65 years ago Spring Valley was set to be a stop on Winter Dance Party tour ...

Feb. 3, 1959, is famously known as “The Day the Music Died,” as rock ‘n’ roll legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” were killed in a plane crash early that morning in northern Iowa. Four days later, the group was scheduled to play in Spring Valley.

Saturday (Feb. 3) marks 65 years since the crash, which remains a seminal moment in American pop culture.

The Spring Valley gig was part of the “Winter Dance Party,” a grueling road trip that wore out the musicians amid freezing cold and inferior transportation. The horrible conditions induced Holly to rent the plane that crashed in Iowa, leaving no survivors.

“The Day the Music Died” has since become an iconic and tragic moment in rock ‘n’ roll history. It also reflects an innocence among both music fans and the performers they adored in 1950s America.

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The Winter Dance Party was intended to bring big names to midsize Midwestern towns. In theory, that sounded like a great idea. In reality, it was a mess from the outset.

Certainly, there was loads of talent. Headlining the group was Holly, who was only 22 and already one of the brightest stars in rock ‘n’ roll, a genre that had only been around for a few years. The Lubbock native burst on the scene with “That’ll Be the Day,” which went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in September 1957.

Next came “Peggy Sue,” his best known single, which peaked at No. 3 later that year, followed by “Oh, Boy!,” which went to No. 10. Others included his fourth single on the charts, “Maybe Baby,” which may be Holly’s most underrated hit.

Despite his meteoric rise, Holly was at a tumultuous time in his career. He had just separated from his manager, Norman Petty, amid allegations that Petty had mismanaged, and stolen, much of Holly’s money. Holly had recently married Maria Elena, who was pregnant. Fellow performer Paul Anka claimed that Holly embarked on the Winter Dance Party because he was short on money.

Holly also just broke up with his famous backing band, The Crickets. For the new tour, he assembled a group that included bassist Waylon Jennings, who later had 16 No. 1 hits on the country charts.

Joining Holly was a 17-year-old Latin sensation from California, Valens, who was riding the crest of “Donna,” which rose to No. 2 on the charts. Two weeks before the crash, his most recognizable hit, “La Bamba,” broke onto Billboard.

There was also the famous “Big Bopper,” whose real name was J.P. Richardson, a 28-year-old Texan known for “Chantilly Lace,” also a top 10 hit. Like Holly, Richardson also wrote hits for other performers, including “White Lightning” for George Jones.

A popular disc jockey from Beaumont, Texas, Richardson had not only discovered Johnny Preston, but also wrote that artist’s biggest hit, “Running Bear,” which enjoyed a three-week run atop the charts in January 1960, nearly a year after the crash. All three of Preston’s top hits were published by a company that Richardson had co-founded.

The opening act was Frankie Sardo, a largely unknown singer from New York who later wrote and produced some minor film hits. Few remember Sardo’s role in the tour today.

Rounding out the tour was Dion and his backing group, The Belmonts, all of whom were also on the cusp of stardom. That spring, Dion broke into the Billboard Top 10 with “A Teenager in Love,” while smash hits like “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer” were just a couple of years away. Fate would keep Dion off the plane on that frigid winter night.

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On “The Day the Music Died,” Holly and his friends were halfway through the Winter Dance Party. By then, they were calling it “the tour from hell.”

Today, stars travel in luxury, usually private jets and tricked-out tour buses. But this was 1959, and performers were accustomed to little of that. Rather, the Winter Dance Party was relegated to buses that one historian called “reconditioned school buses, not good enough for school kids.”

The buses frequently broke down and came with poor heat – not a good thing for the dead of winter in the Midwest. Not only did they have to drive through piles of snow, but temperatures dipped to minus 36 at one point.

As a result, some of the performers suffered flu-like symptoms, while Holly’s drummer, Carl Bunch, ended up in a hospital with frostbite. As many as five buses were used on the tour, most with serious problems.

The tour consisted of 24 dates in as many days, meaning there were no days off. That forced the musicians to travel for hours before every scheduled concert, often in hazardous conditions. They also had to pack and unload all their own equipment, as there was no road crew.

To compound the issue, the production company had little regard for distance between stops, worrying more about available venues. Though many cities were fairly close to each other, organizers scheduled dates far apart, causing the tour to zig-zag. A few of the stops were over 500 miles from one another.

