July 1930   Lady Conan Doyle took to the stage alongside members of his family, with a vacant chair on her right reserved for her late husband.Time Magazine, who attended the seance, reports:   ‘Mrs. Estelle Roberts, clairvoyant, took the stage. She declared five spirits were “pushing” her. She cried out their messages. Persons in the audience confirmed their validity. Suddenly Mrs. Roberts looked at Sir Arthur's empty chair, cried: “He is here.” Lady Doyle stood up. The clairvoyant's eyes moved as though accompanying a person who was approaching her. “He is wearing evening clothes,” she murmured. She inclined her head to listen. A silent moment. Her head jerked up. She stared at Lady Doyle, shivered, ran to the widow, whispered. Persons nearby could hear: “Sir Arthur told me that one of you went into the hut [on the Doyle estate] this morning. Is that correct?” Lady Doyle, faltering: “Why, yes.” She beamed. Her eyes opened widely. The clairvoyant to Lady Doyle: “The message is this. Tell Mary [eldest daughter]…' Time Magazine, 21 July 1930   At this the audience rose in a clamor, and the great organ of the Hall began to peal, the noise drowning out the answer of Mrs Roberts.   But what was the message delivered to Lady Doyle that night? Did the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle really visit the Royal Albert Hall on that night in 1930?   Seances are always fun and definitely work as we found out...yea...right….   Here's some more stories taken straight from the RAH website!   THE GIRLS Beneath the Door 6 foyer, in the carpeted basement area, there is one spot where two young women, known as ‘the girls', briefly appear each  November 2nd a little before 2am, when the building is almost deserted, except for some security staff.   Over the years, several staff members reported hearing ‘the girls' laughing, and seeing their animated and excited silhouettes appear, clothed in the fashion of slightly risqué Victorian ladies (extravagant long dark dresses embellished with lace from neck to bodice, with many ruffles, especially around the sleeves and hem, and their hair styled in cottage-loaf buns with ringlets hanging over their ears). The Duty Security Incident Book indicates that there had been appearances by ‘the girls' for the three years prior to 1991. They have been seen passing across the foyer space, which is bounded by double doors at each end, leading on one side to the staff canteen (where we still eat today) and on the other to the kitchen corridor, and then disappear. That is why some believe that ‘the girls' may be responsible for unexplained accidents, tappings and footsteps that occur behind locked doors late at night in the kitchens. Assistants Chefs, who have to clean the kitchen every night after use, often used to hear noises and have been frightened whilst in that area.    FATHER WILLIS Whenever restoration work is carried out on our organ, its original constructor Henry Willis, fondly nicknamed ‘Father Willis', returns as a stooped ghost wearing a black skull cap. When the organ was being reconstructed in 1924, workmen saw a little old man walk down the stairs late one afternoon. On returning to their workshop and relating the facts, their foreman asked what the man was wearing. When told that he was donning a black skull cap, the foreman decided it was the ghost of Father Willis, the original builder of the organ, long since dead, who would not approve of the alterations being undertaken. Since then there have been many reports of a sudden cold atmosphere in the area behind the organ.   When interviewed in 2018, Michael Broadway, the Hall's organ custodian was asked if he had ever seen signs of the legendary ghost of Henry Willis. He answered: “I remember the organ builder Clifford Hyatt telling me about this over forty years ago. The tuner […] was making the final visit of the Willis contract before the Harrison & Harrison rebuild in the 1920s. When he got up on to the Great passage board he saw Father Willis there saying ‘They shan't take my organ from me'. A lovely story, but I haven't seen him. There are many questions I would ask him and hopefully have his approval of the way I look after this instrument. Perhaps he has no reason to be disturbed.”    THE MAN IN WHITE During a Jasper Carrott comedy event in May 1990, the Duty Manager was ordered to clear the Middle Choir seats and to post a Steward at either end to avoid anyone entering as it is very distracting for a performer to have people walking across the back of the stage during the show. That's why a very angry Stage Manager demanded on radio to know why there was someone crossing the stage. The description was of a man dressed in white, walking oddly as if on drugs. The Stewards insisted no one had passed them and on further investigation no one except Jasper Carrott was onstage, but several people had seen the figure cross the stage from left to right.   THE VICTORIAN COUPLE A staff member during the 2000s reported having seen a couple in Victorian clothing walk across the second tier near to Door Six and vanish into a box. As a venue whose history is so closely tied to the Victorian times, this didn't seem particularly odd (people dress up sometimes…)   But in 2011, a Head Steward was finishing off his shift one evening and had made sure that all members of the public had left the second tier. On going downstairs into the auditorium, he noticed a couple sitting in the box so he returned to the second tier but found no one in the box. He assumed they had left while he was on his way back, so once again he returned to the auditorium… Only to see them again. So he went back to the second tier, and that's when he heard the couple chattering. He assumed they were in the box but on opening the door, there was no one there.   There are several more accounts on their website and tons and tons of stories all over the web about experiences at the historical venue. It sounds like it's one crazy place!!!   We've got a couple more for you guys.                Next up is another club we've been too, the Masquerade in Atlanta. The Masquerade features three indoor venues with capacities ranging from 300 to 1000, appropriately named Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.  The Masquerade was founded in 1988 at the historic DuPre Excelsior Mill, a former excelsior mill at 695 North Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. The venue had both indoor and outdoor concert space. It was sold in 2006 and moved in late November 2016 after it was made part of a new mixed-use development called North + Line. The building was designated as historic by the city and all of the original parts will be saved through adaptive reuse. The masquerade had hosted tons of national and local acts from cannibal corpse to the greatest entertainer in history, Weird Al Yankovic.     This night club is said to be visited by the spirits who died in fire and tuberculosis outbreaks long ago, both of which killed several members of the building's former staff. Apparitions have been seen and unexplained footsteps have been reported.One popular story is that of a large and tall black man who is always seen walking around the nightclub. The staff believes that it is this man who turns the musical amplifiers every night.   The staff has also reported hearing footsteps from unidentified sources, as well as cold spots all throughout the building. Horrifying screams can also be heard coming from the back of the stairs even when there is no one there. They believe that the screams come from the young woman who died in a freakish accident in the nightclub. Nowadays, there are rumors that real vampires come to the nightclub and even live there.  Some people believe that this rumor has been spread to promote business as vampires have suddenly become very popular.   Next up were heading to Nashville and a place the Moody had been to, but not for music, for the national beard and mustache competition. He did not place unfortunately. The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats.When Ryman died in 1904, his memorial service was held at the tabernacle. During the service, it was proposed the building be renamed Ryman Auditorium, which was met with the overwhelming approval of the attendees. The building was originally designed to contain a balcony, but a lack of funds delayed its completion. The balcony was eventually built and opened in time for the 1897 gathering of the United Confederate Veterans, with funds provided by members of the group. As a result, the balcony was once called the Confederate Gallery.[5] Upon the completion of the balcony, the Ryman's capacity rose to 6,000. A stage was added in 1901 that reduced the capacity to just over 3,000. Though the building was designed to be a house of worship – a purpose it continued to serve throughout most of its early existence – it was often leased to promoters for nonreligious events in an effort to pay off its debts and remain open. In 1904, Lula C. Naff, a widow and mother who was working as a stenographer, began to book and promote speaking engagements, concerts, boxing matches, and other attractions at the Ryman in her free time.  Naff gained a reputation for battling local censorship groups, who had threatened to ban various performances deemed too risqué. In 1939, Naff won a landmark lawsuit against the Nashville Board of Censors, which was planning to arrest the star of the play Tobacco Road due to its provocative nature. The court declared the law creating the censors to be invalid W.C. Fields, Will Rogers in 1925, Charlie Chaplin, Bob Hope with Doris Day in '49, Harry Houdini in '24, and John Philip Sousa (among others) performed at the venue over the years, earning the Ryman the nickname, "The Carnegie Hall of the South". The Ryman in its early years also hosted Marian Anderson in 1932, Bill Monroe (from KY) and the Bluegrass Boys in '45, Little Jimmy Dickens in '48, Hank Williams in '49, The Carter Sisters with Mother Maybelle Carter in 1950, Elvis in '54, Johnny Cash in '56, trumpeter Louis Armstrong in '57, Patsy Cline in '60, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs (bluegrass) in '64, and Minnie Pearl in '64. The Grand Ole Opry was first broadcast from the Ryman on June 5, 1943, and originated there every week for nearly 31 years thereafter. Every show sold out, and hundreds of fans were often turned away. During its tenure at Ryman Auditorium, the Opry hosted the biggest country music stars of the day and became a show known around the world. Melding its then-current usage with the building's origins as a house of worship, the Ryman got the nickname "The Mother Church of Country Music", which it still holds to this day. The last Opry show at the Ryman occurred the previous evening, on Friday, March 15. The final shows downtown were emotional. Sarah Cannon, performing as Minnie Pearl, broke character and cried on stage. When the plans for Opryland USA were announced, WSM president Irving Waugh also revealed the company's intent to demolish the Ryman and use its materials to construct a chapel called "The Little Church of Opryland" at the amusement park. Waugh brought in a consultant to evaluate the building, noted theatrical producer Jo Mielziner, who had staged a production at the Ryman in 1935. He concluded that the Ryman was "full of bad workmanship and contains nothing of value as a theater worth restoring." Mielziner suggested the auditorium be razed and replaced with a modern theater. Waugh's plans were met with resounding resistance from the public, including many influential musicians of the time. Members of historic preservation groups argued that WSM, Inc. (and Acuff, by proxy) exaggerated the Ryman's poor condition, saying the company was worried that attachment to the old building would hurt business at the new Opry House. Preservationists leaned on the building's religious history and gained traction for their case as a result. The outcry led to the building being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Following the departure of the Opry, the Ryman sat mostly vacant and deteriorating for nearly 20 years, as the neighborhood surrounding it continued to see the increasing effects of urban decay.  In 1986, as part of the Grand Ole Opry 60th-anniversary celebration, CBS aired a special program that featured some of the Opry's legendary stars performing at the Ryman. While the auditorium was dormant, major motion pictures continued to be filmed on location there, including John Carpenter's Elvis (1979), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980 – Loretta Lynn Oscar-winning biopic), Sweet Dreams (1985 – story of Patsy Cline), and Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man (1982). A 1979 television special, Dolly & Carol in Nashville, included a segment featuring Dolly Parton performing a gospel medley on the Ryman stage. In 1989, Gaylord Entertainment began work to beautify the Ryman's exterior. The structure of the building was also improved, as the company installed a new roof, replaced broken windows, and repaired broken bricks and wood. In October 1992, executives of Gaylord Entertainment announced plans to renovate the entire building and expand it to create modern amenities for performers and audiences alike, as part of a larger initiative to invest in the city's efforts to revitalize the downtown area. The first performance at the newly renovated Ryman was a broadcast of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion on June 4, 1994. Beginning in November 1999, the Opry was held at Ryman Auditorium for three months, mostly due to the success of the January shows, but partly due to the ongoing construction of Opry Mills shopping mall next door to the Grand Ole Opry House. The Opry has returned to the Ryman for all of its November, December, and January shows every year since then, allowing the production to acknowledge its roots while also taking advantage of a smaller venue during the off-peak season for tourism and freeing the Grand Ole Opry House for special holiday presentations.The Ryman has also served as a gathering place for the memorial services of many prominent country music figures. Tammy Wynette, Chet Atkins, Skeeter Davis, Harlan Howard, Bill Monroe, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Billy Block, George Hamilton IV, Earl Scruggs, and Jim Ed Brown have all been memorialized from the Ryman stage. In 2018, the Ryman was named the most iconic structure in Tennessee by Architectural Digest. And just because….On June 9, 2019, Wu-Tang Clan performed the first pure rap concert ever at the Ryman. The concert was sold out.   Again, we like to give history on these places for context and honestly it's just interesting to us so whatever. But this again illustrates the point that many crazy things happened here over the years as many many people have passed through this auditorium… Including Moody.   Ok, so let's get to the ghosts and spooky shit. Ryman's spirit was fine with most performances but would rise if the people onstage were getting a bit risqué. Apparently, he disrupted shows by stomping around the room so loudly that spectators were forced to leave. Famously, the ghost wreaked havoc while the opera Carmen was taking place. Probably because it tells the story of a gypsy temptress.    During the grand ole Opry period, rumors surfaced that the venue was cursed since apparently, most singers that performed there wound up dead. A total of 37 people met their fate in the most gruesome ways, dying from O.D.s, car accidents, fires, or slaughterings. Among the artists believed to have succumbed to the curse are: Stringbean Akeman, Patsy Cline, Texas Ruby, and many more. In a blog post by Virginia Lamkin titled Haunted Ryman Auditorium, the author explains that when the show relocated to the Opryland USA theme park, 14 additional acts died. It is believed that the curse followed because a large portion of the Ryman Auditorium stage was cut out and brought to the new location.   The spirit often referred to as “The Grey Man,” is believed to have been one of the Confederate soldiers who frequented the auditorium during post-war gatherings. Some say they've witnessed him sitting in the balcony while artists rehearse. He watches the stage steadily but disappears as soon as anyone gets too close.   ”The lady,” on the other hand, isn't a spectator; she's a performer. Believed to be the ghost of Patsy Cline, she has been heard singing by staff. Usually, her performance happens late at night as they prepare to close. Patsy Cline, who died tragically in a plane crash, has also been linked to the Opry Curse. Could the curse not only kill but also trap artists in the venue?   Speaking of Opry Curse victims, Hank Williams is said to have been another casualty. The successful singer/songwriter passed away in 1953, after mixing prescription drugs with alcohol. Similar to the other artists haunting the auditorium, Hank's voice has been heard clear as day by employees. They have also heard his songs being played onstage, without explanation. Along with Patsy, Hank Williams' soul has lingered in the old venue ever since he passed.   The info on the history of the ryman comes mostly from their own website while the stories of the hauntings we found on the website ghostcitytours.com   Next up is the Phoenix theater in Petaluma California. The club has been in existence since 1905 and has changed in both structure and purpose, mostly due to severe damage caused by several fires. Petaluma's Phoenix Theater has been entertaining Sonoma County residents for over 116 years. Hosting everyone from the likes of Harry Houdini to Green Day, the fabled teen center and music venue has a varied and interesting history.   The entertainment center opened in 1904 as the Hill Opera House. The structure was designed by San Francisco architect Charles Havens, who also designed Petaluma's Carlson-Currier Silk Mill in 1892. The Beaux Arts-style theater hosted operas, theatrical performances, high school graduations and music for over 15 years until the early 1920s when it was gutted by fire.   In 1925, the venue reopened as the California Theatre playing silent films accompanied by music. A Jan. 24, 1925, Press Democrat article proclaimed the showplace the “largest playhouse in Petaluma and one of the finest theaters of Northern California.” A packed house attended the opening night performance which include a double feature picture show and live entertainment.   The theater switched to movies with sound in later years and lost major sections of its roof to a second fire in 1957. Petaluma's Tocchini family bought the floundering venue in 1967 switching to a program of live music and entertainment.   In 1983, the theater was renamed the Phoenix - reflecting its ability to be reborn from the ashes. Tom Gaffey, a young man who had grown up in Petaluma and worked at both the California and the Showcase theaters, was hired as manager, a position he holds to this day. The theater gained unwanted attention after a late-night performance by the band Popsicle Love Sponge performed a questionable act with the body of what was believed to be a dead chicken. The late-night shows ended, but the movies continued for a short time.   Today the venue serves as a graffiti-covered teen center and venue for rock, punk, reggae and more. In 1996, it hosted the last show of the Long Beach ska band Sublime as well as rock and punk legends the Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, X, Metallica and Primus. The guiding principle of the Phoenix has always been that it's "everyone's building" and this was formalized in the early 2000's when the Phoenix became a 501(c)3 nonprofit  community center.   This place sounds pretty awesome. This following except it's taken directly from their website :               The Phoenix Theater is open seven days a week, generally from 3pm to 7pm, for drop-in “unstructured” use. Our building interior is large and soulful, with several rooms to accommodate a variety of activities. On a typical afternoon, you'll find kids playing acoustic music (we've got two pianos and a big stage), skateboarding (across the large wooden floor and up one of four quarter-pipe ramps), doing homework in the tutoring room, or sitting in one of the overstuffed sofas: reading, talking with friends, or napping. There's always a staff member onsite, but the atmosphere is casual.    On top of this they have free music programs from lessons to recording to production to podcasting to band management and everything in between. Also they have many programs for teens in the art community to hone their skills. Not only that they have a teen health center to help inform teens and help them make better, more  conscientious choices regarding their personal health. They also have services for  transitive health and STD help as well. We feel like every town needs a place like this. Especially if it's haunted!!! Speaking of which we found an interview that Gaffney did where he talks about some of his experiences and other things that have happened. The following was taken from petaluma360.com:   Gaffey began by talking about his earliest days. “It was my job to close the theater down. By 10:15 it would just be me, and whatever people were watching the movie. Near the end, I'd go up to the projection booth. After the audience exited, I'd turn off the projector, come down onto the stage where the sound equipment was, turn off the amps, check doors, balcony, bathrooms, lock the doors, hit the security alarm, then go out the door by the box office.”   On three separate nights, as he was leaving, the box office phone rang.   Gaffey explained the building had five phone stations. The light on the box office phone indicated the call was from the projection booth.   “I'd have to turn off the alarm and pick up the phone. ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?' But there was nobody there.   “You can't believe in ghosts when you're shutting down a theater. You have to check.   “Three times I mustered my courage, turned the lights back on and burst into the projection booth. There was no one there.   “That was my first experience, when I was an unknown here, a spooky ‘welcome back.'”   Gaffey is quick to temper his conversation with “it could have been” and “maybe someone playing pranks.” He keeps an open mind. Ghosts or explainable experiences: it's for the individual to decide.   “Blue lights have been seen floating through the building. There's the Little Kid: he'd been seen even when I was a kid working down here. And one night, sleeping on stage as a teen, I could hear and feel big footsteps. I never felt afraid.   “The big guy has been felt by many over the years,” Gaffey said. “We named him Chris. Big Chris. He's the only ghost - if there are ghosts here - who's not from a show business background.” He added that psychics who've visited the theater have talked about Chris dating to the livery stable-era and that someone was murdered on this spot, possibly with a knife.   But Gaffey continued firmly, “My experiences in this building have been warm and protective. “Chris had the spirit of the Phoenix before it became what it is. Chris may have loved this spot. I think it's one of the coolest corners in town.” He commented he sensed from the warmth he felt as he was talking that Chris was on stage, observing.   Then there's the Little Kid - a boy. “That's an interesting one,” Gaffey said. “Again - a psychic had come in. First off, he talked about the guy in the attic [the projection booth], said he seemed to be older, white hair and faded green, almost khaki, clothing; tall, thin with angular knees and elbows.   The older man, the psychic told Gaffey, is trying to make good on something wrong he felt he did to a child. The psychic added the old man hadn't, however, done anything.   “I'm wondering,” Gaffey said, “if it's the little boy. This was the fly area” - the area to the rear of the stage where backdrops hung. “With stuff hanging here and ladder work, maybe the kid was injured. He's been seen by many. He's got shaggy hair, maybe less than five feet, wearing shorts or knickers, a wool suit and a cap, from the 1920s.”   In the 1990s, a security guard for the thrash metal band GWAR got down off a ladder and asked, “Who's that little kid back there in the exit?” When no one could find the boy, the guard quit.    There is much more to the interview and we would definitely recommend checking it out! We've got one one more venue for you guys even though there are a bunch more out there. Some of the more well known and covered places like Bobby Mackey's in Kentucky, The Avalon in Hollywood, Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carre in New Orleans, The rapids theater in Niagara falls NY among others we've left off but will definitely be back to cover at a future point as the history and Hauntings in these places is awesome.    So that brings us to our home town of Cleveland Ohio and to the World famous Agora Theater. Now this a place where we've both spent many nights jamming out to some great fucking shows. And yes.. Whether you like it or not… Here comes some history fuckers.    The first Agora in Cleveland, informally referred to as Agora Alpha, opened on February 26, 1966, at 2175 Cornell Road in Little Italy near the campus of Case Western Reserve University. In 1967, the Agora moved to a second building on East 24th Street near the campus of Cleveland State University. Once settled in their new location, the new Agora Ballroom, informally referred to as Agora Beta, played a role in giving exposure to many bands, both from the Cleveland area and abroad. Many artists such as Peter Frampton, Bruce Springsteen, Boston, Grand Funk Railroad, ZZ Top, Kiss and many others received much exposure after playing the Agora.[3] The Agora Ballroom was also the setting of the concert by Paul Simon's character in the opening minutes of the 1980 movie One-Trick Pony. The front facade of the Agora Ballroom was temporarily swapped for the one shown in the movie. It is also one of three locations used to record Todd Rundgren's live album Back to the Bars in 1978.   The East 24th Street building also housed Agency Recording Studios, located above the Agora. The onsite recording studio and the close proximity to radio station WMMS allowed for high-quality live concert broadcasts from the Agora. Some of these concerts were later released commercially, including Bruce Springsteen's “The Agora, Cleveland 1978”, the Cars' “Live at the Agora 1978”, Ian Hunter's “You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic, Deluxe Edition” and Dwight Twilley Band's “Live From Agora”.   The popularity of the club led the Agora to expand during the 1970s and 1980s, opening 12 other clubs in the cities of Columbus, Toledo, Youngstown, Painesville, Akron, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Hallandale, Hartford, and New Haven. However, the Cleveland location is the only one still in existence today.   In 1984, the Agora was damaged by a fire and closed.   The building currently known as the Agora first opened on March 31, 1913, with an English performance of Aida as the Metropolitan Theatre. It was the brainchild of Max Faetkenheuer, an opera promoter and conductor who had also been involved in the construction of the monumental Hippodrome Theatre on Euclid Avenue five years earlier. The new opera house was well received and did well early on, but later struggled to stay profitable. Among various uses, the Metropolitan was home to a Cleveland's Yiddish theatre troupe in 1927. This brief episode in its history came to an end a few months later in 1928 after the troupe was involved in a bus accident on the way to a performance in Youngstown; the actors were too injured to perform and the venture went bankrupt. By 1932, the venue had turned into a vaudeville/burlesque house called "The Gayety," hosting "hoofers, comics and strippers." The Metropolitan returned to its original use for a short time during the mid-1940s staging comedic musicals, but by the end of the decade stage productions had ceased and the theatre became a full-time movie house. From 1951–78, the theater offices were home to radio stations WHK (1420 AM) and WMMS (100.7 FM); the theater itself was known as the WHK Auditorium. In 1968–69 the theater was known as the Cleveland Grande. In the early 1980s, it briefly re-opened as the New Hippodrome Theatre showing movies. Following the fire which damaged the Agora Ballroom on East 24th Street, club owner Henry LoConti, Sr. decided to move to the 5000 Euclid Avenue location. Following extensive renovations, the new Agora Metropolitan Theater, the third Cleveland venue to bear the Agora name, opened in October 1986. The Agora has two rooms: a 500-person capacity, standing-room-only ballroom with adjoining bar, and an 1800-seat theater.   As far as some spooky shit goes, we were able to get some info straight from the source! We spoke with Mike who works at the agora and we got some cool stuff from him. In an email mine related the following information.            "Prior to our merger with AEG Presents, I used to lead our ‘Ghost Tours' with a group called Black Sheep Paranormal.   While I didn't know what to expect, and I wasn't exactly familiar with paranormal investigations, that quickly changed working with the group.             One of the members of the Black Sheep Paranormal group was a retired police officer. Pretty easy to say he's seen some shit, and could be characterized as fearless. Another member told him to check out the men's room, where we have a utility closest between our sinks and stalls. From past experiences, we usually get some decent activity from that closest. However, nothing occurred this time. After giving up on this spot, the team member decided to use the bathroom. Seconds later, he hears **CLAP, CLAP, CLAP** from behind his neck, and he exited the bathroom about as white as a ghost.   Oh man… Good thing he was in the bathroom in case he pissed himself!! This next story is pretty crazy. He talks about "The Cleaning Lady"!             "One of the known spirits at The Agora, who we call “The Cleaning Lady,” as you could have guessed, was responsible for cleaning the venue many decades ago. While I'm not exactly sure what happened to her, she was said to have fallen off our balcony, and died. One night, during an investigation, we were sitting in silence at the top of our balcony on the left hand side. As we sat there, we started to hear sweeping sounds. As the broom sweeps started to happen for a few seconds, all of the sudden, the sound traveled from the left side of the venue, all the way to the right side of the venue. We couldn't really explain it, but that's exactly what happened."   Wow! That's awesome! This next one would probably freak a lot of people out… but it's definitely cool.           "Another occurrence was when we were up in one of the suite boxes up in the balcony. The venue was blacked out, and from where we were sitting, you could still see the bar area in our lower level. The bar had a mini fridge up against the wall that had lighting in it. We draped it off with a black table cloth, but there was still exposed light coming from the fridge. As we're sitting there, we see a shadow fading in, and fading out of the light. Almost as if a person was pacing back and forth. We were able to see this because of the light from the fridge. As this shadow figure is pacing back and forth for a good 30 – 60 seconds, one of our team members calls out “if anyone is over by the bar, please make a sound.” And I shit you not, with no hesitation, a stack of plastic cups falls off the bar and onto the ground. That was definitely one of my favorite experiences."   Hopefully we get some action like that on our ghost hunt! Mike goes on to say that he actually got to see an apparition as well!       "Over the years, we've heard and seen many things. We've had items that turn up missing, seen plenty of white anomalies, and other occurrences. Apparitions are rare, but sounds are usually constant. We've heard bangs on our doors, we've heard voices, we've even heard music; big band music to be specific. The apparition I've seen was an unreal experience. We were sitting in the balcony, and we just saw this shadow figure in one of the seats across/behind us. The figure was perfectly human-shaped, but you could see through it. It definitely seemed like it was staring at us the whole time. Sadly, my story telling doesn't do this moment very much justice.   He said that a lot of the investigation stuff was mainly communication based with the spirits. He said they would ask  questions and they frequently got answers. We asked about how the spirits would answer and he told us:             "Most of the time in our investigations, we used dowsing rods for the questions, and asked them to cross the rods in a ‘yes or no' type of questioning. They were always responsive in this form. As long as we got it started, we usually were able to keep the questions going. Obviously, noises would happen all the time. I remember one evening just working (no event going on), but we use to have these ‘garage' type doors for our balcony entry. And for whatever reason, the spirts would not stop banging on them. Like something out of a movie, non-stop banging. That was the same day where my coworker went to use the bathroom, and as she was coming back to the office she heard “There she goes…” in a whisper type voice.   Damn! That's some crazy shit! We would like to thank Mike for his time and this incredible stories of the strange stuff that occurs at the agora! Hometown spooky shit is always awesome!  Top ten horror movie musicals https://screenrant.com/horror-musicals-best-ever-imdb/

