Tommy Allsup plays New Anniesland Friday 9th June--even senior members of the HSC Ltd have indicated attendance


Tommy Allsup
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tommy Allsup (born November 24, 1931 in Owasso, Oklahoma) is an American musician.

Allsup began his career in music in 1949 as a guitarist with the Oklahoma Swingbillies. In 1958, recording at Norman Petty\'s studio in Clovis, New Mexico, he met Buddy Holly, who asked him to play lead guitar in a new backup band to replace The Crickets. Allsup agreed, and played with Waylon Jennings, who played bass guitar, and Carl Bunch, who played the drums.

During their winter tour, Buddy Holly was killed in an airplane crash on February 3, 1959 at Clear Lake Iowa, in what has become known as \"The Day the Music Died.\" Allsup was the person who, luckily, lost the toss of a coin to Ritchie Valens for a seat on the small airplane. needed The scene was depicted in the film La Bamba.

After Holly\'s death, Allsup moved to California, where he did session work for Liberty Records and eventually became one of their record producers. In 1968 , he moved to Nashville to manage Metromedia Records.

More info on the "the day the music died"
Following the February 2, 1959 performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new back-up band ** (Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. {**Former bassist JB Mauldin and Drummer Jerry Allison agreed to continue as the Crickets, while Buddy was now booked under his own name.} Carl Bunch did not take the flight as he was hospitalized for 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 had never flown on a small plane and requested Allsup's seat. They flipped a coin, Valens called heads and won the toss. The four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza took off in extremely cold but otherwise good flying weather at around 1:05 A.M. but crashed only a few minutes after takeoff. The wreckage was discovered several hours later by the plane's owner, Jerry Dwyer, some 8 miles from the airport on the property of Albert Juhl. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson, leaving Holly's pregnant bride, Maria Elena Holly, a widow

This article was originally posted on 31-May-2007, 21:56 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 31-May-2007, 22:02.