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The Winter Dance Party opened in Milwaukee on Jan. 23, 1959, and wound its way across the Midwest. There were four stops planned in Illinois, beginning with Feb. 7 in Spring Valley at the fabled Les Buzz Ballroom.

Today, it seems strange major musical acts would play in small towns like Spring Valley. But in 1959, it was commonplace, particularly in outstanding venues like the Les Buzz.

Though it’s gone today, the Les Buzz Ballroom is still a cherished memory in Spring Valley. Its unusual name was taken from its two owners, Lester Dheese and Arthur “Buzz” Verucchi, who opened the facility in August 1949 as a roller rink. Eventually, the Les Buzz evolved into a dance hall, and the first musical act was booked for Dec. 30, 1950.

Over the next decade, the biggest names in multiple genres of music played the Les Buzz, which always found a way to change with the times, at least for a while. Among its headliners from the big-band era were the revamped Glenn Miller Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lawrence Welk, the Dorsey brothers, Guy Lombardo, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington and Les Brown.

Other stars at the Les Buzz included Andy Williams, Bill Haley, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Rydell, Fabian, Gene Krupa, Vaughn Monroe, and Sammy Kaye.

Sadly, the life of the Les Buzz Ballroom proved short, as it closed in 1961. That April 10, the Streator Times called it a “day of mourning for dancers.”

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The Winter Dance Party was in St. Paul on Jan. 28, then had to go down to Davenport, Iowa, the next night. The heat on the bus went out 30 miles outside of Davenport, forcing a lengthy maintenance stop. From there, it was over to Fort Dodge and all the way back up to Duluth, where temperatures were forecast for minus 35 on the night of the concert.

Next were two shows in Wisconsin on Feb. 1, Appleton in the afternoon and nearby Green Bay in the evening. But the bus again broke down on the way, forcing the Appleton concert to be canceled. When the tour left Green Bay the next morning, the temperatures had plunged to minus 19.

Needless to say, the singers were worn out. The next stop, Feb. 2, was at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, a small city in north-central Iowa, and 350 miles away from Green Bay. After Clear Lake was another mammoth drive to Moorhead, Minnesota, 365 miles to the north.

By then, Holly had enough. He decided to skip the bus and charter a small plane to carry him and his band to the Moorhead stop. The manager of the Surf called a service in nearby Mason City, which secured a 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson, and a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza, a V-tailed plane that carried three passengers. The fee was $36 per passenger.

There is considerable discrepancy as to how the three victims ended up on board. Many believe that Holly rented the plane for himself and his band members. However, Richardson, “The Big Bopper,” was suffering from the flu, and asked Jennings for his seat. Meanwhile, Valens and another band member, guitarist Tommy Alsup, flipped a coin for the other seat, and Valens won.

Holly is said to have needled Jennings, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up,” to which Jennings supposedly replied, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

Dion remembered some of the events differently, claiming that he had flipped the coin with Valens and actually won. But he turned down the seat based on the price, thinking that the $36 was the same amount his parents paid for the apartment he grew up in. Indeed, it was a different era than today.

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The plane departed in light snow, high winds, and low visibility at around 12:55 a.m. Feb. 3, hours after the Clear Lake concert. The pilot, Peterson, had apparently received incomplete weather information.

An expected radio contact at 1 a.m. did not occur. Around that time, rural residents north of town noticed a low-flying airplane that nearly hit several houses. At 9:35 a.m., the wreckage of the plane was found 6 miles northwest of the airport, with the bodies strewn nearby.

All four victims had died on impact. Subsequent investigations pointed the finger at the faulty weather report and Peterson’s decision to fly in conditions for which he was not qualified.

None of the three stars left a will, and the value of their estates is of debate. Music historian Larry Lehmer writes that Richardson’s estate was valued at $11,111.50, including his most valuable possession, a 1953 Dodge. He also left a savings account of $8. Allsup said that Holly was “broke” at the time of the tour.

Sales of the music of all three performers skyrocketed after their deaths, though who actually received the profits was disputed for decades.

The legends of Buddy Holly and the crash have grown with time, but in the days that followed, some papers carried scant news of the disaster. Others pushed it to the background for another airline disaster, the loss of an American Airlines commercial jet in New York on the same day as the Holly plane crash. The New York tragedy cost 65 lives.