On Episode 34, Emily tells us about the terrible story behind an infamous headline: Headless Body in Topless Bar. Then, Rachel shares about the life and death of Buddy Holly. Hopefully, you're horrified.Content/Trigger Warnings: plane crash, dismemberment Contact Us:Instagram: @horriblehistorypodTikTok: @horriblehistorypodEmail: horriblehistorypodcast@gmail.comSupport Your Hosts:Learn all about your options on our website!Sources:PoliticoNPRBiographyVacation IdeaSirvedWinter Dance PartyPlane and Pilot MagazineSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/horriblehistory)

08. Honoring the legendary music of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens & "The Big Bopper," a.k.a. JP Richardson with archival radio ads & original studio recordings on the anniversary of their last Winter Dance Party performance, 62 years ago this very week. PLUS, we've got fabulous NEW music to share from the likes of Heidi-Pearl Chandler, Lee Rocker, Jake Calypso, Jim Jeffries & The Spaniards, Darrel Higham, The Sirroco Bros., Eva Eastwood, The Tin Cans and Al Duel, to name but a few! Join the "Aztec Werewolf," DJ Del Villarreal for 3 big hours of the BEST vintage 50's styled rockin' music and the latest recordings from tomorrow's rockin' stars! On Tuesday nights, make a radio date to listen to the LIVE WCBN FM episode of "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" Good to the last BOP!™

This week Rich and Dan mark the solemn occasion of the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.

Serene and Steve tackle the last six songs (plus a hidden track - aww, the wonders of the compact disc) of the Winter Trance Party album, a song cycle that originally set out to be the soundtrack to a children's story Serene wrote about a bunch of kids that communicate with the dead rock stars, specifically those who perished during of the Winter Dance Party of 1959 when a charter plane crashed in a frozen cornfield and took the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper. While the morose children's story never got turned into an app as originally intended (the paid app was going to include the album for free), he did succeed in crafting a suitably psychedelic chill down album. Serene and Steve go into length about the death of Tanya Roberts, the Everly Brothers' most morbid disk, how Nino Rota's score for 'The Godfather' was declared ineligible, Serene's Catholic School gym shorts, James Brown's star turn in Ski Party, Steve defining what Calabash means to beer drinkers, Joe Meek's morbid fascination with Buddy Holly and Why old master painters put their ugly mugs in to their Madonna and Child paintings.Songs include "Don't Lost That Rock, Child! ," "Suspend Your Disbelief," "Cold Day in December," "I Rebelled Last Night," "Take Your Little Heart and Go," "Calabash" and "Goodbyes in The Snow."Click here to stream the entire Winter Trance Party album!Click here to watch all the Winter Trance Party and subscribe to the Serene Dominic YouTube channel!Check out the Buddy Holly biography Serene was reading during the making of this album!Catch Serene Dominic's weekly livecast "The Human Torch Floor Show" every Thursday at 8:30 MST on facebook.com/serenedominic

Serene and Steve survey the first six songs of the Winter Trance Party album, a song cycle that originally set out to be the soundtrack to a children's story Serene wrote about a bunch of kids that communicate with the dead rock stars, specifically those who perished during of the Winter Dance Party of 1959when a charter plane crashed in a frozen cornfield and took the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper. While the morose children's story never got turned into an app as originally intended (the paid app was going to include the album for free), he did succeed in crafting a suitably psychedelic chill down album. Serene and Steve go into length about the Winter Dance Party and go off on some tangents involving defense attorney Melvin Belli, Peter Pan records, The Million Dollar Movie and Sy Sperling., the President of Hair Club for MenSongs include "Friendly Angel Revisited," "Winter Trance Party," "Crazed Shape Shifter," "Rezo Para Donna," "Heartbreaking Machine" and "Carbon Footprint Man."Click here to stream the entire Winter Trance Party album!Click here to watch all the Winter Trance Party and subscribe to the Serene Dominic YouTube channel!Check out the Buddy Holly biography Serene was reading during the making of this album!Catch Serene Dominic's weekly livecast "The Human Torch Floor Show" every Thursday at 8:30 MST on facebook.com/serenedominic

John interviews his fellow Winter Dance Party performers Ray Anthony and Linwood Sasser on their humble beginnings, favorite memories of the tour, memories of Jay Richardson, the Big Bopper's son and much more.

