Fifty years ago this morning, the Beechcraft B35 Bonanza carrying Buddy Holly, 22, Ritchie Valens, 17, J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper), 28, and pilot Roger Peterson, 21, crashed into the frozen ground, amidst rose of cornstalk, ice and snow - just miles north of Clear Lake, Iowa. The plane came to a screeching halt, and so did the lives of all four on board.
I can't recall the infancy of rock and roll. I arrived a little too late (25 years, roughly). But i can vividly remember my reaction every time I recognized a Buddy Holly tune on the car radio: "Turn it up, please." And at four years old, I had developed a pretty good ear for a Buddy Holly riff. That is, thanks to my grandpa; he was the one who spotted me the five bucks for my own copy of Buddy Holly Lives. It was one of my first cassette tapes, the first I'd ever purchased at a store. And, like the title, the tape did live; believe it or not, it lasted me through high school. I'm willing to bet it's still in the console of my old Cutlass Supreme.
Later on, as a fledgling musician I found Buddy Holly influencing my own music - and everyone else's for that matter. Older musicians have often told me I was born later than I should've been, that I would have had a blast playing early rock and roll. Speaking on behalf of all the musicians I know, I think we all would have. And not because we're all lost souls of a past era. I believe it's because those big stars, on that small plane, were far ahead of their time. Their influence, and the legacy they left behind, can be found in the skeletal structure of rock and roll anatomy - right in the spine.
February 3, 1959, just after 1AM, they left the ground boys. Five short miles and moments later, they came down icons. Their music never left the sky. It has been immortalized by every heralded hook, every catchy chorus. Their lives fell short fifty years ago, but their songs will forever "rave on."
paul tefft - a real handful.
