The Hour The Music Died

1st Broadcast 3rd February 2009 10.30-11.30 BBC Radio 2

Director

Dirk Maggs

Producer

Mik Wilkojc

Written By

Richard Ward

Colin Birch

Production By

A Perfectly Normal production Ltd

Synopsis

Fifty years to the day after the Iowa plane-crash deaths of rock 'n' rollers Buddey Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (aka Jiles Richardson JR). A docudrama speculating on what may have happened in the hour prior to the accident. Covering their tumultuous gig in Clear Lake, Iowa, and the car journey to the airport, this carefully researched re-creation features period music.

Cast

Buddy Holly Rupert Degas

The Big Bopper Nicholas Colicos

Ritchie Valens kerry Shale

Tommy Dominic Hawksley

Anderson William Roberts

Lucille Susan Sheridan

Maria Elena Laurence Bouvard

Mixer

Not known

Recorded at

The Soundhouse Ltd London England

Music composed & Arranged

Buddy Holly

Comment by Dirk Maggs

Nothing yet

Running Time

1 Episode of 60 Minutes 60 minutes in total

Other Items

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Holly began a solo tour with other notable performers, including Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. After a performance in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the Riverside Ballroom, on 1 February the tour moved on to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa on 2 February 1959. Afterwards, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new back-up band (Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota, enroute to play the next leg of the Winter Dance Party tour at the Armory in Moorhead, Minnesota. Carl Bunch missed the flight as he had been hospitalized with frostbite three days earlier. The Big Bopper asked Jennings for his spot on the four-seat plane, as he was recovering from the flu. Ritchie Valens was still signing autographs at the concert site when Allsup walked in and told him it was time to go. Valens begged for a seat on the plane. Allsup pulled a 50-cent coin out of his pocket and the two men flipped for the seat. Allsup lost.

The plane took off in light snow and gusty winds at around 12:05 A.M. but crashed a few minutes later. The wreckage was discovered several hours later by the plane's owner, Jerry Dwyer, some 8 miles (13 km) from the airport on the property of Albert Juhl. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. Holly's body, along with those of Valens and Richardson, was thrown from the wreckage. Holly and Valens lay 17 feet (5.2 m) south of the wreckage and Richardson was thrown around 40 feet (12 m) to the north of the wreckage.

The pilot's body remained in the wreckage. All had suffered severe and multiple injuries. Without any doubt, all had died on impact, with the plane hitting the ground at 170 mph (270 km/h). While theories abound as to the exact cause of the crash, an official determination of pilot error was rendered by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Although the crash received a good deal of local coverage, it was displaced in the national news by an accident that occurred the same day in New York City, when American Airlines Flight 320 crashed during an instrument landing approach at LaGuardia Airport, killing 65. Don McLean referred to it as "The Day the Music Died".

Holly's pregnant wife became a widow after barely six months of marriage and miscarried soon after. Holly's funeral was held on 7 February 1959 at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock under the direction of Sanders Funeral Home. His body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery in the eastern part of the city. Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. Maria Holly did not attend the funeral and has never visited the gravesite. She told the Avalanche-Journal: "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane." Early in 2008, Maria visited the apartment building where she and Holly lived. There, she observed musicians in nearby Washington Square Park, where Holly often played his guitar. "I gave one musician $9 because 9 was Buddy's favourite number," Maria told the Avalanche-Journal. She said that she had never come to grips with his premature death.