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Three Steps to Heaven" by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on "Quarter to Three" by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  ----more---- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. Much of the information here comes from Spencer Leigh's book Things Do Go Wrong, which looks specifically at the 1960 tour. I also used Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis.  While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran's music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. This CD contains the Saturday Club recordings by Vincent and Cochran, which are well worth listening to.   Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though -- his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. And a fair chunk of the background information here also comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn's Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's been a sad running theme in the episodes in recent months of rock stars dying in accidents. Sadly, in the 1950s and sixties, travelling long distances was even more dangerous than it is today, and rock musicians, who had to travel a lot more than most people, and did much of that travelling at night, were more likely to be in accidents than most. Today, we're going to look at yet another of these tragic deaths, of someone who is thought of in the US as being something of a one-hit wonder, but who had a much bigger effect on British music. We're going to look at what would be Eddie Cochran's final tour, and at his UK number one single "Three Steps to Heaven": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] When we left Eddie Cochran, he had just appeared in the film "The Girl Can't Help It", singing "Twenty Flight Rock", and he had also had a hit with "Sittin' in the Balcony". But he hadn't yet managed to establish himself as the star he knew he could be -- he was the whole package, singer, songwriter, and especially guitarist, and he hadn't yet made a record that showed him to his best advantage as an artist. "Twenty Flight Rock" had come close, but it wasn't a song he'd written himself, and the record hadn't yet been released in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty Records seemed to not understand what they had in him -- they were trying to push him to be another Pat Boone, and become a bland pop singer with no rock and roll in his sound. His first album, Singin' to My Baby, had little to do with the music that he was interested in playing. So Cochran needed to find something that would really put him on the map -- a song that would mean he wasn't just one of dozens of Fabians and Frankie Avalons and interchangeable Bobbies who were starting to take over shows like American Bandstand. "Twenty Flight Rock" hadn't ended up being a hit at all, despite its placement in a popular film -- they'd left it too long between the film coming out and releasing the record, and he'd lost that momentum. At the end of 1957 he'd gone on the Australian tour with Little Richard and Gene Vincent which had led to Richard retiring from rock and roll, and he'd become much closer with Vincent, with whom he'd already struck up a friendship when making The Girl Can't Help It. The two men bonded, particularly, over their love of guns, although they expressed that love in very different ways. Cochran had grown up in rural Minnesota, and had the same love of hunting and fishing that most men of his background did at that time (and that many still do). He was, by all accounts, an affable person, and basically well adjusted. Vincent, on the other hand, was a polite and friendly person when not drinking. Unfortunately, he was in constant pain from his leg wounds, and that meant he was drinking a lot, and when he was drunk he was an incredibly unpleasant, aggressive, person. His love of guns was mostly for threatening people with, and he seems to have latched on to Cochran as someone who could look after him when he got himself into awkward situations -- Cochran was so personally charming that he could defuse the situation when Vincent had behaved appallingly towards someone. At the time, Vincent seemed like a has-been and Cochran a never-would-be. This was late 1957, and it seemed like rock and roll records with guitars on were a fad that had already passed their sell-by date. The only white guitarist/vocalist other than Elvis who'd been having hits on a regular basis was Buddy Holly, and his records were doing worse and worse with each release. Vincent hadn't had a real hit since his first single, "Be Bop A Lula", while Cochran had made the top twenty with "Sittin' in the Balcony", but the highest he'd got after that was number eighty-two. He'd recently recorded a song co-written by George Mottola, who'd written "Goodnight My Love", but "Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie" stalled at number ninety-four when it was released in early 1958: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie"] So neither man was in a good place at the start of 1958, but they had very different attitudes -- Vincent was depressed and angry, but Cochran knew that something would come along. He was only nineteen, he was astonishingly good looking, he was a great guitarist -- if rock and roll didn't work out, something would. In early 1958, Cochran was still hunting for that elusive big hit, as he joined the Blue Caps in the studio, to provide bass, arrangements, and backing vocals on several tracks for Vincent's latest album. It's Cochran singing the bass vocals at the start of "Git It", one of Vincent's greatest tracks: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, "Git It"] But shortly after that recording, a major turn in Cochran's fortunes came from an unexpected place. Liberty Records had been in financial difficulties, and part of the reason that Cochran's records were unsuccessful was that they just didn't have the money to promote them as much as they'd like. But then at the beginning of April a man called Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, released a novelty song called "The Witch Doctor", featuring some mildly racist comedy and a sped-up voice. That record became a massive hit, selling over a million copies, going to number one, and becoming the fourth most successful record of 1958. Suddenly, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy. That made all the difference to the success of a track that Cochran had recorded on March the 28th, the same week he recorded those Gene Vincent sessions, and which came out at the tail-end of summer. Cochran had come up with a guitar riff that he liked, but he didn't have any lyrics for it, and his friend and co-writer Jerry Capehart said "there's never been a blues about the summer". The two of them came up with some comedy lyrics in the style of the Coasters, who had just started to have big hits, and the result became Cochran's only top ten hit in the US, reaching number eight, and becoming one of the best-remembered tracks of the fifties: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Summertime Blues"] That track was recorded with a minimal number of musicians -- Cochran played all the guitars and sang both vocal parts, his bass player Guybo Smith played the bass part, and the great session drummer Earl Palmer played drums. There was also a fourth person on the record -- Sharon Sheeley, who added handclaps, and who had written the B-side. Sheeley was a talented songwriter who also had a propensity for dating musicians. She'd dated one of the Everly Brothers for a while -- different reports name different brothers, but the consensus seems to be that it was Don -- and then when they'd split up, she'd written a song called "Poor Little Fool". She'd then faked having her car break down outside Ricky Nelson's house, and collared him when he came out to help. That sort of thing seemed to happen to Nelson a lot with songwriters -- Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had sold Nelson songs by sitting on his doorstep and refusing to move until he listened to them -- but it seemed to work out very well for him. The Burnettes wrote several hits for him, while Sheeley's "Poor Little Fool" became Nelson's first number one, as well as being the first number one ever on Billboard's newly-renamed Hot One Hundred, and the first number one single on any chart to be written by a woman without a male cowriter: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Poor Little Fool"] Sheeley gets unfairly pigeonholed as a groupie (not that there's anything wrong with being a groupie) because she had relationships with musicians, and at this point she was starting a relationship with Cochran. But it's important to remember that when they got together, even though he was eighteen months older than her, she was the one who had written a number one single, and he was the one whose last record had gone to number ninety-four -- and that after her relationship with Cochran, she went on to form a writing partnership with Jackie DeShannon that produced a long string of hits for people like Brenda Lee and the Fleetwoods, as well as songs that weren't hits but probably deserved to be, like Ral Donner's "Don't Put Your Heart in His Hands": [Excerpt: Ral Donner, "Don't Put Your Heart in His Hands"] Sheeley was more invested in her relationship with Cochran than he was, but this has led rock writers to completely dismiss her as "just Eddie Cochran's girlfriend", when in terms of their relative statuses in the music industry, it would be more fair to define Cochran as "just Sharon Sheeley's boyfriend". I have to emphasise this point, because in the limited number of books about Cochran, you will see a lot of descriptions of her as "a groupie", "a fantasist", and worse, and very few mentions of the fact that she had a life outside her partner. "Summertime Blues" looked like it was going to be the start of Eddie Cochran's career as a rock and roll star, but in fact it was the peak of it, at least in the US. While the song was a big hit, the follow-up, "C'mon Everybody", which was written by Cochran and Capehart to much the same formula, but without the humour that characterised "Summertime Blues", didn't do so well: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "C'mon Everybody"] That made only number thirty-five on the US charts, and would be Cochran's last top forty record there -- but in the UK, it was a bigger hit than "Summertime Blues", reaching number six. "C'mon Everybody" was, though, big enough for Cochran to make some TV appearances. He'd agreed to go on tour with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on a tour called the Winter Dance Party tour, but had bowed out when he got some offers of TV work. He definitely appeared on a show called Town Hall Party broadcast from California on February the second 1959, and according to Sheeley he was booked to appear in New York on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was the reason he'd decided not to do the tour, a few days later. As it turned out, Cochran never made that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as in the early hours of February the third, his friends died in a plane crash. He refused to get on the plane to New York for the show, and instead drove out to the desert in his station wagon to grieve, and from that point on he developed a fear of flying. The follow-up to "C'mon Everybody", "Teenage Heaven", only went to number ninety-nine on the charts, and his next two singles didn't do much better. "Somethin' Else", a song that Sheeley had written for him, made number fifty-eight, while his cover version of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" didn't chart at all. 1959 was a depressing year for Cochran personally and professionally. But while "Somethin' Else" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So" were flops in the US, they both made the top thirty in the UK. In the US, guitar-based white rock and roll was now firmly out of fashion, with the audience split between black vocal groups singing R&B and white male solo singers called Bobby singing mid-tempo pop. But in the UK, the image of rock and roll in people's minds was still that of the rockabillies from a couple of years earlier -- while British musical trends would start to move faster than the US by the sixties, in the fifties they lagged a long way behind. And in particular, Cochran's friend Gene Vincent was doing much better in Britain than in the US. Very few US performers had toured the UK, and with the exception of Buddy Holly, most of those who had were not particularly impressive. Because of an agreement between the two countries' musicians' unions, it was difficult for musicians to perform in one country if they were from the other. It wasn't quite so difficult for solo performers, who could be backed by local musicians and were covered under a different agreement, but Lew and Leslie Grade, who had a virtual monopoly on the UK entertainment business, had had a very bad experience with Jerry Lee Lewis when his marriage to his teenage cousin had caused his UK tour to be cancelled, and anyway, Britain was an unimportant market a long way away from America, so why would Americans come all that way? For most of 1959, the closest thing to American rock and roll stars touring the UK were Connie Francis and Paul Anka, neither of whom screamed rock and roll rebellion. American rockers just didn't come to the UK. Unless they had nowhere else to go, that is -- and Gene Vincent had nowhere else to go. In the US, he was a washed-up has been who'd burned every single bridge, but in the UK he was an American Rock Star. In late 1959 he released a not-great single, "Wildcat": [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, "Wildcat"] That single wasn't doing particularly well, but then Larry Parnes and Jack Good hatched a plan. Good had a new TV show, "Boy Meets Girls", based around one of Parnes' artists, Marty Wilde, and also had a column in Disc magazine. They'd get an American rock star over to the UK, Parnes would stick him on a bill with a bunch of Parnes' acts, Good would put him on the TV show and promote him in Disc magazine, and the tour and TV show would split the costs. Wilde was, at the time, about to go into a career slump. He'd just got married, and he and his wife were trying for their first kid -- they'd decided that if it was a girl, they were going to call her Kim. It seemed likely they were going to lose his audience of teenage girls, as he was no longer available, and so Larry Parnes was trying to move him from rock and roll into musical styles that would be more suitable for adults, so his latest single was a ballad, "Bad Boy": [Excerpt: Marty Wilde, "Bad Boy"] That meant that Wilde's band, the Wildcats, made up at this point of Tony Belcher, Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, were no longer going to be suitable to back Wilde, as they were all rock and rollers, so they'd be fine for whichever rock star they could persuade over to the UK. Vincent was the only rock star available, and his latest single was even called "Wildcat". That made him perfect for Parnes' purposes, though Vincent was slightly nervous about using British musicians -- he simply didn't think that British musicians would be any good. As it turned out, Vincent had nothing to worry about on that score at least. When he got to the studios in Didsbury, in Manchester, where Boy Meets Girls was filmed, he met some of the best session musicians Britain had to offer. The house band for the show, the Flying Squad, was a smaller version of the bands that had appeared on Good's earlier shows, a nine-piece group that included organist Cherry Wainer and session drummer Andy White, and was led by Joe Brown. Brown was a Larry Parnes artist, who at this point had released one rather uninspired single, the country-flavoured "People Gotta Talk": [Excerpt: Joe Brown, "People Gotta Talk"] But Brown had an independent streak, which could be seen just from his name -- Larry Parnes had tried to change it, as he did with all his acts, but Brown had flat-out refused to be called Elmer Twitch, the name Parnes had chosen for him. He insisted on keeping his own name, and it was under that name that he became one of Britain's most respected guitarists. Vincent, amazingly, found these British musicians to be every bit as good as any musicians he'd worked with in the USA. But that was about all that he liked about the UK -- you couldn't get a hamburger or a pizza anywhere in the whole country, and the TV was only in black and white, and it finished at 11PM. For someone like Vincent, who liked to stay up all night watching old monster movies on TV, that was completely unacceptable. Luckily for him, at least he had his gun and knife to keep him occupied -- he'd strapped them both to the leg iron he used for his damaged leg, so they wouldn't set off the metal detectors coming into the country. But whatever his thoughts about the country as a whole, he couldn't help loving the audience reaction. Jack Good knew how to present a rock and roll star to an audience, and he'd moved Vincent out of the slacks and sweater vests and blue caps into the kind of leather that he'd already had Vince Taylor wear. He got Vincent to emphasise his limp, and to look pained at all times. He was imagining Vincent as something along the lines of Richard III, and wanted him to appear as dangerous as possible. He used all the tricks of stagecraft that he'd used on Taylor, but with the added advantage that Vincent had a remarkable voice, unlike Taylor. Sadly, as is the case with almost all of the British TV of the period, the videotapes of the performances have long since been wiped, but we have poor-quality audio that demonstrates both how good Vincent was sounding and how well the British musicians were able to adapt to backing him: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, "Summertime", live on Boy Meets Girls] After making three appearances on Boy Meets Girls, Vincent was put on tour backed by the Wildcats, on a bill with acts like Wee Willie Harris and the Bachelors (the ones who recorded for Parlophone, not the later act of the same name), and "Wildcat" started going up the charts. Even though Gene Vincent hadn't had a hit in three years, he was a massive success with the British audiences, and as a result Parnes and Good decided that it might be an idea if they got another American star over here, and the obvious choice was Eddie Cochran. Cochran had the same agent as Vincent, and so there was a working relationship there; they both knew each other and so Vincent could help persuade Cochran over; and Cochran had had a string of top thirty hits in the UK, but was commercially dead in the US. It was tempting for Cochran, too -- as well as the obvious advantage of playing to people who were actually buying his record, the geography of Britain appealed. He'd been terrified of flying since Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had died, but the British tour would only involve the transatlantic flight -- all the travel once he was in the UK would be by road or rail. Before he came over, he had to record his next single, to be released while he was over in the UK. So on January the 8th, 1960, Eddie Cochran went into Gold Star Studios with his normal bass player, Guybo, and with his friends Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, the guitarist and drummer of the Crickets, and they cut what turned out to be his last single, "Three Steps to Heaven": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] Two days later, he was in Britain, for the start of what was the biggest rock and roll tour in British history to that point -- a hundred and eight live appearances, plus several TV and radio appearances, in a little over three months, playing two shows a night most nights. Parnes felt he had to work them hard to justify their fees -- Vincent was getting $2500 a week, and Cochran $1000, while for example Billy Fury, at that point the biggest of Parnes' acts, was on a salary of twenty pounds a week. While Vincent had made a great impression largely despite himself, Cochran was a different matter. Everyone seemed to love him. Unlike Vincent, he was a musician's musician, and he formed close friendships with the players on the tour. Joe Brown, for example, remembers Cochran explaining to him that if you swap the G string on your guitar for a second B string, tuned down to G, you could bend a note a full tone -- Brown used that trick to make himself one of the most sought-after session players in the UK before his own pop career started to take off. It was also apparent that while Jack Good had had to create a stage act for Gene Vincent, he didn't have to do anything to make Cochran look good in front of the cameras. Marty Wilde said of him "The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his complexion. We British lads had acne and all the usual problems, and Eddie walked in with the most beautiful hair and the most beautiful skin - his skin was a light brown, beautiful colour, all that California sunshine, and I thought 'you lucky devil'. We had Manchester white all over us. And he had the most beautiful face -- the photographs never did the guy justice". From the moment Cochran started his set in Ipswich, by saying "It's great to be here in Hipswich" and wiggling his hips, he was utterly in command of the British audiences. Thankfully, because they did so many TV and radio sessions while they were over here, we have some idea of what these shows sounded like -- and from the recordings, even when they were in the antiseptic environment of a BBC recording studio, without an audience, they still sounded fantastic. On some shows, Cochran would start with his back to the audience, the band would start playing "Somethin' Else", the song that Sharon Sheeley had written for him that had been a minor hit, and he'd whirl round and face the audience on the opening line, "Well look-a there!" [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, "Somethin' Else [Eddie Cochran vocals]", Saturday Club version] The shows all had a number of acts on, all of them other than the stars Larry Parnes acts, and because there were so many shows, acts would get rotated in and out as the tour went on. But some of those who played on many dates were Vince Eager, who had named himself after Gene Vincent but quickly grew more attached to Eddie Cochran, who he started to regard as his best friend as the tour went on, Tony Sheridan, who was building a solo career after leaving the Oh Boy! band, Georgie Fame, who was already more interested in being a jazz and R&B pianist in the mould of Mose Allison than he was in being a pop star, Johnny Gentle, a Liverpudlian performer who never rose to massive success, and Billy Fury, by far the most talented of Parnes' acts. Fury was another Liverpudlian, who looked enough like Cochran that they could be brothers, and who had a top ten hit at the time with "Collette", one of many hits he wrote for himself: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, "Collette"]  Fury was something of a sex symbol, aided by the fact that he would stuff his pants with the cardboard tube from a toilet roll before going on stage. This would lead the girls to scream at him -- but would also lead their violent boyfriends to try to bottle him off stage, which meant he had more reason than most to have stagefright. Cochran would joke with Fury, and try to put him at ease -- one story has him telling a nervous Fury, about to go on stage, to just say to himself "I am the greatest performer in the world". Fury repeated back "I am the greatest performer in the world", and Cochran replied, "No you're not -- I am!" This kind of joking led to Cochran becoming immensely popular among all the musicians on the tour, and to him once again falling into his old role of protecting Gene Vincent from the consequences of his own actions, when Vincent would do things like cut up a suit belonging to one of the road managers, while the road manager was inside it. While Vincent was the headliner, Cochran was clearly the one who impressed the British audiences the most. We have some stories from people who saw the tour, and they all focus on Eddie. Particularly notable is the tour's residency in Liverpool, during which time Cochran was opening his set with his version of "What'd I Say": [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, "What'd I Say [Eddie Cochran vocals]", Saturday Club version] We have this report of Cochran's performance in Liverpool: "Eddie blew me away. He had his unwound 3rd string, looked good and sang good and he was really getting to be a good guitarist… One moment will always represent Eddie to me. He finished a tune, the crowd stopped screaming and clapping, and he stepped up to the mike and before he said something he put both his hands back, pushed his hair back, and some girl, a single voice in the audience, she went ‘Eddie!’ and he said ‘Hi honey!’… I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it – rock ’n’ roll!’" That's a quote from George Harrison in the early 1990s. He'd gone to see the show with a friend, John Lennon -- it was Lennon's first ever rock and roll gig as an audience member, and one of a very small number he ever attended. Lennon never particularly enjoyed seeing live shows -- he preferred records -- but even he couldn't resist seeing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent on the same bill. The Liverpool shows were massive successes, despite both American rockers being increasingly bored and turning more and more to drink as a result. Apparently the two would drink a bottle of bourbon between them before going on stage, and at one Liverpool show Cochran had to hold on to a mic stand to keep himself upright for the first two songs, before he sobered up enough to let go. The shows were successful enough that a local promoter, Allan Williams, asked if he could book Cochran and Vincent for another show, and Larry Parnes said yes -- after Liverpool, they had to play Newcastle, Manchester, London, and Bristol, taking up another month, and then Eddie Cochran was going to be going back to the US for a couple of weeks, but he could pencil them in for six weeks' time, when Cochran was going to come back. It's quite surprising that Cochran agreed to come back, because he was getting thoroughly sick of the UK. He'd asked Sharon Sheeley to fly over and join him, but other than her and Vincent he had nothing of home with him, and he liked sunshine, fast food, cold beer, and all-night TV, and hated everything about the British winter, which was far darker and wetter than anything he'd experienced. But on the other hand, he was enjoying making music with these British people. There's a great recording of Cochran, Vincent, Billy Fury, and Joe Brown jamming on the Willie Dixon blues song "My Babe" on "Boy Meets Girls": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, “My Babe”] But by the time the tour ended in Bristol, Eddie was very keen to get back. He was going to be bringing Vince Eager over to America to record, and arranged to meet him in London in the early hours of Easter Sunday. They were going to be taking the lunchtime plane from what was then London Airport but is now Heathrow. But there was a problem with getting there on time. There were very few trains between Bristol and London, and they'd have to get a car from the train station to the airport. But that Easter Sunday was the day of the annual Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons. These were massive marches which were big enough that they spawned compilation albums of songs to sing on the march, like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's "Brother Won't You Join the Line": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, "Brother Won't You Join the Line?"] But the main effect the march was having on Cochran and Vincent was that it meant that to be sure of catching their plane, they would have to travel overnight by car. At first, they asked one of the other artists on the tour, Johnny Gentle, if they could go in his car, but he already had a carful, so they ended up getting a local driver, named George Martin (not the one at Parlophone Records) to drive them overnight. They got into the back seat of the car -- Cochran sitting between Vincent and Sheeley, as Sheeley couldn't stand Vincent. Vincent took a sleeping pill and went to sleep almost immediately, but Sheeley and Cochran were in a good mood, singing "California Here We Come" together, when Martin took a turn too fast and hit a lamppost. Vincent and Sheeley suffered major injuries and had to spend time in hospital. Cochran died. A short while later, Johnny Gentle's car made its way onward towards London, and ran out of fuel. As all-night garages weren't a thing in Britain then, they flagged down a policeman who told them there'd been a crash, and they could see if the breakdown vehicle would let them siphon petrol from the wrecked car. They did, and it was only the next day they realised which car it was they'd taken the fuel from. One of the police at the scene – maybe even that one – was a cadet who would later change his name to Dave Dee, and become the lead singer in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. As soon as the news got out about Cochran's death, "Three Steps to Heaven", which had come out in the US, but not yet in the UK, was rush-released: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] It went to number one, and became Cochran's biggest hit. Larry Parnes didn't see why Cochran's death should put a crimp in his plans, and so he immediately started promoting the shows for which Vincent and Cochran had been booked, calling them Eddie Cochran Tribute Shows, and talking to the press about how ironic it was that Cochran's last song was "Three Steps to Heaven". Vince Eager was so disgusted with Parnes that he never worked with him again. But those shows turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone could have imagined. Allan Williams was worried that without Cochran, the show he'd got booked in Liverpool wouldn't get enough of a crowd, so he booked in a number of local bands -- Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Nero and the Gladiators, and Gerry and the Pacemakers -- to fill out the bill. This led to all the bands and musicians in Liverpool realising, for the first time, how much talent there was in the city and how many bands there were. That one show changed Liverpool from a town where there were a few bands to a town with a music scene, and May the third 1960 can be pointed to as the day that Merseybeat started. Parnes was impressed enough by the local groups that he decided that Liverpool might be a good place to look for musicians to back his singers on the road. And we'll pick up on what happened then in a few months. Sharon Sheeley, once she'd recovered from her injuries, went on to write hits for Brenda Lee, Jackie DeShannon, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and when Jack Good moved back to the US, she renewed her acquaintance with him, and together with Sheeley's husband they created Shindig, the most important American music show of the sixties. But by the time she died in 2002, all her obituaries talked about was that she'd been Eddie Cochran's girlfriend. And as for Gene Vincent, he was already in chronic pain, suffering mood swings, and drinking too much before the accident hospitalised him. After that, all those things intensified. He became increasingly unreliable, and the hits dried up even in Britain by mid-1961. He made some good music in the sixties, but almost nobody was listening any more, and an attempted comeback was cut short when he died, aged thirty-six, in 1971, from illnesses caused by his alcoholism. Despite their tragic deaths, Vincent and Cochran, on that 1960 UK tour, almost accidentally catalysed a revolution in British music, and the changes from that will reverberate throughout the rest of this story.