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Incredibly, the tour went on as scheduled. Mere hours after the crash in Iowa, the planned Moorhead concert was held, with a 15-year-old high school kid from nearby Fargo who was later known as Bobby Vee (“Take Good Care of My Baby,” “Run to Him”) filling in.

Vee was used just for that night, as organizers lined up Fabian, a teen idol whose first single hit the charts the day before, the last day of Holly’s life.

Fabian turned 16 that Feb. 6. He was joined on the tour by Jimmy Clanton (“Venus in Blue Jeans”). Frankie Avalon (“Venus”) was also added for a few dates.

Some compared the Moorhead concert to “be like a big wake” with a “certain sadness” about the venue. A sellout crowd was on hand, which one insider attributed to “a curiosity factor” because of the tragedy.

After Moorhead, the tour staggered toward three dates in Iowa, at Sioux City, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, from Feb. 4-6.

Next came Spring Valley on the evening of Saturday, Feb. 7. That afternoon, Buddy Holly was laid to rest in Lubbock.

Valens also was buried that day, in San Fernando, California. The previous day, Richardson was laid to rest in Beaumont, while the pilot, Peterson, was buried in Alta, Iowa.

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Posters for the gig at the Les Buzz had to be updated at the last minute. The original spotlighted Holly, Valens, and the “Big Bopper,” along with Dion and the Belmonts. Sardo received secondary mention, near the bottom. The posters were similar to those used by other venues on the tour.

With the loss of the headliners, a new poster was needed, and the tone was indeed somber. The words at the top of the replacement poster were the mantra of all entertainers before and since – “The Show Must Go On.”

Underneath was the passage “Here are the Replacements and the Complete Winter Dance Party.” In descending order, the list was Avalon, Clanton, Dion and the Belmonts, The Crickets and Sardo.

The poster noted that Spring Valley was to be Avalon’s only downstate performance, as he was not scheduled to appear in Peoria a week later. All in all, the poster trumpeted “5 Big Record Stars in a 4 Hr. Dance & Show.”

Doors opened at 8 p.m. for the show, which lasted from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. Tickets in advance cost $2.25 and $2.50 at the door.

Jennings was an angry man as he took the stage with The Crickets that night. He had wanted to attend the funeral of Holly, his close friend, back in Texas earlier that day. However, the tour promoters wouldn’t let him off.

For the regulars at the Lez Buzz Ballroom, the night of the performance was disheartening. In 1999, Lloyd Pletsch, who recalled attending many shows at the ballroom as a youth, wrote of “the sense of loss for those of us who frequented those concerts.”

The concert itself was overwhelming to some in attendance. A grandson of the owners of the Les Buzz said that “those who attended [the Feb. 7 date there] recall that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.”

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A gig at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago was scheduled for Feb. 8, the day after Spring Valley. Then it was back to Iowa for Waterloo and Dubuque before another mammoth drive, to Louisville, Kentucky, That was followed by concerts at Canton and Youngstown, Ohio, on Feb. 12-13.

The second-to-last date was at the fabled Peoria State Armory on Feb. 14. The final stop was on Sunday, Feb. 15, in Springfield at the Illinois State Armory, one of the city’s top concert venues, just across the street from the state capitol building.

At 75 miles, those were two of the stops closest to one another. To get to Peoria, the tour had to come from Youngstown, 550 miles away.

At Peoria, the Winter Dance Party was what some consider the first big rock concert in the city. Two shows were held, and drew a combined audience of 6,100. Ticket prices were $1.50.

The emotions of the Peoria crowd are debated today. Several attendees, when interviewed for the Peoria Journal-Star in 2019, noted that their youthful enthusiasm dimmed any mournful sentiment at the concert.

Sixty years earlier, the Journal-Star reported the day after the concert that “nothing short of a full-blown tornado will ever come as close to ripping the roof off the Peoria State Armory as did the wild antics of more than 6,000 screaming, stomping teenagers.”

On the day of the last concert in Springfield, temperatures were, ironically, unseasonably warm, reaching the low 40s – much better than at almost any point in the tour.

Thirteen years later, the sprawling Don McLean hit “American Pie,” which rambles for 8 minutes, 42 seconds, and was inspired by the plane crash, sat atop the Billboard charts for four weeks. Then as now, “The Day the Music Died” lives on.

• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.