The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) “Chantilly Lace” Mercury Records (1958)

With the success of “Chantilly Lace,” Richardson joined Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Richie Valens and Dion & The Belmonts for a “Winter Dance Party” tour. On February 2, 1959, Buddy Holly chartered a small plane to take him and his new Crickets band (Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. Richardson came down with the flu and didn’t feel comfortable on the bus, so Jennings gave his plane seat to Richardson. Valens had never flown on a small plane and requested Allsup’s seat. They flipped a coin, and Valens won the toss.

In the early morning of February 3, 1959, in Clear Lake, Iowa, the small four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza took off from the Mason City airport during a blinding snow storm and crashed into Albert Juhl’s corn field several miles after takeoff at 1:05 a.m. Richardson was in the seat that Waylon Jennings was supposed to have occupied. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. In his 1971 hit song “American Pie” Don McLean referred to this event as “The Day the Music Died”.

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