The 1971 hit single American Pie by Don McLean is about the death of Buddy Holly in a chartered plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959.
McLean’s lyrics include: “Bad news on the doorstep; I couldn’t take one more step… The day the music died.”
But he was wrong. According to the Bond Head Lions Club, the music never died – and a concert at the Bond Head Community Hall on Saturday proved it to the satisfaction of the sold-out crowd.
Local musician Ken Blyth, who describes himself as “an avid Buddy Holly fan,” and his band Reminiscing took to the stage at the Hall, to channel the music of Buddy Holly from the earliest recordings in Nashville to his final sessions before the fatal crash.
“This is an educational musical experience,” said Blyth, who also talked about the life and times of Holly – including the fact that Buddy Holly and the Crickets were initially more popular in Europe than in North America, and that Holly’s recording career spanned just three years.
Holly married in 1958 “one month after his first date,” Blyth said. In fact, he proposed to Maria Elena Santiago on that first meeting. “She turned out to be a big part of his short career,” said Blyth, and the inspiration for hits like “True Love.”
Holly also split up with the Crickets in 1958, and needed to put together a new band for his Winter Party Tour, in 1959.
He approached a DJ and guitar player, and asked if he'd be interested in playing bass on the tour. That DJ was a young Waylon Jennings. “Buddy actually recorded and produced Waylon’s first song,” said Blyth.
And Waylon, saying yes to the tour, “gave up his seat on the plane on a coin toss,” that fateful day in Clear Lake, Iowa. Holly made a joke about Jennings’ bus breaking down; Jennings retaliated with a crack about the plane crashing.
After the tragedy, which also took the lives of Ritchie Valens and ‘The Big Bopper’ JP Richardson, Jennings, consumed with guilt, didn’t pick up a guitar for two years, said Blyth.
Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly was just 22 when he died.
Peggy Sue, Oh Boy!, Roll Over Beethoven, That’ll be the Day - the music of Buddy Holly lives on.
Part of the concert was streamed live on facebook – dedicating ‘Raining in my Heart’ to Larry Holly, the 94-year-old older brother of Buddy Holly, and ‘Rock Around with Ollie Vee’ to songwriter and guitarist for the Crickets, Sonny Curtis.