The Day the Music Died: Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, Big Bopper killed on this day in 1959

SAN ANTONIO (WOAI/KABB) — Friday marks 64 years since "the day the music died."

It was one of rock and roll's first tragedies and it put an end to the 1950s. Don McLean coined it “The Day the Music Died” in his 1971 opus “American Pie.”

That day, Feb. 3, 1959, three young rock and rollers, Buddy Holly, 22, Richie Valens, 17, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, 24, died in a tragic plane crash shortly after takeoff in Clear Lake, Iowa.

With Elvis in the Army, Chuck Berry in trouble with the law and Jerry Lee Lewis' scandal involving him marrying his 13-year-old cousin, rock and roll had lost its superstars. Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper were in the midst of taking over and becoming superstars in their own right.

But after a gig at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, the three hopped aboard a chartered airplane in the hopes of not traveling on the cold tour bus on their way to their next tour stop, Moorhead, Minnesota.

The plane wouldn’t make it out of Clear Lake, as it crashed in a field shortly after takeoff.

A future country music legend gave up his seat on the plane to the Big Bopper, who was sick at the time.

A young Waylon Jennings, who was the bass player for Holly’s band during the “Winter Dance Party” tour, was stuck taking the tour bus. Holly joked with Jennings saying that he hoped the bus would break down. Jennings responded with “I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

"I was so afraid for many years that somebody was going to find out I said that,” Jennings told CMT in 1999. “Somehow I blamed myself. Compounding that was the guilty feeling that I was still alive. I hadn’t contributed anything to the world at that time compared to Buddy.

"Why would he die and not me? It took a long time to figure that out, and it brought about some big changes in my life — the way I thought about things."

The "Winter Dance Party" continued on for two weeks after the crash, including the gig in Moorhead.

At the time of his death, Holly scored a slew of hit songs with his band The Crickets in less than 2 years on the music scene, including classics like "That'll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Oh Boy," and "Maybe Baby."

Holly would go on to influence a generation of musicians. From Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to The Beatles, they all were in awe of this boy from Lubbock.

The legendary Paul McCartney talked about Holly's influence on The Beatles.

One of the main things about The Beatles is that we started out writing our own material," he said in The Beatles Anthology. "People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician'

Holly was among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's inaugural Class of 1986 that included Chuck Berry, James Brown, Sam Cooke, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

Valens, born Richard Valenzuela, was only 17 when the plane went down. He had already hit the charts with the songs “Come On, Let’s Go,” “Donna” and “La Bamba." Many thought Valens was on the cusp of being a real superstar at the time of his death.

Valens was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Richardson started out as a disk jockey in Texas, but then began writing songs, including his most famous, “Chantilly Lace,” which made the Top 10.

In January 2021, the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake was declared a National Historic Landmark.