'The Day the Music Died': Buddy Holly — Feb. 3, 1959

DULUTH, Minn. (MCT) — The rickety old bus pulled out of the Duluth Armory late on Saturday, Jan. 31, 1959, and headed across St. Louis Bay into the frigid Wisconsin night.

On board were some exhausted and stinky rock 'n' rollers and their harried manager. The Winter Dance Party tour had just finished its ninth gig in as many days and was headed for Appleton and Green Bay, Wis., for two shows that Sunday.

But as the temperature plunged to around 30 below zero and the wind howled, fate intervened. The southbound bus creaked to a stop as it struggled up an incline on Hwy. 51 about 10 miles south of Hurley.

Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Waylon Jennings, Dion and the others were stranded on a remote highway in the northern Wisconsin forest. They huddled under blankets and burned newspapers to try to stay warm. Buddy's drummer nursed painful frostbitten feet.

It was the night the music almost died.

As Holly fans from around the world converge on Iowa's Surf Ballroom to remember his death in a plane crash 50 years ago, the little-known story of the bus breakdown and the rest of the grueling tour is worth telling to understand why Holly chartered the airplane at Mason City two nights later .

One of the nation's most famous rock 'n' roll stars, Holly had reluctantly signed onto the tour because he needed the money. But after 11 days of touring, he was tired — tired of the endless miles on frozen buses, tired of performing in dirty clothes, tired of bickering with his manager in Clovis, N.M., and tired of sleeping sitting up.

By all accounts, the rockers gave a rousing performance in Clear Lake on Feb. 2, 1959. But rather than ride that cold bus 365 miles to Moorhead, Holly, J.P. (the Big Bopper) Richardson and Valens climbed into a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza that crashed into a cornfield in a snowstorm just after take-off.

The story is legend — made more famous by Don McLean's '70s song "American Pie." Not so well known is what some call the "Tour From Hell."

The midwinter tour was particularly difficult for Texans Holly and his reconstituted Crickets, and for Valens, a Southern California boy who hadn't taken a winter coat.

"It was so cold on the bus that we'd have to wear all our clothes, coats and everything. … I couldn't believe how cold it was," wrote Jennings, who played bass for Holly on the tour. The original Crickets were back in Texas.

General Artists Corp. had organized the tour with no thought to geographic sanity.

"They didn't care," says Holly historian Bill Griggs. "It was like they threw darts at a map."

Griggs estimates they had five different buses before driving into Clear Lake — "reconditioned school buses, not good enough for school kids."