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Quarter to Three” by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  —-more—- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. Much of the information here comes from Spencer Leigh’s book Things Do Go Wrong, which looks specifically at the 1960 tour. I also used Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis.  While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. This CD contains the Saturday Club recordings by Vincent and Cochran, which are well worth listening to.   Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. And a fair chunk of the background information here also comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There’s been a sad running theme in the episodes in recent months of rock stars dying in accidents. Sadly, in the 1950s and sixties, travelling long distances was even more dangerous than it is today, and rock musicians, who had to travel a lot more than most people, and did much of that travelling at night, were more likely to be in accidents than most. Today, we’re going to look at yet another of these tragic deaths, of someone who is thought of in the US as being something of a one-hit wonder, but who had a much bigger effect on British music. We’re going to look at what would be Eddie Cochran’s final tour, and at his UK number one single “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] When we left Eddie Cochran, he had just appeared in the film “The Girl Can’t Help It”, singing “Twenty Flight Rock”, and he had also had a hit with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”. But he hadn’t yet managed to establish himself as the star he knew he could be — he was the whole package, singer, songwriter, and especially guitarist, and he hadn’t yet made a record that showed him to his best advantage as an artist. “Twenty Flight Rock” had come close, but it wasn’t a song he’d written himself, and the record hadn’t yet been released in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty Records seemed to not understand what they had in him — they were trying to push him to be another Pat Boone, and become a bland pop singer with no rock and roll in his sound. His first album, Singin’ to My Baby, had little to do with the music that he was interested in playing. So Cochran needed to find something that would really put him on the map — a song that would mean he wasn’t just one of dozens of Fabians and Frankie Avalons and interchangeable Bobbies who were starting to take over shows like American Bandstand. “Twenty Flight Rock” hadn’t ended up being a hit at all, despite its placement in a popular film — they’d left it too long between the film coming out and releasing the record, and he’d lost that momentum. At the end of 1957 he’d gone on the Australian tour with Little Richard and Gene Vincent which had led to Richard retiring from rock and roll, and he’d become much closer with Vincent, with whom he’d already struck up a friendship when making The Girl Can’t Help It. The two men bonded, particularly, over their love of guns, although they expressed that love in very different ways. Cochran had grown up in rural Minnesota, and had the same love of hunting and fishing that most men of his background did at that time (and that many still do). He was, by all accounts, an affable person, and basically well adjusted. Vincent, on the other hand, was a polite and friendly person when not drinking. Unfortunately, he was in constant pain from his leg wounds, and that meant he was drinking a lot, and when he was drunk he was an incredibly unpleasant, aggressive, person. His love of guns was mostly for threatening people with, and he seems to have latched on to Cochran as someone who could look after him when he got himself into awkward situations — Cochran was so personally charming that he could defuse the situation when Vincent had behaved appallingly towards someone. At the time, Vincent seemed like a has-been and Cochran a never-would-be. This was late 1957, and it seemed like rock and roll records with guitars on were a fad that had already passed their sell-by date. The only white guitarist/vocalist other than Elvis who’d been having hits on a regular basis was Buddy Holly, and his records were doing worse and worse with each release. Vincent hadn’t had a real hit since his first single, “Be Bop A Lula”, while Cochran had made the top twenty with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”, but the highest he’d got after that was number eighty-two. He’d recently recorded a song co-written by George Mottola, who’d written “Goodnight My Love”, but “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie” stalled at number ninety-four when it was released in early 1958: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie”] So neither man was in a good place at the start of 1958, but they had very different attitudes — Vincent was depressed and angry, but Cochran knew that something would come along. He was only nineteen, he was astonishingly good looking, he was a great guitarist — if rock and roll didn’t work out, something would. In early 1958, Cochran was still hunting for that elusive big hit, as he joined the Blue Caps in the studio, to provide bass, arrangements, and backing vocals on several tracks for Vincent’s latest album. It’s Cochran singing the bass vocals at the start of “Git It”, one of Vincent’s greatest tracks: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, “Git It”] But shortly after that recording, a major turn in Cochran’s fortunes came from an unexpected place. Liberty Records had been in financial difficulties, and part of the reason that Cochran’s records were unsuccessful was that they just didn’t have the money to promote them as much as they’d like. But then at the beginning of April a man called Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, released a novelty song called “The Witch Doctor”, featuring some mildly racist comedy and a sped-up voice. That record became a massive hit, selling over a million copies, going to number one, and becoming the fourth most successful record of 1958. Suddenly, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy. That made all the difference to the success of a track that Cochran had recorded on March the 28th, the same week he recorded those Gene Vincent sessions, and which came out at the tail-end of summer. Cochran had come up with a guitar riff that he liked, but he didn’t have any lyrics for it, and his friend and co-writer Jerry Capehart said “there’s never been a blues about the summer”. The two of them came up with some comedy lyrics in the style of the Coasters, who had just started to have big hits, and the result became Cochran’s only top ten hit in the US, reaching number eight, and becoming one of the best-remembered tracks of the fifties: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues”] That track was recorded with a minimal number of musicians — Cochran played all the guitars and sang both vocal parts, his bass player Guybo Smith played the bass part, and the great session drummer Earl Palmer played drums. There was also a fourth person on the record — Sharon Sheeley, who added handclaps, and who had written the B-side. Sheeley was a talented songwriter who also had a propensity for dating musicians. She’d dated one of the Everly Brothers for a while — different reports name different brothers, but the consensus seems to be that it was Don — and then when they’d split up, she’d written a song called “Poor Little Fool”. She’d then faked having her car break down outside Ricky Nelson’s house, and collared him when he came out to help. That sort of thing seemed to happen to Nelson a lot with songwriters — Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had sold Nelson songs by sitting on his doorstep and refusing to move until he listened to them — but it seemed to work out very well for him. The Burnettes wrote several hits for him, while Sheeley’s “Poor Little Fool” became Nelson’s first number one, as well as being the first number one ever on Billboard’s newly-renamed Hot One Hundred, and the first number one single on any chart to be written by a woman without a male cowriter: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Poor Little Fool”] Sheeley gets unfairly pigeonholed as a groupie (not that there’s anything wrong with being a groupie) because she had relationships with musicians, and at this point she was starting a relationship with Cochran. But it’s important to remember that when they got together, even though he was eighteen months older than her, she was the one who had written a number one single, and he was the one whose last record had gone to number ninety-four — and that after her relationship with Cochran, she went on to form a writing partnership with Jackie DeShannon that produced a long string of hits for people like Brenda Lee and the Fleetwoods, as well as songs that weren’t hits but probably deserved to be, like Ral Donner’s “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”: [Excerpt: Ral Donner, “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”] Sheeley was more invested in her relationship with Cochran than he was, but this has led rock writers to completely dismiss her as “just Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend”, when in terms of their relative statuses in the music industry, it would be more fair to define Cochran as “just Sharon Sheeley’s boyfriend”. I have to emphasise this point, because in the limited number of books about Cochran, you will see a lot of descriptions of her as “a groupie”, “a fantasist”, and worse, and very few mentions of the fact that she had a life outside her partner. “Summertime Blues” looked like it was going to be the start of Eddie Cochran’s career as a rock and roll star, but in fact it was the peak of it, at least in the US. While the song was a big hit, the follow-up, “C’mon Everybody”, which was written by Cochran and Capehart to much the same formula, but without the humour that characterised “Summertime Blues”, didn’t do so well: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “C’mon Everybody”] That made only number thirty-five on the US charts, and would be Cochran’s last top forty record there — but in the UK, it was a bigger hit than “Summertime Blues”, reaching number six. “C’mon Everybody” was, though, big enough for Cochran to make some TV appearances. He’d agreed to go on tour with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on a tour called the Winter Dance Party tour, but had bowed out when he got some offers of TV work. He definitely appeared on a show called Town Hall Party broadcast from California on February the second 1959, and according to Sheeley he was booked to appear in New York on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was the reason he’d decided not to do the tour, a few days later. As it turned out, Cochran never made that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as in the early hours of February the third, his friends died in a plane crash. He refused to get on the plane to New York for the show, and instead drove out to the desert in his station wagon to grieve, and from that point on he developed a fear of flying. The follow-up to “C’mon Everybody”, “Teenage Heaven”, only went to number ninety-nine on the charts, and his next two singles didn’t do much better. “Somethin’ Else”, a song that Sheeley had written for him, made number fifty-eight, while his cover version of Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” didn’t chart at all. 1959 was a depressing year for Cochran personally and professionally. But while “Somethin’ Else” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So” were flops in the US, they both made the top thirty in the UK. In the US, guitar-based white rock and roll was now firmly out of fashion, with the audience split between black vocal groups singing R&B and white male solo singers called Bobby singing mid-tempo pop. But in the UK, the image of rock and roll in people’s minds was still that of the rockabillies from a couple of years earlier — while British musical trends would start to move faster than the US by the sixties, in the fifties they lagged a long way behind. And in particular, Cochran’s friend Gene Vincent was doing much better in Britain than in the US. Very few US performers had toured the UK, and with the exception of Buddy Holly, most of those who had were not particularly impressive. Because of an agreement between the two countries’ musicians’ unions, it was difficult for musicians to perform in one country if they were from the other. It wasn’t quite so difficult for solo performers, who could be backed by local musicians and were covered under a different agreement, but Lew and Leslie Grade, who had a virtual monopoly on the UK entertainment business, had had a very bad experience with Jerry Lee Lewis when his marriage to his teenage cousin had caused his UK tour to be cancelled, and anyway, Britain was an unimportant market a long way away from America, so why would Americans come all that way? For most of 1959, the closest thing to American rock and roll stars touring the UK were Connie Francis and Paul Anka, neither of whom screamed rock and roll rebellion. American rockers just didn’t come to the UK. Unless they had nowhere else to go, that is — and Gene Vincent had nowhere else to go. In the US, he was a washed-up has been who’d burned every single bridge, but in the UK he was an American Rock Star. In late 1959 he released a not-great single, “Wildcat”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Wildcat”] That single wasn’t doing particularly well, but then Larry Parnes and Jack Good hatched a plan. Good had a new TV show, “Boy Meets Girls”, based around one of Parnes’ artists, Marty Wilde, and also had a column in Disc magazine. They’d get an American rock star over to the UK, Parnes would stick him on a bill with a bunch of Parnes’ acts, Good would put him on the TV show and promote him in Disc magazine, and the tour and TV show would split the costs. Wilde was, at the time, about to go into a career slump. He’d just got married, and he and his wife were trying for their first kid — they’d decided that if it was a girl, they were going to call her Kim. It seemed likely they were going to lose his audience of teenage girls, as he was no longer available, and so Larry Parnes was trying to move him from rock and roll into musical styles that would be more suitable for adults, so his latest single was a ballad, “Bad Boy”: [Excerpt: Marty Wilde, “Bad Boy”] That meant that Wilde’s band, the Wildcats, made up at this point of Tony Belcher, Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, were no longer going to be suitable to back Wilde, as they were all rock and rollers, so they’d be fine for whichever rock star they could persuade over to the UK. Vincent was the only rock star available, and his latest single was even called “Wildcat”. That made him perfect for Parnes’ purposes, though Vincent was slightly nervous about using British musicians — he simply didn’t think that British musicians would be any good. As it turned out, Vincent had nothing to worry about on that score at least. When he got to the studios in Didsbury, in Manchester, where Boy Meets Girls was filmed, he met some of the best session musicians Britain had to offer. The house band for the show, the Flying Squad, was a smaller version of the bands that had appeared on Good’s earlier shows, a nine-piece group that included organist Cherry Wainer and session drummer Andy White, and was led by Joe Brown. Brown was a Larry Parnes artist, who at this point had released one rather uninspired single, the country-flavoured “People Gotta Talk”: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “People Gotta Talk”] But Brown had an independent streak, which could be seen just from his name — Larry Parnes had tried to change it, as he did with all his acts, but Brown had flat-out refused to be called Elmer Twitch, the name Parnes had chosen for him. He insisted on keeping his own name, and it was under that name that he became one of Britain’s most respected guitarists. Vincent, amazingly, found these British musicians to be every bit as good as any musicians he’d worked with in the USA. But that was about all that he liked about the UK — you couldn’t get a hamburger or a pizza anywhere in the whole country, and the TV was only in black and white, and it finished at 11PM. For someone like Vincent, who liked to stay up all night watching old monster movies on TV, that was completely unacceptable. Luckily for him, at least he had his gun and knife to keep him occupied — he’d strapped them both to the leg iron he used for his damaged leg, so they wouldn’t set off the metal detectors coming into the country. But whatever his thoughts about the country as a whole, he couldn’t help loving the audience reaction. Jack Good knew how to present a rock and roll star to an audience, and he’d moved Vincent out of the slacks and sweater vests and blue caps into the kind of leather that he’d already had Vince Taylor wear. He got Vincent to emphasise his limp, and to look pained at all times. He was imagining Vincent as something along the lines of Richard III, and wanted him to appear as dangerous as possible. He used all the tricks of stagecraft that he’d used on Taylor, but with the added advantage that Vincent had a remarkable voice, unlike Taylor. Sadly, as is the case with almost all of the British TV of the period, the videotapes of the performances have long since been wiped, but we have poor-quality audio that demonstrates both how good Vincent was sounding and how well the British musicians were able to adapt to backing him: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Summertime”, live on Boy Meets Girls] After making three appearances on Boy Meets Girls, Vincent was put on tour backed by the Wildcats, on a bill with acts like Wee Willie Harris and the Bachelors (the ones who recorded for Parlophone, not the later act of the same name), and “Wildcat” started going up the charts. Even though Gene Vincent hadn’t had a hit in three years, he was a massive success with the British audiences, and as a result Parnes and Good decided that it might be an idea if they got another American star over here, and the obvious choice was Eddie Cochran. Cochran had the same agent as Vincent, and so there was a working relationship there; they both knew each other and so Vincent could help persuade Cochran over; and Cochran had had a string of top thirty hits in the UK, but was commercially dead in the US. It was tempting for Cochran, too — as well as the obvious advantage of playing to people who were actually buying his record, the geography of Britain appealed. He’d been terrified of flying since Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had died, but the British tour would only involve the transatlantic flight — all the travel once he was in the UK would be by road or rail. Before he came over, he had to record his next single, to be released while he was over in the UK. So on January the 8th, 1960, Eddie Cochran went into Gold Star Studios with his normal bass player, Guybo, and with his friends Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, the guitarist and drummer of the Crickets, and they cut what turned out to be his last single, “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] Two days later, he was in Britain, for the start of what was the biggest rock and roll tour in British history to that point — a hundred and eight live appearances, plus several TV and radio appearances, in a little over three months, playing two shows a night most nights. Parnes felt he had to work them hard to justify their fees — Vincent was getting $2500 a week, and Cochran $1000, while for example Billy Fury, at that point the biggest of Parnes’ acts, was on a salary of twenty pounds a week. While Vincent had made a great impression largely despite himself, Cochran was a different matter. Everyone seemed to love him. Unlike Vincent, he was a musician’s musician, and he formed close friendships with the players on the tour. Joe Brown, for example, remembers Cochran explaining to him that if you swap the G string on your guitar for a second B string, tuned down to G, you could bend a note a full tone — Brown used that trick to make himself one of the most sought-after session players in the UK before his own pop career started to take off. It was also apparent that while Jack Good had had to create a stage act for Gene Vincent, he didn’t have to do anything to make Cochran look good in front of the cameras. Marty Wilde said of him “The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his complexion. We British lads had acne and all the usual problems, and Eddie walked in with the most beautiful hair and the most beautiful skin – his skin was a light brown, beautiful colour, all that California sunshine, and I thought ‘you lucky devil’. We had Manchester white all over us. And he had the most beautiful face — the photographs never did the guy justice”. From the moment Cochran started his set in Ipswich, by saying “It’s great to be here in Hipswich” and wiggling his hips, he was utterly in command of the British audiences. Thankfully, because they did so many TV and radio sessions while they were over here, we have some idea of what these shows sounded like — and from the recordings, even when they were in the antiseptic environment of a BBC recording studio, without an audience, they still sounded fantastic. On some shows, Cochran would start with his back to the audience, the band would start playing “Somethin’ Else”, the song that Sharon Sheeley had written for him that had been a minor hit, and he’d whirl round and face the audience on the opening line, “Well look-a there!” [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, “Somethin’ Else [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] The shows all had a number of acts on, all of them other than the stars Larry Parnes acts, and because there were so many shows, acts would get rotated in and out as the tour went on. But some of those who played on many dates were Vince Eager, who had named himself after Gene Vincent but quickly grew more attached to Eddie Cochran, who he started to regard as his best friend as the tour went on, Tony Sheridan, who was building a solo career after leaving the Oh Boy! band, Georgie Fame, who was already more interested in being a jazz and R&B pianist in the mould of Mose Allison than he was in being a pop star, Johnny Gentle, a Liverpudlian performer who never rose to massive success, and Billy Fury, by far the most talented of Parnes’ acts. Fury was another Liverpudlian, who looked enough like Cochran that they could be brothers, and who had a top ten hit at the time with “Collette”, one of many hits he wrote for himself: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, “Collette”]  Fury was something of a sex symbol, aided by the fact that he would stuff his pants with the cardboard tube from a toilet roll before going on stage. This would lead the girls to scream at him — but would also lead their violent boyfriends to try to bottle him off stage, which meant he had more reason than most to have stagefright. Cochran would joke with Fury, and try to put him at ease — one story has him telling a nervous Fury, about to go on stage, to just say to himself “I am the greatest performer in the world”. Fury repeated back “I am the greatest performer in the world”, and Cochran replied, “No you’re not — I am!” This kind of joking led to Cochran becoming immensely popular among all the musicians on the tour, and to him once again falling into his old role of protecting Gene Vincent from the consequences of his own actions, when Vincent would do things like cut up a suit belonging to one of the road managers, while the road manager was inside it. While Vincent was the headliner, Cochran was clearly the one who impressed the British audiences the most. We have some stories from people who saw the tour, and they all focus on Eddie. Particularly notable is the tour’s residency in Liverpool, during which time Cochran was opening his set with his version of “What’d I Say”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, “What’d I Say [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] We have this report of Cochran’s performance in Liverpool: “Eddie blew me away. He had his unwound 3rd string, looked good and sang good and he was really getting to be a good guitarist… One moment will always represent Eddie to me. He finished a tune, the crowd stopped screaming and clapping, and he stepped up to the mike and before he said something he put both his hands back, pushed his hair back, and some girl, a single voice in the audience, she went ‘Eddie!’ and he said ‘Hi honey!’… I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it – rock ’n’ roll!’” That’s a quote from George Harrison in the early 1990s. He’d gone to see the show with a friend, John Lennon — it was Lennon’s first ever rock and roll gig as an audience member, and one of a very small number he ever attended. Lennon never particularly enjoyed seeing live shows — he preferred records — but even he couldn’t resist seeing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent on the same bill. The Liverpool shows were massive successes, despite both American rockers being increasingly bored and turning more and more to drink as a result. Apparently the two would drink a bottle of bourbon between them before going on stage, and at one Liverpool show Cochran had to hold on to a mic stand to keep himself upright for the first two songs, before he sobered up enough to let go. The shows were successful enough that a local promoter, Allan Williams, asked if he could book Cochran and Vincent for another show, and Larry Parnes said yes — after Liverpool, they had to play Newcastle, Manchester, London, and Bristol, taking up another month, and then Eddie Cochran was going to be going back to the US for a couple of weeks, but he could pencil them in for six weeks’ time, when Cochran was going to come back. It’s quite surprising that Cochran agreed to come back, because he was getting thoroughly sick of the UK. He’d asked Sharon Sheeley to fly over and join him, but other than her and Vincent he had nothing of home with him, and he liked sunshine, fast food, cold beer, and all-night TV, and hated everything about the British winter, which was far darker and wetter than anything he’d experienced. But on the other hand, he was enjoying making music with these British people. There’s a great recording of Cochran, Vincent, Billy Fury, and Joe Brown jamming on the Willie Dixon blues song “My Babe” on “Boy Meets Girls”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, “My Babe”] But by the time the tour ended in Bristol, Eddie was very keen to get back. He was going to be bringing Vince Eager over to America to record, and arranged to meet him in London in the early hours of Easter Sunday. They were going to be taking the lunchtime plane from what was then London Airport but is now Heathrow. But there was a problem with getting there on time. There were very few trains between Bristol and London, and they’d have to get a car from the train station to the airport. But that Easter Sunday was the day of the annual Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons. These were massive marches which were big enough that they spawned compilation albums of songs to sing on the march, like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s “Brother Won’t You Join the Line”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, “Brother Won’t You Join the Line?”] But the main effect the march was having on Cochran and Vincent was that it meant that to be sure of catching their plane, they would have to travel overnight by car. At first, they asked one of the other artists on the tour, Johnny Gentle, if they could go in his car, but he already had a carful, so they ended up getting a local driver, named George Martin (not the one at Parlophone Records) to drive them overnight. They got into the back seat of the car — Cochran sitting between Vincent and Sheeley, as Sheeley couldn’t stand Vincent. Vincent took a sleeping pill and went to sleep almost immediately, but Sheeley and Cochran were in a good mood, singing “California Here We Come” together, when Martin took a turn too fast and hit a lamppost. Vincent and Sheeley suffered major injuries and had to spend time in hospital. Cochran died. A short while later, Johnny Gentle’s car made its way onward towards London, and ran out of fuel. As all-night garages weren’t a thing in Britain then, they flagged down a policeman who told them there’d been a crash, and they could see if the breakdown vehicle would let them siphon petrol from the wrecked car. They did, and it was only the next day they realised which car it was they’d taken the fuel from. One of the police at the scene – maybe even that one – was a cadet who would later change his name to Dave Dee, and become the lead singer in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. As soon as the news got out about Cochran’s death, “Three Steps to Heaven”, which had come out in the US, but not yet in the UK, was rush-released: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] It went to number one, and became Cochran’s biggest hit. Larry Parnes didn’t see why Cochran’s death should put a crimp in his plans, and so he immediately started promoting the shows for which Vincent and Cochran had been booked, calling them Eddie Cochran Tribute Shows, and talking to the press about how ironic it was that Cochran’s last song was “Three Steps to Heaven”. Vince Eager was so disgusted with Parnes that he never worked with him again. But those shows turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone could have imagined. Allan Williams was worried that without Cochran, the show he’d got booked in Liverpool wouldn’t get enough of a crowd, so he booked in a number of local bands — Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Nero and the Gladiators, and Gerry and the Pacemakers — to fill out the bill. This led to all the bands and musicians in Liverpool realising, for the first time, how much talent there was in the city and how many bands there were. That one show changed Liverpool from a town where there were a few bands to a town with a music scene, and May the third 1960 can be pointed to as the day that Merseybeat started. Parnes was impressed enough by the local groups that he decided that Liverpool might be a good place to look for musicians to back his singers on the road. And we’ll pick up on what happened then in a few months. Sharon Sheeley, once she’d recovered from her injuries, went on to write hits for Brenda Lee, Jackie DeShannon, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and when Jack Good moved back to the US, she renewed her acquaintance with him, and together with Sheeley’s husband they created Shindig, the most important American music show of the sixties. But by the time she died in 2002, all her obituaries talked about was that she’d been Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend. And as for Gene Vincent, he was already in chronic pain, suffering mood swings, and drinking too much before the accident hospitalised him. After that, all those things intensified. He became increasingly unreliable, and the hits dried up even in Britain by mid-1961. He made some good music in the sixties, but almost nobody was listening any more, and an attempted comeback was cut short when he died, aged thirty-six, in 1971, from illnesses caused by his alcoholism. Despite their tragic deaths, Vincent and Cochran, on that 1960 UK tour, almost accidentally catalysed a revolution in British music, and the changes from that will reverberate throughout the rest of this story.

feat BUDDY HOLLY - RICHIE VALENS - THE BIG BOPPER - DON MCLEAN   the day the music died 

