Song buddy holly died1/10/2023 The boys hadn’t had their laundry cleaned for days. On the bus ride to Clear Lake, Buddy Holly decided he’d had enough of the road. At the ballroom that night, they performed their hits, and for the finale they all came onstage for a jam that included “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” “La Bamba” and “Great Balls of Fire.” And Buddy and the Crickets were clothed in black jackets, gray slacks and ascots. Valens dressed in a blue satin shirt, black bolero and vaquero pants. Throughout the tour, the Big Bopper sported a Stetson and a three-quarter leopard-skin coat that he called Melvin. and the girls did too with their poodle skirts, capris, froufrous and rabbit-fur collars.”Īnd the musicians were dressed to kill. And I have to chuckle when I remember my ducktail and lots of Brylcreem - ‘A little dab will do ya.’ We looked very cool then. Alan Mitchell, a former Chicago radio disc jockey who was there that night with his girlfriend, recalls, “I was 15 and was wearing my Thompson High School letter jacket. show for the more than 1,200 teens who had paid $1.25 to attend the concert. They arrived at the Ballroom just in time to perform their 8 p.m. It was 19 below zero the morning when the Winter Dance Party musicians boarded another bus in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the 340-mile journey to Clear Lake, but near Prairie du Chien, the heaters, as if on schedule, failed once again and had to be repaired. A one-story, hangarlike structure, it looks as if it had materialized out of one of Stephen Shore’s photographs of the American vernacular roadside attractions he wittily calls “Uncommon Places.” Inside, clouds are projected on the ballroom’s blue-painted domed ceiling and faux palm trees flank the stage, intended to simulate the atmosphere of a South Sea Island beach club. The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa - a town of about 8,000 once known as “Iowa’s Fun Capital” - was opened in 1934. When we hit those chords and were stompin’ on the floor of the bus and we were rockin’ and taking solos and taking verses… man, that was home, that was family, that was the connection, that was a bit of salvation, that was touching the very center of my heart.” And when we were playing in the back of the bus, I knew it. “When I’m inside a song, I know exactly who I am. “You know, Buddy, Ritchie and I used to sit in the back and jam together. We were laughin’, and to me it seemed like a field trip! I didn’t know 30 below zero. One of the Belmonts had a bottle of scotch, so we’d all take a shot. “Buddy and I huddled together under a blanket, and just to pass the time, I’d tell him stories of the Bronx - about Ralphie Mooch, Frankie Yunk Yunk and Joe BB-Eyes - and he’d tell me stories about Baptists in Lubbock, Texas. In the pitch darkness and with no heat, the musicians, stranded for several hours until rescued by passing motorists, burned newspapers in the aisle of the bus to keep warm.ĭion, whose exhilarating versions of songs by Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens are featured on his new album, Heroes, recalls his memories of that night: “We were in the middle of a blizzard, trees were snapping in the wind, it was 30 below, and the snow was coming down so hard we couldn’t see out the windows. 'The Buddy Holly Story' Deluxe Soundtrack Is Now Availableĭown on Highway 51, near the town of Hurley, Wisconsin, in the early hours of the morning, a piston on the tour bus had gone through the engine block. You know what I like!”), was a recent Top 10 hit. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, a radio DJ from Beaumont, Texas, who, in 1957, had broken the record for continuous on-the-air broadcasting (five days, two hours and eight minutes, during which time he played 1,821 discs, taking showers during five-minute newscasts) and whose signature song, “Chantilly Lace” (“Hel-lo, bay-bee…. As their heat-deprived yellow converted Baptist-school tour bus went slipping and sliding in subarctic temperatures along the ice-laced highways of the Upper Midwest, a dozen shivering young musicians inside whiled away the hours huddling under blankets, catnapping, cardplaying, storytelling and making music together on acoustic guitars.Īmong the riders were the 22-year-old Buddy Holly, one of the radiant lights of 1950s rock & roll, from Lubbock, Texas the 17-year-old Ritchie Valens, a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, from California’s San Fernando Valley the 19-year-old Dion DiMucci (better known as Dion) and the Belmonts - soon to rise to the top of the charts with “A Teenager in Love” - from the Bronx and the 28-year-old group elder, J.P. It would go down in history as rock & roll’s Tour From Hell: the Winter Dance Party of 1959 that took place exactly 50 winters ago in February.
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