Explore the tragic events of February 3, 1959, famously dubbed 'the day the music died' in Don McLean's 'American Pie.' On this fateful day, rising stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper lost their lives in a plane crash. We delve into the circumstances leading up to the crash amidst the Winter Dance Party tour and its impact on music history. #BuddyHolly #TheDayTheMusicDied #RitchieValens #TheBigBopper #AmericanPie #WinterDanceParty #planecrash #musichistory #1959tragedy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode seventy-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly, and at the reasons he ended up on the plane that killed him. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper.  Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/—-more—- Before I get to the resources and transcript, a quick apology. This one is up more than a day late. I’ve not been coping very well with all the news about coronavirus outbreak (I’m one of those who’s been advised by the government to sel-isolate for three months) and things are taking longer than normal. Next week’s should be up at the normal time. Also, no Mixcloud this week — I get a server error when uploading the file to Mixcloud’s site. Erratum I mention that Bob Dylan saw the first show on the Winter Dance Party tour with no drummer. He actually saw the last one with the drummer, who was hospitalised that night after the show, not before the show as I had thought.  Resources   I’ve used two biographies for the bulk of the information here — Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh, and Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman. I also used  Beverly Mendheim’s book on Ritchie Valens. There are many collections of Buddy Holly’s work available, but many of them are very shoddy, with instrumental overdubs recorded over demos after his death. The best compilation I am aware of is The Memorial Collection, which contains almost everything he issued in his life, as he issued it (for some reason two cover versions are missing) along with the undubbed acoustic recordings that were messed with and released after his death. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before I begin, this episode will deal with both accidental bereavement and miscarriage, so if you think those subjects might be traumatising, you may want to skip this one. Today, we’re going to look at a record that holds a sad place in rock and roll’s history, because it’s the record that is often credited as “the first posthumous rock and roll hit”. Now, that’s not strictly true — as we’ve talked about before in this podcast, there is rarely, if ever, a “first” anything at all, and indeed we’ve already looked at an earlier posthumous hit when we talked about “Pledging My Love” by Johnny Ace. But it is a very sad fact that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly ended up becoming the first of several posthumous hit records that Holly had, and that there would be many more posthumous hit records by other performers after him than there had been before him. Buddy Holly’s death is something that hangs over every attempt to tell his story. More than any other musician of his generation, his death has entered rock and roll mythology. Even if you don’t know Holly’s music, you probably know two things about him — that he wore glasses, and that he died in a plane crash. You’re likely also to know that Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in the same crash, even if you don’t know any of the songs that either of those two artists recorded. Normally, when you’re telling a story, you’d leave that to the end, but in the case of Holly it overshadows his life so much that there’s absolutely no point trying to build up any suspense — not to mention that there’s something distasteful about turning a real person’s tragic death into entertainment. I hope I’ve not done so in episodes where other people have died, but it’s even more important not to do so here. Because while the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper is always portrayed as an accident, the cause of their death has its roots in exploitation of young, vulnerable, people, and a pressure to work no matter what. So today, we’re going to look at how “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” became Buddy Holly’s last single: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] People often talk about how Buddy Holly’s career was short, but what they don’t mention is that his chart career was even shorter. Holly’s first chart single, “That’ll Be the Day”, was released in May 1957. His last top thirty single during his lifetime, “Think it Over”, was released in May 1958. By the time he went on the Winter Dance Party, the tour that led to his death, in January 1959, he had gone many months without a hit, and his most recent record, “Heartbeat”, had only reached number eighty-two. He’d lost every important professional relationship in his life, and had split from the group that had made him famous. To see how this happened, we need to pick up where we left off with him last time. You’ll remember that when we left the Crickets, they’d released “That’ll Be the Day”, and it hadn’t yet become a hit, and they’d also released “Words of Love” as a Buddy Holly solo single. While there were different names on them, the same people would make the records, whether it was a solo or group record — Buddy Holly on vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, Jerry Allison on drums, Joe Mauldin on bass, and producer Norman Petty and his wife sometimes adding keyboards. They didn’t distinguish between “Buddy Holly” and “Crickets” material when recording — rather they separated it out later. The more straight-ahead rock and roll records would have backing vocals overdubbed on them, usually by a vocal group called the Picks, and would be released as Crickets records, while the more experimental ones would be left with only Holly’s vocal on, and would be released as solo records. (There were no records released as by “Buddy Holly and the Crickets” at the time, because the whole idea of the split was that DJs would play two records instead of one if they appeared to be by different artists). And they were recording *a lot*. Two days after “That’ll be the Day” was released, on the twenty-seventh of May 1957, they recorded “Everyday” and “Not Fade Away”. Between then and the first of July they recorded “Tell Me How”, “Oh Boy”, “Listen to Me”, “I’m Going to Love You Too”, and cover versions of Fats Domino’s “Valley of Tears” and Little Richard’s “Ready Teddy”. Remember, this was all before they’d had a single hit — “That’ll Be the Day” and “Words of Love” still hadn’t charted. This is quite an astonishing outpouring of songs, but the big leap forward came on the second of July, when they made a second attempt at a song they’d attempted to record back in late 1956, and had been playing in their stage show since then. The song had originally been titled “Cindy Lou”, after Buddy’s niece, but Jerry Allison had recently started dating a girl named Peggy Sue Gerrison, and they decided to change the lyrics to be about her. The song had also originally been played as a Latin-flavoured number, but when they were warming up, Allison started playing a fast paradiddle on his snare drum. Holly decided that they were going to change the tempo of the song and have Allison play that part all the way through, though this meant that Allison had to go out and play in the hallway rather than in the main studio, because the noise from his drums was too loud in the studio itself. The final touch came when Petty decided, on the song’s intro, to put the drums through the echo chamber and keep flicking the switch on the echo from “on” to “off”, so it sounded like there were two drummers playing: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] Someone else was flicking a switch, too — Niki Sullivan was already starting to regret joining the Crickets, because there really wasn’t room for his rhythm guitar on most of the songs they were playing. And on “Peggy Sue” he ended up not playing at all. On that song, Buddy had to switch between two pickups — one for when he was singing, and another to give his guitar a different tone during the solo. But he was playing so fast that he couldn’t move his hand to the switch, and in those days there were no foot pedals one could use for the same sort of effect. So Niki Sullivan became Holly’s foot pedal. He knelt beside Holly and waited for the point when the solo was about to start, and flicked the switch on his guitar. When the solo came to an end again, Sullivan flicked the switch again and it went back to the original sound. [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] It’s a really strange sounding record, if you start to pay attention to it. Other than during the solo, Holly’s guitar is so quiet that you can hear the plectrum as loudly as you can hear the notes. He just keeps up a ram-a-ram-a quaver downstrum throughout the whole song, which sounds simple until you try to play it, at which point you realise that you start feeling like your arm’s going to fall off about a quarter of the way through. And there’s just that, those drums (playing a part which must be similarly physically demanding) with their weird echo, and Holly’s voice. In theory, Joe Mauldin’s bass is also in there, but it’s there at almost homeopathic levels. It’s a record that is entirely carried by the voice, the drums, and the guitar solo. Of course, Niki Sullivan wasn’t happy about being relegated to guitar-switch-flicker, and there were other tensions within the group as well. Holly was having an affair with a married woman at the time — and Jerry Allison, who was Holly’s best friend as well as his bandmate, was also in love with her, though not in a relationship with her, and so Holly had to keep his affair hidden from his best friend. And not only that, but Allison and Sullivan were starting to have problems with each other, too. To help defuse the situation, Holly’s brother Larry took him on holiday, to go fishing in Colorado. But even there, the stress of the current situation was showing — Buddy spent much of the trip worried about the lack of success of “That’ll Be the Day”, and obsessing over a new record by a new singer, Paul Anka, that had gone to number one: [Excerpt: Paul Anka, “Diana”] Holly was insistent that he could do better than that, and that his records were at least as good. But so far they were doing nothing at all on the charts. But then a strange thing happened. “That’ll Be the Day” started getting picked up by black radio stations. It turned out that there had been another group called the Crickets — a black doo-wop group from about five years earlier, led by a singer called Dean Barlow, who had specialised in smooth Ink Spots-style ballads: [Excerpt The Crickets featuring Dean Barlow, “Be Faithful”] People at black radio stations had assumed that this new group called the Crickets was the same one, and had then discovered that “That’ll Be the Day” was really rather good. The group even got booked on an otherwise all-black tour headlined by Clyde McPhatter and Otis Rush, booked by people who hadn’t realised they were white. Before going on the tour, they formally arranged to have Norman Petty be their manager as well as their producer. They were a success on the tour, though when it reached the Harlem Apollo, which had notoriously hostile audiences, the group had to reconfigure their sets, as the audiences didn’t like any of Holly’s original material except “That’ll Be the Day”, but did like the group’s cover versions of R&B records like “Bo Diddley”: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Bo Diddley (Undubbed Version)”] Some have said that the Crickets were the first white act to play the Apollo. That’s not the case — Bobby Darin had played there before them, and I think so had the jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and maybe one or two others. But it was still a rarity, and the Crickets had to work hard to win the audience around. After they finished that tour, they moved on to a residency at the Brooklyn Paramount, on an Alan Freed show that also featured Little Richard and Larry Williams — who the Crickets met for the first time when they walked into the dressing room to find Richard and Williams engaged in a threesome with Richard’s girlfriend. During that engagement at the Paramount, the tensions within the group reached boiling point. Niki Sullivan, who was in an awful mood because he was trying to quit smoking, revealed the truth about Holly’s affair to Allison, and the group got in a fist-fight. According to Sullivan — who seems not to have always been the most reliable of interviewees — Sullivan gave Jerry Allison a black eye, and then straight away they had to go to the rooftop to take the photo for the group’s first album, The “Chirping” Crickets. Sullivan says that while the photo was retouched to hide the black eye, it’s still visible, though I can’t see it myself. After this, they went into a three-month tour on a giant package of stars featuring Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, the Bobbettes, the Drifters, LaVern Baker, and many more. By this point, both “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue” had risen up the charts — “That’ll Be the Day” eventually went to number one, while “Peggy Sue” hit number three — and the next Crickets single, “Oh Boy!” was also charting. “Oh Boy!” had originally been written by an acquaintance of the band, Sonny West, who had recorded his own version as “All My Love” a short while earlier: [Excerpt: Sonny West, “All My Love”] Glen Hardin, the piano player on that track, would later join a lineup of the Crickets in the sixties (and later still would be Elvis’ piano player and arranger in the seventies). Holly would later also cover another of West’s songs, “Rave On”. The Crickets’ version of “Oh Boy!” was recorded at a faster tempo, and became another major hit, their last top ten: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Oh Boy!”] Around the time that came out, Eddie Cochran joined the tour, and like the Everly Brothers he became fast friends with the group. The group also made an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, with Holly, Mauldin, and Allison enthusiastically performing “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue”, and Sullivan enthusiastically miming and playing an unplugged guitar. Sullivan was becoming more and more sidelined in the group, and when they returned to Lubbock at the end of the tour — during which he’d ended up breaking down and crying — he decided he was going to quit the group. Sullivan tried to have a solo career, releasing “It’s All Over” on Dot Records: [Excerpt: Niki Sullivan, “It’s All Over”] But he had no success, and ended up working in electronics, and in later years also making money from the Buddy Holly nostalgia industry. He’d only toured as a member of the group for a total of ninety days, though he’d been playing with them in the studio for a few months before that, and he’d played on a total of twenty-seven of the thirty-two songs that Holly or the Crickets would release in Holly’s lifetime. While he’d been promised an equal share of the group’s income — and Petty had also promised Sullivan, like all the other Crickets, that he would pay 10% of his income to his church — Sullivan got into endless battles with Petty over seeing the group’s accounts, which Petty wouldn’t show him, and eventually settled for getting just $1000, ten percent of the recording royalties just for the single “That’ll Be the Day”, and co-writing royalties on one song, “I’m Going to Love You Too”. His church didn’t get a cent. Meanwhile, Petty was busy trying to widen the rifts in the group. He decided that while the records would still be released as either “Buddy Holly” or “the Crickets”, as a live act they would from now on be billed as “Buddy Holly and the Crickets”, a singer and his backing group, and that while Mauldin and Allison would continue to get twenty-five percent of the money each, Holly would be on fifty percent. This was an easy decision, since Petty was handling all the money and only giving the group pocket money rather than giving them their actual shares of the money they’d earned. The group spent all of 1958 touring, visiting Hawaii, Australia, the UK, and all over the US, including the famous last ever Alan Freed tour that we looked at recently in episodes on Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. They got in another guitarist, Tommy Allsup, who took over the lead role while Buddy played rhythm, and who joined them on tour, though he wasn’t an official member of the group. The first recording Allsup played on was “It’s So Easy”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “It’s So Easy”] But the group’s records were selling less and less well. Holly was getting worried, and there was another factor that came into play. On a visit to New York, stopping in to visit their publisher in the Brill Building, all three of the Crickets became attracted to the receptionist, a Puerto Rican woman named Maria Elena Santiago who was a few years older than them. They all started to joke about which of them would ask her out, and Holly eventually did so. It turned out that while Maria Elena was twenty-five, she’d never yet been on a date, and she had to ask the permission of her aunt, who she lived with, and who was also the head of the Latin-American division of the publishing company. The aunt rang round every business contact she had, satisfied herself that Buddy was a nice boy, and gave her blessing for the date. The next day, she was giving her blessing for the two to marry — Buddy proposed on the very first date. They eventually went on a joint honeymoon with Jerry Allison and Peggy Sue. But Maria Elena was someone who worked in the music industry, and was a little bit older, and she started saying things to Buddy like “You need to get a proper accounting of the money that’s owed you”, and “You should be getting paid”. This strained his relationship with Petty, who didn’t want any woman of colour butting her nose in and getting involved in his business. Buddy moved to a flat in Greenwich Village with Maria Elena, but for the moment he was still working with Petty, even after Petty used some extremely misogynistic slurs I’m not going to repeat here against his new wife. But he was worried about his lack of hits, and they tried a few different variations on the formula. The Crickets recorded one song, a cover version of a song they’d learned on the Australian tour, with Jerry Allison singing lead. It was released under the name “Ivan” — Allison’s middle name — and became a minor hit: [Excerpt: Ivan, “Real Wild Child”] They tried more and more different things, like getting King Curtis in to play saxophone on “Reminiscing”, and on one occasion dispensing with the Crickets entirely and having Buddy cut a Bobby Darin song, “Early in the Morning”, with other musicians. They were stockpiling recordings much faster than they could release them, but the releases weren’t doing well at all. “It’s So Easy” didn’t even reach the top one hundred. Holly was also working with other artists. In September, he produced a session for his friend Waylon Jennings, who would later become a huge country star. It was Jennings’ first ever session, and they turned out an interesting version of the old Cajun song “Jole Blon”, which had earlier been a hit for Moon Mullican. This version had Holly on guitar and King Curtis on saxophone, and is a really interesting attempt at blending Cajun music with R&B: [Excerpt: Waylon Jennings, “Jole Blon”] But Holly’s biggest hope was placed in a session that was really breaking new ground. No rock and roll singer had ever recorded with a full string section before — at least as far as he was aware, and bearing in mind that, as we’ve seen many times, there’s never truly a first anything. In October 1958, Holly went into the studio with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, with the intention of recording three songs — his own “True Love Ways”, a song called “Moondreams” written by Petty, and one called “Raining in My Heart” written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who’d written many hits for his friends the Everly Brothers. At the last minute, though, he decided to record a fourth song, which had been written for him by Paul Anka, the same kid whose “Diana” had been so irritating to him the year before. He played through the song on his guitar for Dick Jacobs, who only had a short while to write the arrangement, and so stuck to the simplest thing he could think of, basing it around pizzicato violins: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] At that point, everything still seemed like it could work out OK. Norman Petty and the other Crickets were all there at the recording session, cheering Buddy on. That night the Crickets appeared on American Bandstand, miming to “It’s So Easy”. That would be the last time they ever performed together, and soon there would be an irreparable split that would lead directly to Holly’s death — and to his posthumous fame. Holly was getting sick of Norman Petty’s continual withholding of royalties, and he’d come up with a plan. The Crickets would, as a group, confront Petty, get him to give them the money he owed them, and then all move to New York together to start up their own record label and publishing company. They’d stop touring, and focus on making records, and this would allow them the time to get things right and try new things out, which would lead to them having hits again, and they could also produce records for their friends like Waylon Jennings and Sonny Curtis. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, but it relied on them getting that money off Norman Petty. When the other two got back to Texas, Petty started manipulating them. He told them they were small-town Texas boys who would never be able to live in the big city. He told them that they didn’t need Buddy Holly, and that they could carry on making Crickets records without him. He told them that Maria Elena was manipulating Buddy, and that if they went off to New York with him it would be her who was in charge of the group from that point on. And he also pointed out that he was currently the only signatory on the group’s bank account, and it would be a real shame if something happened to all that money. By the time Buddy got back to Texas, the other two Crickets had agreed that they were going to stick with Norman Petty. Petty said it was fine if Buddy wanted to fire him, but he wasn’t getting any money until a full audit had been done of the organisation’s money. Buddy was no longer even going to get the per diem pocket money or expenses he’d been getting. Holly went back to New York, and started writing many, many, more songs, recording dozens of acoustic demos for when he could start his plan up: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”] It was a massive creative explosion for the young man. He was not only writing songs himself, but he was busily planning to make an album of Latin music, and he was making preparations for two more projects he’d like to do — an album of duets on gospel songs with Mahalia Jackson, and an album of soul duets with Ray Charles. He was going to jazz clubs, and he had ambitions of following Elvis into films, but doing it properly — he enrolled in courses with Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, to learn Method Acting. Greenwich Village in 1958 was the perfect place for a young man with a huge amount of natural talent and appetite for learning, but little experience of the wider world and culture. But the young couple were living off Maria Elena’s aunt’s generosity, and had no income at all of their own. And then Maria Elena revealed that she was pregnant. And Norman Petty revealed something he’d kept hidden before — by the terms of Buddy’s contract, he hadn’t really been recording for Brunswick or Coral, so they didn’t owe him a penny. He’d been recording for Petty’s company, who then sold the masters on to the other labels, and would get all the royalties. The Crickets bank account into which the royalties had supposedly been being paid, and which Petty had refused to let the band members see, was essentially empty. There was only one thing for it. He had to do another tour. And the only one he could get on was a miserable-seeming affair called the Winter Dance Party. While most of the rock and roll package tours of the time had more than a dozen acts on, this one had only five. There was an opening act called Frankie Sardo, and then Dion and the Belmonts, who had had a few minor hits, and had just recorded, but not yet released, their breakthrough record “Teenager in Love”: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “Teenager in Love”] Then there was the Big Bopper, who was actually a fairly accomplished songwriter but was touring on the basis of his one hit, a novelty song called “Chantilly Lace”: [Excerpt: the Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”] And Ritchie Valens, whose hit “Donna” was rising up the charts in a way that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” was notably failing to do: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] Buddy put together a new touring band consisting of Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass — who had never played bass before starting the tour — and a drummer called Carl Bunch. For a while it looked like Buddy’s friend Eddie Cochran was going to go on tour with them as well, but shortly before the tour started Cochran got an offer to do the Ed Sullivan Show, which would have clashed with the tour dates, and so he didn’t make it. Maria Elena was very insistent that she didn’t want Buddy to go, but he felt that he had no choice if he was going to support his new child. The Winter Dance Party toured Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, through the end of January and the beginning of February 1959, and the conditions were miserable for everyone concerned. The tour had been put together with no thought of logistics, and it zig-zagged wildly across those three states, with gigs often four hundred miles away from each other. The musicians had to sleep on the tour bus — or buses. The tour was being run on a shoe-string, and they’d gone with the cheapest vehicle-hire company possible. They went through, according to one biography I’ve read, eight different buses in eleven days, as none of the buses were able to cope with the Midwestern winter, and their engines kept failing and the heating on several of the buses broke down. I don’t know if you’ve spent any time in that part of America in the winter, but I go there for Christmas every year (my wife has family in Minnesota) and it’s unimaginably cold in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it. It’s not unusual for temperatures to drop to as low as minus forty degrees, and to have three feet or more of snow. Travelling in a bus, with no heating, in that weather, all packed together, was hell for everyone. The Big Bopper and Valens were both fat, and couldn’t fit in the small seats easily. Several people on the tour, including Bopper and Valens, got the flu. And then finally Carl Bunch got hospitalised with frostbite. Buddy’s band, which was backing everyone on stage, now had no drummer, and so for the next three days of the tour Holly, Dion, and Valens would all take it in turns playing the drums, as all of them were adequate drummers. The shows were still good, at least according to a young man named Robert Zimmerman, who saw the first drummerless show, in Duluth Minnesota, and who would move to Greenwich Village himself not that long afterwards. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy had had enough. He decided to charter a plane to take him to Fargo, North Dakota, which was just near Moorhead, Minnesota, where they were planning on playing their next show. He’d take everyone’s laundry — everyone stank and had been wearing the same clothes for days — and get it washed, and get some sleep in a real bed. The original plan was to have Allsup and Jennings travel with him, but eventually they gave up their seats to the two other people who were suffering the most — the Big Bopper and Valens. There are different stories about how that happened, most involving a coin-toss, but they all agree that when Buddy found out that Waylon Jennings was giving up his seat, he jokingly said to Jennings “I hope your old bus freezes”, and Jennings replied, “Yeah, well I hope your ol’ plane crashes”. The three of them got on the plane in the middle of the night, on a foggy winter’s night, which would require flying by instruments. Unfortunately, while the pilot on the plane was rated as being a good pilot during the day, he kept almost failing his certification for being bad at flying by instrument. And the plane in question had an unusual type of altitude meter. Where most altitude meters would go up when the plane was going up and down when it was going down, that particular model’s meter went down when the plane was going up, and up when it was going down. The plane took off, and less than five minutes after takeoff, it plummeted straight down, nose first, into the ground at top speed, killing everyone on board instantly. As soon as the news got out, Holly’s last single finally started rising up the charts. It ended up going to number thirteen on the US charts, and number one in many other countries. The aftermath shows how much contempt the music industry — and society itself — had for those musicians at that time. Maria Elena found out about Buddy’s death not from the police, but from the TV — this later prompted changes in how news of celebrity deaths was to be revealed. She was so upset that she miscarried two days later. She was too distraught to attend the funeral, and to this day has still never been able to bring herself to visit her husband’s grave. The grief was just too much. The rest of the people on the tour were forced to continue the remaining thirteen days of the tour without the three acts anyone wanted to go and see, but were also not paid their full wages, because the bill wasn’t as advertised. A new young singer was picked up to round out the bill on the next gig, a young Minnesotan Holly soundalike called Bobby Vee, whose first single, “Suzy Baby”, was just about to come out: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Suzy Baby”] When Vee went on tour on his own, later, he hired that Zimmerman kid we mentioned earlier as his piano player. Zimmerman worked under the stage name Elston Gunn, but would later choose a better one. After that date Holly, Valens, and the Bopper were replaced by Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Jimmy Clanton, and the tour continued. Meanwhile, the remaining Crickets picked themselves up and carried on. They got Buddy’s old friend Sonny Curtis on guitar, and a succession of Holly-soundalike singers, and continued playing together until Joe Mauldin died in 2015. Most of their records without Buddy weren’t particularly memorable, but they did record one song written by Curtis which would later become a hit for several other people, “I Fought the Law”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “I Fought the Law”] But the person who ended up benefiting most from Holly’s death was Norman Petty. Suddenly his stockpile of unreleased Buddy Holly recordings was a goldmine — and not only that, he ended up coming to an agreement with Holly’s estate that he could take all those demos Holly had recorded and overdub new backing tracks on them, turning them into full-blown rock and roll songs. Between overdubbed versions of the demos, and stockpiled full-band recordings, Buddy Holly kept having hit singles in the rest of the world until 1965, though none charted in the US, and he made both Petty and his estate very rich. Norman Petty died in 1984. His last project was a still-unreleased “updating” of Buddy’s biggest hits with synthesisers. These days, Buddy Holly is once again on tour, or at least something purporting to be him is. You can now go and see a “hologram tour”, in which an image of a look-not-very-alike actor miming to Holly’s old recordings is projected on glass, using the old Victorian stage trick Pepper’s Ghost, while a live band plays along to the records. Just because you’ve worked someone to death aged twenty-two, doesn’t mean that they can’t still keep earning money for you when they’re eighty-three. And a hologram will never complain about how cold the tour bus is, or want to wash his laundry.

Episode seventy-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly, and at the reasons he ended up on the plane that killed him. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper.  Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/—-more—- Before I get to the resources and transcript, a quick apology. This one is up more than a day late. I’ve not been coping very well with all the news about coronavirus outbreak (I’m one of those who’s been advised by the government to sel-isolate for three months) and things are taking longer than normal. Next week’s should be up at the normal time. Also, no Mixcloud this week — I get a server error when uploading the file to Mixcloud’s site. Erratum I mention that Bob Dylan saw the first show on the Winter Dance Party tour with no drummer. He actually saw the last one with the drummer, who was hospitalised that night after the show, not before the show as I had thought.  Resources   I’ve used two biographies for the bulk of the information here — Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh, and Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman. I also used  Beverly Mendheim’s book on Ritchie Valens. There are many collections of Buddy Holly’s work available, but many of them are very shoddy, with instrumental overdubs recorded over demos after his death. The best compilation I am aware of is The Memorial Collection, which contains almost everything he issued in his life, as he issued it (for some reason two cover versions are missing) along with the undubbed acoustic recordings that were messed with and released after his death. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before I begin, this episode will deal with both accidental bereavement and miscarriage, so if you think those subjects might be traumatising, you may want to skip this one. Today, we’re going to look at a record that holds a sad place in rock and roll’s history, because it’s the record that is often credited as “the first posthumous rock and roll hit”. Now, that’s not strictly true — as we’ve talked about before in this podcast, there is rarely, if ever, a “first” anything at all, and indeed we’ve already looked at an earlier posthumous hit when we talked about “Pledging My Love” by Johnny Ace. But it is a very sad fact that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” by Buddy Holly ended up becoming the first of several posthumous hit records that Holly had, and that there would be many more posthumous hit records by other performers after him than there had been before him. Buddy Holly’s death is something that hangs over every attempt to tell his story. More than any other musician of his generation, his death has entered rock and roll mythology. Even if you don’t know Holly’s music, you probably know two things about him — that he wore glasses, and that he died in a plane crash. You’re likely also to know that Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in the same crash, even if you don’t know any of the songs that either of those two artists recorded. Normally, when you’re telling a story, you’d leave that to the end, but in the case of Holly it overshadows his life so much that there’s absolutely no point trying to build up any suspense — not to mention that there’s something distasteful about turning a real person’s tragic death into entertainment. I hope I’ve not done so in episodes where other people have died, but it’s even more important not to do so here. Because while the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper is always portrayed as an accident, the cause of their death has its roots in exploitation of young, vulnerable, people, and a pressure to work no matter what. So today, we’re going to look at how “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” became Buddy Holly’s last single: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] People often talk about how Buddy Holly’s career was short, but what they don’t mention is that his chart career was even shorter. Holly’s first chart single, “That’ll Be the Day”, was released in May 1957. His last top thirty single during his lifetime, “Think it Over”, was released in May 1958. By the time he went on the Winter Dance Party, the tour that led to his death, in January 1959, he had gone many months without a hit, and his most recent record, “Heartbeat”, had only reached number eighty-two. He’d lost every important professional relationship in his life, and had split from the group that had made him famous. To see how this happened, we need to pick up where we left off with him last time. You’ll remember that when we left the Crickets, they’d released “That’ll Be the Day”, and it hadn’t yet become a hit, and they’d also released “Words of Love” as a Buddy Holly solo single. While there were different names on them, the same people would make the records, whether it was a solo or group record — Buddy Holly on vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, Jerry Allison on drums, Joe Mauldin on bass, and producer Norman Petty and his wife sometimes adding keyboards. They didn’t distinguish between “Buddy Holly” and “Crickets” material when recording — rather they separated it out later. The more straight-ahead rock and roll records would have backing vocals overdubbed on them, usually by a vocal group called the Picks, and would be released as Crickets records, while the more experimental ones would be left with only Holly’s vocal on, and would be released as solo records. (There were no records released as by “Buddy Holly and the Crickets” at the time, because the whole idea of the split was that DJs would play two records instead of one if they appeared to be by different artists). And they were recording *a lot*. Two days after “That’ll be the Day” was released, on the twenty-seventh of May 1957, they recorded “Everyday” and “Not Fade Away”. Between then and the first of July they recorded “Tell Me How”, “Oh Boy”, “Listen to Me”, “I’m Going to Love You Too”, and cover versions of Fats Domino’s “Valley of Tears” and Little Richard’s “Ready Teddy”. Remember, this was all before they’d had a single hit — “That’ll Be the Day” and “Words of Love” still hadn’t charted. This is quite an astonishing outpouring of songs, but the big leap forward came on the second of July, when they made a second attempt at a song they’d attempted to record back in late 1956, and had been playing in their stage show since then. The song had originally been titled “Cindy Lou”, after Buddy’s niece, but Jerry Allison had recently started dating a girl named Peggy Sue Gerrison, and they decided to change the lyrics to be about her. The song had also originally been played as a Latin-flavoured number, but when they were warming up, Allison started playing a fast paradiddle on his snare drum. Holly decided that they were going to change the tempo of the song and have Allison play that part all the way through, though this meant that Allison had to go out and play in the hallway rather than in the main studio, because the noise from his drums was too loud in the studio itself. The final touch came when Petty decided, on the song’s intro, to put the drums through the echo chamber and keep flicking the switch on the echo from “on” to “off”, so it sounded like there were two drummers playing: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] Someone else was flicking a switch, too — Niki Sullivan was already starting to regret joining the Crickets, because there really wasn’t room for his rhythm guitar on most of the songs they were playing. And on “Peggy Sue” he ended up not playing at all. On that song, Buddy had to switch between two pickups — one for when he was singing, and another to give his guitar a different tone during the solo. But he was playing so fast that he couldn’t move his hand to the switch, and in those days there were no foot pedals one could use for the same sort of effect. So Niki Sullivan became Holly’s foot pedal. He knelt beside Holly and waited for the point when the solo was about to start, and flicked the switch on his guitar. When the solo came to an end again, Sullivan flicked the switch again and it went back to the original sound. [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] It’s a really strange sounding record, if you start to pay attention to it. Other than during the solo, Holly’s guitar is so quiet that you can hear the plectrum as loudly as you can hear the notes. He just keeps up a ram-a-ram-a quaver downstrum throughout the whole song, which sounds simple until you try to play it, at which point you realise that you start feeling like your arm’s going to fall off about a quarter of the way through. And there’s just that, those drums (playing a part which must be similarly physically demanding) with their weird echo, and Holly’s voice. In theory, Joe Mauldin’s bass is also in there, but it’s there at almost homeopathic levels. It’s a record that is entirely carried by the voice, the drums, and the guitar solo. Of course, Niki Sullivan wasn’t happy about being relegated to guitar-switch-flicker, and there were other tensions within the group as well. Holly was having an affair with a married woman at the time — and Jerry Allison, who was Holly’s best friend as well as his bandmate, was also in love with her, though not in a relationship with her, and so Holly had to keep his affair hidden from his best friend. And not only that, but Allison and Sullivan were starting to have problems with each other, too. To help defuse the situation, Holly’s brother Larry took him on holiday, to go fishing in Colorado. But even there, the stress of the current situation was showing — Buddy spent much of the trip worried about the lack of success of “That’ll Be the Day”, and obsessing over a new record by a new singer, Paul Anka, that had gone to number one: [Excerpt: Paul Anka, “Diana”] Holly was insistent that he could do better than that, and that his records were at least as good. But so far they were doing nothing at all on the charts. But then a strange thing happened. “That’ll Be the Day” started getting picked up by black radio stations. It turned out that there had been another group called the Crickets — a black doo-wop group from about five years earlier, led by a singer called Dean Barlow, who had specialised in smooth Ink Spots-style ballads: [Excerpt The Crickets featuring Dean Barlow, “Be Faithful”] People at black radio stations had assumed that this new group called the Crickets was the same one, and had then discovered that “That’ll Be the Day” was really rather good. The group even got booked on an otherwise all-black tour headlined by Clyde McPhatter and Otis Rush, booked by people who hadn’t realised they were white. Before going on the tour, they formally arranged to have Norman Petty be their manager as well as their producer. They were a success on the tour, though when it reached the Harlem Apollo, which had notoriously hostile audiences, the group had to reconfigure their sets, as the audiences didn’t like any of Holly’s original material except “That’ll Be the Day”, but did like the group’s cover versions of R&B records like “Bo Diddley”: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Bo Diddley (Undubbed Version)”] Some have said that the Crickets were the first white act to play the Apollo. That’s not the case — Bobby Darin had played there before them, and I think so had the jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and maybe one or two others. But it was still a rarity, and the Crickets had to work hard to win the audience around. After they finished that tour, they moved on to a residency at the Brooklyn Paramount, on an Alan Freed show that also featured Little Richard and Larry Williams — who the Crickets met for the first time when they walked into the dressing room to find Richard and Williams engaged in a threesome with Richard’s girlfriend. During that engagement at the Paramount, the tensions within the group reached boiling point. Niki Sullivan, who was in an awful mood because he was trying to quit smoking, revealed the truth about Holly’s affair to Allison, and the group got in a fist-fight. According to Sullivan — who seems not to have always been the most reliable of interviewees — Sullivan gave Jerry Allison a black eye, and then straight away they had to go to the rooftop to take the photo for the group’s first album, The “Chirping” Crickets. Sullivan says that while the photo was retouched to hide the black eye, it’s still visible, though I can’t see it myself. After this, they went into a three-month tour on a giant package of stars featuring Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, the Bobbettes, the Drifters, LaVern Baker, and many more. By this point, both “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue” had risen up the charts — “That’ll Be the Day” eventually went to number one, while “Peggy Sue” hit number three — and the next Crickets single, “Oh Boy!” was also charting. “Oh Boy!” had originally been written by an acquaintance of the band, Sonny West, who had recorded his own version as “All My Love” a short while earlier: [Excerpt: Sonny West, “All My Love”] Glen Hardin, the piano player on that track, would later join a lineup of the Crickets in the sixties (and later still would be Elvis’ piano player and arranger in the seventies). Holly would later also cover another of West’s songs, “Rave On”. The Crickets’ version of “Oh Boy!” was recorded at a faster tempo, and became another major hit, their last top ten: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Oh Boy!”] Around the time that came out, Eddie Cochran joined the tour, and like the Everly Brothers he became fast friends with the group. The group also made an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, with Holly, Mauldin, and Allison enthusiastically performing “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue”, and Sullivan enthusiastically miming and playing an unplugged guitar. Sullivan was becoming more and more sidelined in the group, and when they returned to Lubbock at the end of the tour — during which he’d ended up breaking down and crying — he decided he was going to quit the group. Sullivan tried to have a solo career, releasing “It’s All Over” on Dot Records: [Excerpt: Niki Sullivan, “It’s All Over”] But he had no success, and ended up working in electronics, and in later years also making money from the Buddy Holly nostalgia industry. He’d only toured as a member of the group for a total of ninety days, though he’d been playing with them in the studio for a few months before that, and he’d played on a total of twenty-seven of the thirty-two songs that Holly or the Crickets would release in Holly’s lifetime. While he’d been promised an equal share of the group’s income — and Petty had also promised Sullivan, like all the other Crickets, that he would pay 10% of his income to his church — Sullivan got into endless battles with Petty over seeing the group’s accounts, which Petty wouldn’t show him, and eventually settled for getting just $1000, ten percent of the recording royalties just for the single “That’ll Be the Day”, and co-writing royalties on one song, “I’m Going to Love You Too”. His church didn’t get a cent. Meanwhile, Petty was busy trying to widen the rifts in the group. He decided that while the records would still be released as either “Buddy Holly” or “the Crickets”, as a live act they would from now on be billed as “Buddy Holly and the Crickets”, a singer and his backing group, and that while Mauldin and Allison would continue to get twenty-five percent of the money each, Holly would be on fifty percent. This was an easy decision, since Petty was handling all the money and only giving the group pocket money rather than giving them their actual shares of the money they’d earned. The group spent all of 1958 touring, visiting Hawaii, Australia, the UK, and all over the US, including the famous last ever Alan Freed tour that we looked at recently in episodes on Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. They got in another guitarist, Tommy Allsup, who took over the lead role while Buddy played rhythm, and who joined them on tour, though he wasn’t an official member of the group. The first recording Allsup played on was “It’s So Easy”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “It’s So Easy”] But the group’s records were selling less and less well. Holly was getting worried, and there was another factor that came into play. On a visit to New York, stopping in to visit their publisher in the Brill Building, all three of the Crickets became attracted to the receptionist, a Puerto Rican woman named Maria Elena Santiago who was a few years older than them. They all started to joke about which of them would ask her out, and Holly eventually did so. It turned out that while Maria Elena was twenty-five, she’d never yet been on a date, and she had to ask the permission of her aunt, who she lived with, and who was also the head of the Latin-American division of the publishing company. The aunt rang round every business contact she had, satisfied herself that Buddy was a nice boy, and gave her blessing for the date. The next day, she was giving her blessing for the two to marry — Buddy proposed on the very first date. They eventually went on a joint honeymoon with Jerry Allison and Peggy Sue. But Maria Elena was someone who worked in the music industry, and was a little bit older, and she started saying things to Buddy like “You need to get a proper accounting of the money that’s owed you”, and “You should be getting paid”. This strained his relationship with Petty, who didn’t want any woman of colour butting her nose in and getting involved in his business. Buddy moved to a flat in Greenwich Village with Maria Elena, but for the moment he was still working with Petty, even after Petty used some extremely misogynistic slurs I’m not going to repeat here against his new wife. But he was worried about his lack of hits, and they tried a few different variations on the formula. The Crickets recorded one song, a cover version of a song they’d learned on the Australian tour, with Jerry Allison singing lead. It was released under the name “Ivan” — Allison’s middle name — and became a minor hit: [Excerpt: Ivan, “Real Wild Child”] They tried more and more different things, like getting King Curtis in to play saxophone on “Reminiscing”, and on one occasion dispensing with the Crickets entirely and having Buddy cut a Bobby Darin song, “Early in the Morning”, with other musicians. They were stockpiling recordings much faster than they could release them, but the releases weren’t doing well at all. “It’s So Easy” didn’t even reach the top one hundred. Holly was also working with other artists. In September, he produced a session for his friend Waylon Jennings, who would later become a huge country star. It was Jennings’ first ever session, and they turned out an interesting version of the old Cajun song “Jole Blon”, which had earlier been a hit for Moon Mullican. This version had Holly on guitar and King Curtis on saxophone, and is a really interesting attempt at blending Cajun music with R&B: [Excerpt: Waylon Jennings, “Jole Blon”] But Holly’s biggest hope was placed in a session that was really breaking new ground. No rock and roll singer had ever recorded with a full string section before — at least as far as he was aware, and bearing in mind that, as we’ve seen many times, there’s never truly a first anything. In October 1958, Holly went into the studio with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, with the intention of recording three songs — his own “True Love Ways”, a song called “Moondreams” written by Petty, and one called “Raining in My Heart” written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who’d written many hits for his friends the Everly Brothers. At the last minute, though, he decided to record a fourth song, which had been written for him by Paul Anka, the same kid whose “Diana” had been so irritating to him the year before. He played through the song on his guitar for Dick Jacobs, who only had a short while to write the arrangement, and so stuck to the simplest thing he could think of, basing it around pizzicato violins: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”] At that point, everything still seemed like it could work out OK. Norman Petty and the other Crickets were all there at the recording session, cheering Buddy on. That night the Crickets appeared on American Bandstand, miming to “It’s So Easy”. That would be the last time they ever performed together, and soon there would be an irreparable split that would lead directly to Holly’s death — and to his posthumous fame. Holly was getting sick of Norman Petty’s continual withholding of royalties, and he’d come up with a plan. The Crickets would, as a group, confront Petty, get him to give them the money he owed them, and then all move to New York together to start up their own record label and publishing company. They’d stop touring, and focus on making records, and this would allow them the time to get things right and try new things out, which would lead to them having hits again, and they could also produce records for their friends like Waylon Jennings and Sonny Curtis. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, but it relied on them getting that money off Norman Petty. When the other two got back to Texas, Petty started manipulating them. He told them they were small-town Texas boys who would never be able to live in the big city. He told them that they didn’t need Buddy Holly, and that they could carry on making Crickets records without him. He told them that Maria Elena was manipulating Buddy, and that if they went off to New York with him it would be her who was in charge of the group from that point on. And he also pointed out that he was currently the only signatory on the group’s bank account, and it would be a real shame if something happened to all that money. By the time Buddy got back to Texas, the other two Crickets had agreed that they were going to stick with Norman Petty. Petty said it was fine if Buddy wanted to fire him, but he wasn’t getting any money until a full audit had been done of the organisation’s money. Buddy was no longer even going to get the per diem pocket money or expenses he’d been getting. Holly went back to New York, and started writing many, many, more songs, recording dozens of acoustic demos for when he could start his plan up: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”] It was a massive creative explosion for the young man. He was not only writing songs himself, but he was busily planning to make an album of Latin music, and he was making preparations for two more projects he’d like to do — an album of duets on gospel songs with Mahalia Jackson, and an album of soul duets with Ray Charles. He was going to jazz clubs, and he had ambitions of following Elvis into films, but doing it properly — he enrolled in courses with Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, to learn Method Acting. Greenwich Village in 1958 was the perfect place for a young man with a huge amount of natural talent and appetite for learning, but little experience of the wider world and culture. But the young couple were living off Maria Elena’s aunt’s generosity, and had no income at all of their own. And then Maria Elena revealed that she was pregnant. And Norman Petty revealed something he’d kept hidden before — by the terms of Buddy’s contract, he hadn’t really been recording for Brunswick or Coral, so they didn’t owe him a penny. He’d been recording for Petty’s company, who then sold the masters on to the other labels, and would get all the royalties. The Crickets bank account into which the royalties had supposedly been being paid, and which Petty had refused to let the band members see, was essentially empty. There was only one thing for it. He had to do another tour. And the only one he could get on was a miserable-seeming affair called the Winter Dance Party. While most of the rock and roll package tours of the time had more than a dozen acts on, this one had only five. There was an opening act called Frankie Sardo, and then Dion and the Belmonts, who had had a few minor hits, and had just recorded, but not yet released, their breakthrough record “Teenager in Love”: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “Teenager in Love”] Then there was the Big Bopper, who was actually a fairly accomplished songwriter but was touring on the basis of his one hit, a novelty song called “Chantilly Lace”: [Excerpt: the Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”] And Ritchie Valens, whose hit “Donna” was rising up the charts in a way that “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” was notably failing to do: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] Buddy put together a new touring band consisting of Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass — who had never played bass before starting the tour — and a drummer called Carl Bunch. For a while it looked like Buddy’s friend Eddie Cochran was going to go on tour with them as well, but shortly before the tour started Cochran got an offer to do the Ed Sullivan Show, which would have clashed with the tour dates, and so he didn’t make it. Maria Elena was very insistent that she didn’t want Buddy to go, but he felt that he had no choice if he was going to support his new child. The Winter Dance Party toured Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, through the end of January and the beginning of February 1959, and the conditions were miserable for everyone concerned. The tour had been put together with no thought of logistics, and it zig-zagged wildly across those three states, with gigs often four hundred miles away from each other. The musicians had to sleep on the tour bus — or buses. The tour was being run on a shoe-string, and they’d gone with the cheapest vehicle-hire company possible. They went through, according to one biography I’ve read, eight different buses in eleven days, as none of the buses were able to cope with the Midwestern winter, and their engines kept failing and the heating on several of the buses broke down. I don’t know if you’ve spent any time in that part of America in the winter, but I go there for Christmas every year (my wife has family in Minnesota) and it’s unimaginably cold in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it. It’s not unusual for temperatures to drop to as low as minus forty degrees, and to have three feet or more of snow. Travelling in a bus, with no heating, in that weather, all packed together, was hell for everyone. The Big Bopper and Valens were both fat, and couldn’t fit in the small seats easily. Several people on the tour, including Bopper and Valens, got the flu. And then finally Carl Bunch got hospitalised with frostbite. Buddy’s band, which was backing everyone on stage, now had no drummer, and so for the next three days of the tour Holly, Dion, and Valens would all take it in turns playing the drums, as all of them were adequate drummers. The shows were still good, at least according to a young man named Robert Zimmerman, who saw the first drummerless show, in Duluth Minnesota, and who would move to Greenwich Village himself not that long afterwards. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy had had enough. He decided to charter a plane to take him to Fargo, North Dakota, which was just near Moorhead, Minnesota, where they were planning on playing their next show. He’d take everyone’s laundry — everyone stank and had been wearing the same clothes for days — and get it washed, and get some sleep in a real bed. The original plan was to have Allsup and Jennings travel with him, but eventually they gave up their seats to the two other people who were suffering the most — the Big Bopper and Valens. There are different stories about how that happened, most involving a coin-toss, but they all agree that when Buddy found out that Waylon Jennings was giving up his seat, he jokingly said to Jennings “I hope your old bus freezes”, and Jennings replied, “Yeah, well I hope your ol’ plane crashes”. The three of them got on the plane in the middle of the night, on a foggy winter’s night, which would require flying by instruments. Unfortunately, while the pilot on the plane was rated as being a good pilot during the day, he kept almost failing his certification for being bad at flying by instrument. And the plane in question had an unusual type of altitude meter. Where most altitude meters would go up when the plane was going up and down when it was going down, that particular model’s meter went down when the plane was going up, and up when it was going down. The plane took off, and less than five minutes after takeoff, it plummeted straight down, nose first, into the ground at top speed, killing everyone on board instantly. As soon as the news got out, Holly’s last single finally started rising up the charts. It ended up going to number thirteen on the US charts, and number one in many other countries. The aftermath shows how much contempt the music industry — and society itself — had for those musicians at that time. Maria Elena found out about Buddy’s death not from the police, but from the TV — this later prompted changes in how news of celebrity deaths was to be revealed. She was so upset that she miscarried two days later. She was too distraught to attend the funeral, and to this day has still never been able to bring herself to visit her husband’s grave. The grief was just too much. The rest of the people on the tour were forced to continue the remaining thirteen days of the tour without the three acts anyone wanted to go and see, but were also not paid their full wages, because the bill wasn’t as advertised. A new young singer was picked up to round out the bill on the next gig, a young Minnesotan Holly soundalike called Bobby Vee, whose first single, “Suzy Baby”, was just about to come out: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Suzy Baby”] When Vee went on tour on his own, later, he hired that Zimmerman kid we mentioned earlier as his piano player. Zimmerman worked under the stage name Elston Gunn, but would later choose a better one. After that date Holly, Valens, and the Bopper were replaced by Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Jimmy Clanton, and the tour continued. Meanwhile, the remaining Crickets picked themselves up and carried on. They got Buddy’s old friend Sonny Curtis on guitar, and a succession of Holly-soundalike singers, and continued playing together until Joe Mauldin died in 2015. Most of their records without Buddy weren’t particularly memorable, but they did record one song written by Curtis which would later become a hit for several other people, “I Fought the Law”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “I Fought the Law”] But the person who ended up benefiting most from Holly’s death was Norman Petty. Suddenly his stockpile of unreleased Buddy Holly recordings was a goldmine — and not only that, he ended up coming to an agreement with Holly’s estate that he could take all those demos Holly had recorded and overdub new backing tracks on them, turning them into full-blown rock and roll songs. Between overdubbed versions of the demos, and stockpiled full-band recordings, Buddy Holly kept having hit singles in the rest of the world until 1965, though none charted in the US, and he made both Petty and his estate very rich. Norman Petty died in 1984. His last project was a still-unreleased “updating” of Buddy’s biggest hits with synthesisers. These days, Buddy Holly is once again on tour, or at least something purporting to be him is. You can now go and see a “hologram tour”, in which an image of a look-not-very-alike actor miming to Holly’s old recordings is projected on glass, using the old Victorian stage trick Pepper’s Ghost, while a live band plays along to the records. Just because you’ve worked someone to death aged twenty-two, doesn’t mean that they can’t still keep earning money for you when they’re eighty-three. And a hologram will never complain about how cold the tour bus is, or want to wash his laundry.

Episode seventy-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "It Doesn't Matter Any More" by Buddy Holly, and at the reasons he ended up on the plane that killed him. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Chantilly Lace" by the Big Bopper.  Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/----more---- Before I get to the resources and transcript, a quick apology. This one is up more than a day late. I've not been coping very well with all the news about coronavirus outbreak (I'm one of those who's been advised by the government to sel-isolate for three months) and things are taking longer than normal. Next week's should be up at the normal time. Also, no Mixcloud this week -- I get a server error when uploading the file to Mixcloud's site. Erratum I mention that Bob Dylan saw the first show on the Winter Dance Party tour with no drummer. He actually saw the last one with the drummer, who was hospitalised that night after the show, not before the show as I had thought.  Resources   I've used two biographies for the bulk of the information here -- Buddy Holly: Learning the Game, by Spencer Leigh, and Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly by Philip Norman. I also used  Beverly Mendheim's book on Ritchie Valens. There are many collections of Buddy Holly's work available, but many of them are very shoddy, with instrumental overdubs recorded over demos after his death. The best compilation I am aware of is The Memorial Collection, which contains almost everything he issued in his life, as he issued it (for some reason two cover versions are missing) along with the undubbed acoustic recordings that were messed with and released after his death. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before I begin, this episode will deal with both accidental bereavement and miscarriage, so if you think those subjects might be traumatising, you may want to skip this one. Today, we're going to look at a record that holds a sad place in rock and roll's history, because it's the record that is often credited as "the first posthumous rock and roll hit". Now, that's not strictly true -- as we've talked about before in this podcast, there is rarely, if ever, a "first" anything at all, and indeed we've already looked at an earlier posthumous hit when we talked about "Pledging My Love" by Johnny Ace. But it is a very sad fact that "It Doesn't Matter Any More" by Buddy Holly ended up becoming the first of several posthumous hit records that Holly had, and that there would be many more posthumous hit records by other performers after him than there had been before him. Buddy Holly's death is something that hangs over every attempt to tell his story. More than any other musician of his generation, his death has entered rock and roll mythology. Even if you don't know Holly's music, you probably know two things about him -- that he wore glasses, and that he died in a plane crash. You're likely also to know that Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in the same crash, even if you don't know any of the songs that either of those two artists recorded. Normally, when you're telling a story, you'd leave that to the end, but in the case of Holly it overshadows his life so much that there's absolutely no point trying to build up any suspense -- not to mention that there's something distasteful about turning a real person's tragic death into entertainment. I hope I've not done so in episodes where other people have died, but it's even more important not to do so here. Because while the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper is always portrayed as an accident, the cause of their death has its roots in exploitation of young, vulnerable, people, and a pressure to work no matter what. So today, we're going to look at how "It Doesn't Matter Any More" became Buddy Holly's last single: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "It Doesn't Matter Any More"] People often talk about how Buddy Holly's career was short, but what they don't mention is that his chart career was even shorter. Holly's first chart single, "That'll Be the Day", was released in May 1957. His last top thirty single during his lifetime, "Think it Over", was released in May 1958. By the time he went on the Winter Dance Party, the tour that led to his death, in January 1959, he had gone many months without a hit, and his most recent record, "Heartbeat", had only reached number eighty-two. He'd lost every important professional relationship in his life, and had split from the group that had made him famous. To see how this happened, we need to pick up where we left off with him last time. You'll remember that when we left the Crickets, they'd released "That'll Be the Day", and it hadn't yet become a hit, and they'd also released "Words of Love" as a Buddy Holly solo single. While there were different names on them, the same people would make the records, whether it was a solo or group record -- Buddy Holly on vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, Jerry Allison on drums, Joe Mauldin on bass, and producer Norman Petty and his wife sometimes adding keyboards. They didn't distinguish between "Buddy Holly" and "Crickets" material when recording -- rather they separated it out later. The more straight-ahead rock and roll records would have backing vocals overdubbed on them, usually by a vocal group called the Picks, and would be released as Crickets records, while the more experimental ones would be left with only Holly's vocal on, and would be released as solo records. (There were no records released as by "Buddy Holly and the Crickets" at the time, because the whole idea of the split was that DJs would play two records instead of one if they appeared to be by different artists). And they were recording *a lot*. Two days after “That'll be the Day” was released, on the twenty-seventh of May 1957, they recorded "Everyday" and "Not Fade Away". Between then and the first of July they recorded "Tell Me How", "Oh Boy", "Listen to Me", "I'm Going to Love You Too", and cover versions of Fats Domino's "Valley of Tears" and Little Richard's "Ready Teddy". Remember, this was all before they'd had a single hit -- "That'll Be the Day" and "Words of Love" still hadn't charted. This is quite an astonishing outpouring of songs, but the big leap forward came on the second of July, when they made a second attempt at a song they'd attempted to record back in late 1956, and had been playing in their stage show since then. The song had originally been titled "Cindy Lou", after Buddy's niece, but Jerry Allison had recently started dating a girl named Peggy Sue Gerrison, and they decided to change the lyrics to be about her. The song had also originally been played as a Latin-flavoured number, but when they were warming up, Allison started playing a fast paradiddle on his snare drum. Holly decided that they were going to change the tempo of the song and have Allison play that part all the way through, though this meant that Allison had to go out and play in the hallway rather than in the main studio, because the noise from his drums was too loud in the studio itself. The final touch came when Petty decided, on the song's intro, to put the drums through the echo chamber and keep flicking the switch on the echo from "on" to "off", so it sounded like there were two drummers playing: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Peggy Sue"] Someone else was flicking a switch, too -- Niki Sullivan was already starting to regret joining the Crickets, because there really wasn't room for his rhythm guitar on most of the songs they were playing. And on "Peggy Sue" he ended up not playing at all. On that song, Buddy had to switch between two pickups -- one for when he was singing, and another to give his guitar a different tone during the solo. But he was playing so fast that he couldn't move his hand to the switch, and in those days there were no foot pedals one could use for the same sort of effect. So Niki Sullivan became Holly's foot pedal. He knelt beside Holly and waited for the point when the solo was about to start, and flicked the switch on his guitar. When the solo came to an end again, Sullivan flicked the switch again and it went back to the original sound. [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Peggy Sue"] It's a really strange sounding record, if you start to pay attention to it. Other than during the solo, Holly's guitar is so quiet that you can hear the plectrum as loudly as you can hear the notes. He just keeps up a ram-a-ram-a quaver downstrum throughout the whole song, which sounds simple until you try to play it, at which point you realise that you start feeling like your arm's going to fall off about a quarter of the way through. And there's just that, those drums (playing a part which must be similarly physically demanding) with their weird echo, and Holly's voice. In theory, Joe Mauldin's bass is also in there, but it's there at almost homeopathic levels. It's a record that is entirely carried by the voice, the drums, and the guitar solo. Of course, Niki Sullivan wasn't happy about being relegated to guitar-switch-flicker, and there were other tensions within the group as well. Holly was having an affair with a married woman at the time -- and Jerry Allison, who was Holly's best friend as well as his bandmate, was also in love with her, though not in a relationship with her, and so Holly had to keep his affair hidden from his best friend. And not only that, but Allison and Sullivan were starting to have problems with each other, too. To help defuse the situation, Holly's brother Larry took him on holiday, to go fishing in Colorado. But even there, the stress of the current situation was showing -- Buddy spent much of the trip worried about the lack of success of "That'll Be the Day", and obsessing over a new record by a new singer, Paul Anka, that had gone to number one: [Excerpt: Paul Anka, "Diana"] Holly was insistent that he could do better than that, and that his records were at least as good. But so far they were doing nothing at all on the charts. But then a strange thing happened. "That'll Be the Day" started getting picked up by black radio stations. It turned out that there had been another group called the Crickets -- a black doo-wop group from about five years earlier, led by a singer called Dean Barlow, who had specialised in smooth Ink Spots-style ballads: [Excerpt The Crickets featuring Dean Barlow, "Be Faithful"] People at black radio stations had assumed that this new group called the Crickets was the same one, and had then discovered that "That'll Be the Day" was really rather good. The group even got booked on an otherwise all-black tour headlined by Clyde McPhatter and Otis Rush, booked by people who hadn't realised they were white. Before going on the tour, they formally arranged to have Norman Petty be their manager as well as their producer. They were a success on the tour, though when it reached the Harlem Apollo, which had notoriously hostile audiences, the group had to reconfigure their sets, as the audiences didn't like any of Holly's original material except "That'll Be the Day", but did like the group's cover versions of R&B records like "Bo Diddley": [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Bo Diddley (Undubbed Version)"] Some have said that the Crickets were the first white act to play the Apollo. That's not the case -- Bobby Darin had played there before them, and I think so had the jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and maybe one or two others. But it was still a rarity, and the Crickets had to work hard to win the audience around. After they finished that tour, they moved on to a residency at the Brooklyn Paramount, on an Alan Freed show that also featured Little Richard and Larry Williams -- who the Crickets met for the first time when they walked into the dressing room to find Richard and Williams engaged in a threesome with Richard's girlfriend. During that engagement at the Paramount, the tensions within the group reached boiling point. Niki Sullivan, who was in an awful mood because he was trying to quit smoking, revealed the truth about Holly's affair to Allison, and the group got in a fist-fight. According to Sullivan -- who seems not to have always been the most reliable of interviewees -- Sullivan gave Jerry Allison a black eye, and then straight away they had to go to the rooftop to take the photo for the group's first album, The "Chirping" Crickets. Sullivan says that while the photo was retouched to hide the black eye, it's still visible, though I can't see it myself. After this, they went into a three-month tour on a giant package of stars featuring Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, the Bobbettes, the Drifters, LaVern Baker, and many more. By this point, both "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" had risen up the charts -- "That'll Be the Day" eventually went to number one, while "Peggy Sue" hit number three -- and the next Crickets single, "Oh Boy!" was also charting. "Oh Boy!" had originally been written by an acquaintance of the band, Sonny West, who had recorded his own version as "All My Love" a short while earlier: [Excerpt: Sonny West, "All My Love"] Glen Hardin, the piano player on that track, would later join a lineup of the Crickets in the sixties (and later still would be Elvis' piano player and arranger in the seventies). Holly would later also cover another of West's songs, "Rave On". The Crickets' version of “Oh Boy!” was recorded at a faster tempo, and became another major hit, their last top ten: [Excerpt: The Crickets, "Oh Boy!"] Around the time that came out, Eddie Cochran joined the tour, and like the Everly Brothers he became fast friends with the group. The group also made an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, with Holly, Mauldin, and Allison enthusiastically performing "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue", and Sullivan enthusiastically miming and playing an unplugged guitar. Sullivan was becoming more and more sidelined in the group, and when they returned to Lubbock at the end of the tour -- during which he'd ended up breaking down and crying -- he decided he was going to quit the group. Sullivan tried to have a solo career, releasing "It's All Over" on Dot Records: [Excerpt: Niki Sullivan, "It's All Over"] But he had no success, and ended up working in electronics, and in later years also making money from the Buddy Holly nostalgia industry. He'd only toured as a member of the group for a total of ninety days, though he'd been playing with them in the studio for a few months before that, and he'd played on a total of twenty-seven of the thirty-two songs that Holly or the Crickets would release in Holly's lifetime. While he'd been promised an equal share of the group's income -- and Petty had also promised Sullivan, like all the other Crickets, that he would pay 10% of his income to his church -- Sullivan got into endless battles with Petty over seeing the group's accounts, which Petty wouldn't show him, and eventually settled for getting just $1000, ten percent of the recording royalties just for the single "That'll Be the Day", and co-writing royalties on one song, "I'm Going to Love You Too". His church didn't get a cent. Meanwhile, Petty was busy trying to widen the rifts in the group. He decided that while the records would still be released as either "Buddy Holly" or "the Crickets", as a live act they would from now on be billed as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets", a singer and his backing group, and that while Mauldin and Allison would continue to get twenty-five percent of the money each, Holly would be on fifty percent. This was an easy decision, since Petty was handling all the money and only giving the group pocket money rather than giving them their actual shares of the money they'd earned. The group spent all of 1958 touring, visiting Hawaii, Australia, the UK, and all over the US, including the famous last ever Alan Freed tour that we looked at recently in episodes on Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. They got in another guitarist, Tommy Allsup, who took over the lead role while Buddy played rhythm, and who joined them on tour, though he wasn't an official member of the group. The first recording Allsup played on was "It's So Easy": [Excerpt: The Crickets, "It's So Easy"] But the group's records were selling less and less well. Holly was getting worried, and there was another factor that came into play. On a visit to New York, stopping in to visit their publisher in the Brill Building, all three of the Crickets became attracted to the receptionist, a Puerto Rican woman named Maria Elena Santiago who was a few years older than them. They all started to joke about which of them would ask her out, and Holly eventually did so. It turned out that while Maria Elena was twenty-five, she'd never yet been on a date, and she had to ask the permission of her aunt, who she lived with, and who was also the head of the Latin-American division of the publishing company. The aunt rang round every business contact she had, satisfied herself that Buddy was a nice boy, and gave her blessing for the date. The next day, she was giving her blessing for the two to marry -- Buddy proposed on the very first date. They eventually went on a joint honeymoon with Jerry Allison and Peggy Sue. But Maria Elena was someone who worked in the music industry, and was a little bit older, and she started saying things to Buddy like "You need to get a proper accounting of the money that's owed you", and "You should be getting paid". This strained his relationship with Petty, who didn't want any woman of colour butting her nose in and getting involved in his business. Buddy moved to a flat in Greenwich Village with Maria Elena, but for the moment he was still working with Petty, even after Petty used some extremely misogynistic slurs I'm not going to repeat here against his new wife. But he was worried about his lack of hits, and they tried a few different variations on the formula. The Crickets recorded one song, a cover version of a song they'd learned on the Australian tour, with Jerry Allison singing lead. It was released under the name "Ivan" -- Allison's middle name -- and became a minor hit: [Excerpt: Ivan, "Real Wild Child"] They tried more and more different things, like getting King Curtis in to play saxophone on "Reminiscing", and on one occasion dispensing with the Crickets entirely and having Buddy cut a Bobby Darin song, "Early in the Morning", with other musicians. They were stockpiling recordings much faster than they could release them, but the releases weren't doing well at all. "It's So Easy" didn't even reach the top one hundred. Holly was also working with other artists. In September, he produced a session for his friend Waylon Jennings, who would later become a huge country star. It was Jennings' first ever session, and they turned out an interesting version of the old Cajun song "Jole Blon", which had earlier been a hit for Moon Mullican. This version had Holly on guitar and King Curtis on saxophone, and is a really interesting attempt at blending Cajun music with R&B: [Excerpt: Waylon Jennings, "Jole Blon"] But Holly's biggest hope was placed in a session that was really breaking new ground. No rock and roll singer had ever recorded with a full string section before -- at least as far as he was aware, and bearing in mind that, as we've seen many times, there's never truly a first anything. In October 1958, Holly went into the studio with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, with the intention of recording three songs -- his own "True Love Ways", a song called "Moondreams" written by Petty, and one called "Raining in My Heart" written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who'd written many hits for his friends the Everly Brothers. At the last minute, though, he decided to record a fourth song, which had been written for him by Paul Anka, the same kid whose "Diana" had been so irritating to him the year before. He played through the song on his guitar for Dick Jacobs, who only had a short while to write the arrangement, and so stuck to the simplest thing he could think of, basing it around pizzicato violins: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "It Doesn't Matter Any More"] At that point, everything still seemed like it could work out OK. Norman Petty and the other Crickets were all there at the recording session, cheering Buddy on. That night the Crickets appeared on American Bandstand, miming to "It's So Easy". That would be the last time they ever performed together, and soon there would be an irreparable split that would lead directly to Holly's death -- and to his posthumous fame. Holly was getting sick of Norman Petty's continual withholding of royalties, and he'd come up with a plan. The Crickets would, as a group, confront Petty, get him to give them the money he owed them, and then all move to New York together to start up their own record label and publishing company. They'd stop touring, and focus on making records, and this would allow them the time to get things right and try new things out, which would lead to them having hits again, and they could also produce records for their friends like Waylon Jennings and Sonny Curtis. It was a good plan, and it might have worked, but it relied on them getting that money off Norman Petty. When the other two got back to Texas, Petty started manipulating them. He told them they were small-town Texas boys who would never be able to live in the big city. He told them that they didn't need Buddy Holly, and that they could carry on making Crickets records without him. He told them that Maria Elena was manipulating Buddy, and that if they went off to New York with him it would be her who was in charge of the group from that point on. And he also pointed out that he was currently the only signatory on the group's bank account, and it would be a real shame if something happened to all that money. By the time Buddy got back to Texas, the other two Crickets had agreed that they were going to stick with Norman Petty. Petty said it was fine if Buddy wanted to fire him, but he wasn't getting any money until a full audit had been done of the organisation's money. Buddy was no longer even going to get the per diem pocket money or expenses he'd been getting. Holly went back to New York, and started writing many, many, more songs, recording dozens of acoustic demos for when he could start his plan up: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Crying, Waiting, Hoping"] It was a massive creative explosion for the young man. He was not only writing songs himself, but he was busily planning to make an album of Latin music, and he was making preparations for two more projects he'd like to do -- an album of duets on gospel songs with Mahalia Jackson, and an album of soul duets with Ray Charles. He was going to jazz clubs, and he had ambitions of following Elvis into films, but doing it properly -- he enrolled in courses with Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio, to learn Method Acting. Greenwich Village in 1958 was the perfect place for a young man with a huge amount of natural talent and appetite for learning, but little experience of the wider world and culture. But the young couple were living off Maria Elena's aunt's generosity, and had no income at all of their own. And then Maria Elena revealed that she was pregnant. And Norman Petty revealed something he'd kept hidden before -- by the terms of Buddy's contract, he hadn't really been recording for Brunswick or Coral, so they didn't owe him a penny. He'd been recording for Petty's company, who then sold the masters on to the other labels, and would get all the royalties. The Crickets bank account into which the royalties had supposedly been being paid, and which Petty had refused to let the band members see, was essentially empty. There was only one thing for it. He had to do another tour. And the only one he could get on was a miserable-seeming affair called the Winter Dance Party. While most of the rock and roll package tours of the time had more than a dozen acts on, this one had only five. There was an opening act called Frankie Sardo, and then Dion and the Belmonts, who had had a few minor hits, and had just recorded, but not yet released, their breakthrough record "Teenager in Love": [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, "Teenager in Love"] Then there was the Big Bopper, who was actually a fairly accomplished songwriter but was touring on the basis of his one hit, a novelty song called "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: the Big Bopper, "Chantilly Lace"] And Ritchie Valens, whose hit "Donna" was rising up the charts in a way that "It Doesn't Matter Any More" was notably failing to do: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "Donna"] Buddy put together a new touring band consisting of Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass -- who had never played bass before starting the tour -- and a drummer called Carl Bunch. For a while it looked like Buddy's friend Eddie Cochran was going to go on tour with them as well, but shortly before the tour started Cochran got an offer to do the Ed Sullivan Show, which would have clashed with the tour dates, and so he didn't make it. Maria Elena was very insistent that she didn't want Buddy to go, but he felt that he had no choice if he was going to support his new child. The Winter Dance Party toured Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, through the end of January and the beginning of February 1959, and the conditions were miserable for everyone concerned. The tour had been put together with no thought of logistics, and it zig-zagged wildly across those three states, with gigs often four hundred miles away from each other. The musicians had to sleep on the tour bus -- or buses. The tour was being run on a shoe-string, and they'd gone with the cheapest vehicle-hire company possible. They went through, according to one biography I've read, eight different buses in eleven days, as none of the buses were able to cope with the Midwestern winter, and their engines kept failing and the heating on several of the buses broke down. I don't know if you've spent any time in that part of America in the winter, but I go there for Christmas every year (my wife has family in Minnesota) and it's unimaginably cold in a way you can't understand unless you've experienced it. It's not unusual for temperatures to drop to as low as minus forty degrees, and to have three feet or more of snow. Travelling in a bus, with no heating, in that weather, all packed together, was hell for everyone. The Big Bopper and Valens were both fat, and couldn't fit in the small seats easily. Several people on the tour, including Bopper and Valens, got the flu. And then finally Carl Bunch got hospitalised with frostbite. Buddy's band, which was backing everyone on stage, now had no drummer, and so for the next three days of the tour Holly, Dion, and Valens would all take it in turns playing the drums, as all of them were adequate drummers. The shows were still good, at least according to a young man named Robert Zimmerman, who saw the first drummerless show, in Duluth Minnesota, and who would move to Greenwich Village himself not that long afterwards. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy had had enough. He decided to charter a plane to take him to Fargo, North Dakota, which was just near Moorhead, Minnesota, where they were planning on playing their next show. He'd take everyone's laundry -- everyone stank and had been wearing the same clothes for days -- and get it washed, and get some sleep in a real bed. The original plan was to have Allsup and Jennings travel with him, but eventually they gave up their seats to the two other people who were suffering the most -- the Big Bopper and Valens. There are different stories about how that happened, most involving a coin-toss, but they all agree that when Buddy found out that Waylon Jennings was giving up his seat, he jokingly said to Jennings "I hope your old bus freezes", and Jennings replied, "Yeah, well I hope your ol' plane crashes". The three of them got on the plane in the middle of the night, on a foggy winter's night, which would require flying by instruments. Unfortunately, while the pilot on the plane was rated as being a good pilot during the day, he kept almost failing his certification for being bad at flying by instrument. And the plane in question had an unusual type of altitude meter. Where most altitude meters would go up when the plane was going up and down when it was going down, that particular model's meter went down when the plane was going up, and up when it was going down. The plane took off, and less than five minutes after takeoff, it plummeted straight down, nose first, into the ground at top speed, killing everyone on board instantly. As soon as the news got out, Holly's last single finally started rising up the charts. It ended up going to number thirteen on the US charts, and number one in many other countries. The aftermath shows how much contempt the music industry -- and society itself -- had for those musicians at that time. Maria Elena found out about Buddy's death not from the police, but from the TV -- this later prompted changes in how news of celebrity deaths was to be revealed. She was so upset that she miscarried two days later. She was too distraught to attend the funeral, and to this day has still never been able to bring herself to visit her husband's grave. The grief was just too much. The rest of the people on the tour were forced to continue the remaining thirteen days of the tour without the three acts anyone wanted to go and see, but were also not paid their full wages, because the bill wasn't as advertised. A new young singer was picked up to round out the bill on the next gig, a young Minnesotan Holly soundalike called Bobby Vee, whose first single, "Suzy Baby", was just about to come out: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, "Suzy Baby"] When Vee went on tour on his own, later, he hired that Zimmerman kid we mentioned earlier as his piano player. Zimmerman worked under the stage name Elston Gunn, but would later choose a better one. After that date Holly, Valens, and the Bopper were replaced by Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Jimmy Clanton, and the tour continued. Meanwhile, the remaining Crickets picked themselves up and carried on. They got Buddy's old friend Sonny Curtis on guitar, and a succession of Holly-soundalike singers, and continued playing together until Joe Mauldin died in 2015. Most of their records without Buddy weren't particularly memorable, but they did record one song written by Curtis which would later become a hit for several other people, "I Fought the Law": [Excerpt: The Crickets, "I Fought the Law"] But the person who ended up benefiting most from Holly's death was Norman Petty. Suddenly his stockpile of unreleased Buddy Holly recordings was a goldmine -- and not only that, he ended up coming to an agreement with Holly's estate that he could take all those demos Holly had recorded and overdub new backing tracks on them, turning them into full-blown rock and roll songs. Between overdubbed versions of the demos, and stockpiled full-band recordings, Buddy Holly kept having hit singles in the rest of the world until 1965, though none charted in the US, and he made both Petty and his estate very rich. Norman Petty died in 1984. His last project was a still-unreleased "updating" of Buddy's biggest hits with synthesisers. These days, Buddy Holly is once again on tour, or at least something purporting to be him is. You can now go and see a "hologram tour", in which an image of a look-not-very-alike actor miming to Holly's old recordings is projected on glass, using the old Victorian stage trick Pepper's Ghost, while a live band plays along to the records. Just because you've worked someone to death aged twenty-two, doesn't mean that they can't still keep earning money for you when they're eighty-three. And a hologram will never complain about how cold the tour bus is, or want to wash his laundry.

"The Day The Music Died" is one of the watershed moments in rock history. This week we focus on the short life of Ritchie Valens, the youngest member of the Winter Dance Party.Our social stuff:Patreon.com/rockandrollheavenTwitter: @rockandrollltInstagram: RockandrollheavenltFacebook: Rock and Roll Heaven PodOur website: https://rockandrollheavenl.wixsite.com/mysiteEmail us! Rockandrollheavenlt@gmail.comCheck out all the podcasts over on Pantheon.

"The Day The Music Died" is one of the watershed moments in rock history. This week we focus on the short life of Ritchie Valens, the youngest member of the Winter Dance Party.Our social stuff:Patreon.com/rockandrollheavenTwitter: @rockandrollltInstagram: RockandrollheavenltFacebook: Rock and Roll Heaven PodOur website: https://rockandrollheavenl.wixsite.com/mysiteEmail us! Rockandrollheavenlt@gmail.comCheck out all the podcasts over on Pantheon.

"The Day The Music Died" is one of the watershed moments in rock history. This week we focus on the short life of Ritchie Valens, the youngest member of the Winter Dance Party. Our social stuff: Patreon.com/rockandrollheaven Twitter: @rockandrolllt Instagram: Rockandrollheavenlt Facebook: Rock and Roll Heaven Pod Our website: https://rockandrollheavenl.wixsite.com/mysite Email us! Rockandrollheavenlt@gmail.com Check out all the podcasts over on Pantheon.

"The Day The Music Died" is one of the watershed moments in rock history. This week we focus on the short life of Ritchie Valens, the youngest member of the Winter Dance Party. Our social stuff: Patreon.com/rockandrollheaven Twitter: @rockandrolllt Instagram: Rockandrollheavenlt Facebook: Rock and Roll Heaven Pod Our website: https://rockandrollheavenl.wixsite.com/mysite Email us! Rockandrollheavenlt@gmail.com Check out all the podcasts over on Pantheon.

A timely bonus episode of Deeper Digs in Rock! Christian sits down with Ryan Sheeler, lecturer in the music department at Iowa State University where he teaches the History of American Rock ‘n' Roll.  He has a new book out from Hal Leonard Press called ‘Ritchie Valens: His Guitars and Music'.On February 3rd, 1959, Valens, along with the Big Bopper and Winter Dance Party tour headliner Buddy Holly, climbed into Roger Peterson's Beechcraft Bonanza for what should have been a short flight from Clearlake Iowa to Moorhead City, Minnesota.  As most rockers know, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff in poor weather, killing all on board. The infamous “Day the Music Died”.Ryan's quick read book is less biography and more detailed on the 1950's vintage equipment Valens used in his very, very short career (less than one year).  He also provides transcriptions (tablature and notation) on the song La Bamba, both as originally recorded and covered by Los Lobos for the biopic released in 1987.https://www.ryansheeler.comhttp://www.centerstream-usa.com/music-books-catalog.php?searchfor=00292570

A timely bonus episode of Deeper Digs in Rock! Christian sits down with Ryan Sheeler, lecturer in the music department at Iowa State University where he teaches the History of American Rock ‘n' Roll. He has a new book out from Hal Leonard Press called ‘Ritchie Valens: His Guitars and Music'.On February 3rd, 1959, Valens, along with the Big Bopper and Winter Dance Party tour headliner Buddy Holly, climbed into Roger Peterson's Beechcraft Bonanza for what should have been a short flight from Clearlake Iowa to Moorhead City, Minnesota. As most rockers know, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff in poor weather, killing all on board. The infamous “Day the Music Died”.Ryan's quick read book is less biography and more detailed on the 1950's vintage equipment Valens used in his very, very short career (less than one year). He also provides transcriptions (tablature and notation) on the song La Bamba, both as originally recorded and covered by Los Lobos for the biopic released in 1987.https://www.ryansheeler.comhttp://www.centerstream-usa.com/music-books-catalog.php?searchfor=00292570

A timely bonus episode of Deeper Digs in Rock! Christian sits down with Ryan Sheeler, lecturer in the music department at Iowa State University where he teaches the History of American Rock ‘n’ Roll. He has a new book out from Hal Leonard Press called ‘Ritchie Valens: His Guitars and Music’. On February 3rd, 1959, Valens, along with the Big Bopper and Winter Dance Party tour headliner Buddy Holly, climbed into Roger Peterson’s Beechcraft Bonanza for what should have been a short flight from Clearlake Iowa to Moorhead City, Minnesota. As most rockers know, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff in poor weather, killing all on board. The infamous “Day the Music Died”. Ryan's quick read book is less biography and more detailed on the 1950’s vintage equipment Valens used in his very, very short career (less than one year). He also provides transcriptions (tablature and notation) on the song La Bamba, both as originally recorded and covered by Los Lobos for the biopic released in 1987. https://www.ryansheeler.com http://www.centerstream-usa.com/music-books-catalog.php?searchfor=00292570

A timely bonus episode of Deeper Digs in Rock! Christian sits down with Ryan Sheeler, lecturer in the music department at Iowa State University where he teaches the History of American Rock ‘n’ Roll.  He has a new book out from Hal Leonard Press called ‘Ritchie Valens: His Guitars and Music’. On February 3rd, 1959, Valens, along with the Big Bopper and Winter Dance Party tour headliner Buddy Holly, climbed into Roger Peterson’s Beechcraft Bonanza for what should have been a short flight from Clearlake Iowa to Moorhead City, Minnesota.  As most rockers know, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff in poor weather, killing all on board. The infamous “Day the Music Died”. Ryan's quick read book is less biography and more detailed on the 1950’s vintage equipment Valens used in his very, very short career (less than one year).  He also provides transcriptions (tablature and notation) on the song La Bamba, both as originally recorded and covered by Los Lobos for the biopic released in 1987. https://www.ryansheeler.com http://www.centerstream-usa.com/music-books-catalog.php?searchfor=00292570

Michael Rennie, the President & CEO of the acclaimed Poway OnStage, discusses a stellar 2019-20 season with the expectation of fast sellouts. From Melissa Etheridge and Monterrey '67 Revisited to Rosanne Cash and the Winter Dance Party, a tribute to Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper, the new season is a spectacular. Michael also discusses their Arts In Education program for schools.

Buddy Holly and the Winter Dance Party of 1959 meet a brutal Wisconsin winter.

ERICA REID (@drunkmonkeyshow) and REBECCA HANSON (@phunkybeck) give PopFury the full cross-country catch up! They talk about American Girl’s Logan doll, Rebecca’s South Dakota experiences, Erica’s trio of kittens and, naturally, Loretta Lynn’s ranch. SHOW NOTES 0:00 Intro 1:40 Rebecca and Erica share how they spent their (non-romantic) Valentine’s Day. 3:40 Erica just got THREE new kittens. They are destroying her home. They even their own Twitter: @3kttns 9:35 Rebecca helped run the Winter Dance Party in Clear Lake, Iowa. Sammy wonders what rider demands Erica and Rebecca would have. 16:45 Rebecca did not care for her experiences in South Dakota’s restaurants, airports or truck stops. 23:00 Erica is going to Tennessee to visit the Loretta Lynn Ranch. The ladies share what they still NEED to do in their lives. 28:15 Even though her knees are sharp and janky, Erica is doing her first half-marathon in Vermont 32:15 Rebecca and her husband are moving to Los Angeles. 37:20 An 80-year-old woman accidentally brought a sword-cane through airport security. Erica had her own run in with security. 40:05 A man mailed himself Crystal Meth to try on vacation in Key West. 41:20 American Girl added a new boy doll, Logan Everett the drummer, to its line up. Rebecca and Erica recall their own childhood dolls. 50:00 Outro Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode of the PopFury Podcast, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes or Stitcher! You can also listen to PopFury on Google Play Music! If you have any questions or comments, you reach me at Sammy@PopFuryPodcast.com!

Alex Orbison is our guest this hour as we talk about a couple of recent releases from his dad Roy Orbison.  We go in depth about the 13 CD The MGM Years box set and the previously unreleased One Of The Lonely Ones.  We start the show off playing tunes from Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Dion.  They were the 4 headliners from 1959's Winter Dance Party.  The plane crash killing Buddy, Bopper and Ritchie happened 57 years ago on February 3, 1959.  Be sure to also check out the bonus interview footage with Alex Orbison to hear more great stories and tunes! Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey   Buddy Holly- "Rock Around With Ollie Vee" Big Bopper- "Pink Petticoats" Dion & The Belmonts- "I Can't Go On Rosalie" Ritchie Valens- "Bonie Maronie"   Alex Orbison interview Roy Orbison- "Claudette" Segment 1 Roy Orbison- "I'm In A Blue, Blue Mood" Segment 2 Roy Orbison- "Yes I'm Hurting" Segment 3 Roy Orbison- "Ride Away" Segment 4 Roy Orbison- "Go, Go, Go (Down The Line)" Segment 5 Roy Orbison- "Pantomime" Segment 6 Roy Orbison- "You'll Never Walk Alone" Segment 7 Roy Orbison- "Kawliga"      

We describe Rock N Roll as an “enfant terrible,” then an unruly toddler, then a hyperactive kid. When Buddy Holly breaks out in late 1957, we see Rock N Roll has stepped out into the world as a confident young adult. Our story begins on a snowy two-lane highway in rural Iowa, on February 2nd, 1959: the fateful last day of the Winter Dance Party tour. The shows are going well, but the tour is a real grind. Cold, tired, and fed up, Buddy Holly decides to charter a small plane after the show that night in Clear Lake, Iowa. We meet the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Dion DiMucci. We discuss how Ritchie Valens was the first Latino crossover artist, and his 1957 release “La Bamba” is the first Spanish-language pop hit. We then devote a good chunk of the show to Buddy Holly’s life and musical career. We emphasize his giant influence on future Rock N Roll legends, and talk about The Crickets’ groundbreaking tour of the United Kingdom in early 1958. We meet “The Killer,” Jerry Lee Lewis. Great musician and performer, but not at all a nice guy, to put it mildly. We come back to Buddy’s story: the relentless grind of touring with The Crickets, business disputes with his manager Norman Petty, his courtship of and marriage to Maria Elena Santiago. Out on the road Buddy meets Phil and Don Everly, and they become fast friends. We profile the Everly Brothers, and we ask you to hold a picture in your mind. The last chapter: a terse and tense account of the incident outside Mason City, Iowa, in the early-morning hours of February 3rd, 1959. We close with a few words about loss and friendship. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

We remember the artists from the Winter Dance Party Tour this week.  Buddy Holly, Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens were tragically killed in a plane crash on February 3rd, 1959.  We hear from Dion who was also a part of the tour with his group The Belmonts on his thoughts on Buddy Holly and why he calls it "The Day The Music Was Born".  Also this week, we've got rockers from Jerry Lee Lewis, Levi Dexter & Gretsch Brothers, Johnny Burnette, Robert Gordon, Traveling Wilburys and lots more! Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey   Little Richard- "Tutti Frutti" Brian Setzer- "Lemme Slide" Hot Rod Walt & The Psycho DeVilles- "Rebel" Ronnie Self- "Ain't I'm A Dog" Traveling Wilburys- "Wilbury Twist" Buddy Holly & The Crickets- "Rock Me Baby" Eddie Cochran- "Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie"   Dion interview segment Dion & The Belmonts- "I Wonder Why" Levi Dexter & Gretsch Brothers- "Everyday" Roy Orbison- Chicken Hearted" Big Bopper- "White Lightning" Waylon Jennings- "Jole Blon" (produced by Buddy Holly) Jerry Lee Lewis- "Stepchild" JD McPherson- "Let The Good Times Roll" Howlin' Wolf- "Come To Me Baby" Ritchie Valens- "Come On Let's Go" Chan Romero- "Hippy Hippy Shake" Johnny Burnette- "Sweet Baby Doll" Rhythm Bound- "Come On In" Robert Gordon- "Flyin' Saucers Rock & Roll"

Tonight Lee interviews Ryan Vandergriff who has spent much of his adult life researching and writing the first of three books on the Winter Dance Party tour that ended with the tragic death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, Also an hour of great old fifties classics.

Well Ladies and Gentleman, the winter season is now upon us, which can only mean one thing??. I can?t remember what it was?. How about we just dance. Can you remember back? way back? back to a time when fad dances were awesome? Me neither, but tune in as we listen to new and old songs that helped create dance crazes all over the world. Teddy takes the night off to attend a very high profile Christmas bash, and leaves Eroc to man the system.Plus Free ticket giveaways to the upcoming Pink Flamingoes Burlesque Winter Dance Party on Dec.11. Email cabaradio@gmail.com to win 2 tickets.As alway Upcoming Events.Listen in and dance the night away.-----------------------------------------------------MISSED A SHOW?Check out all our shows online at http://citr.ca/ under "Shows"or in the Itunes store under citr -- cabaradioDownload them to your MP3 player or listen online to any of the shows at your convenience!http://feeds.feedburner.com/Citr--Cabaradio