Today sees the 50th anniversary of the death of one of rock and roll's greatest-- Buddy Holly remembered in Don McLean's famous hit "The day the music died"
Tommy Allsup lost the toss of the coin on the fateful night in Iowa and lived-- to the extent that he even managed to play at Glasgow Accies last year in the pavilion New Anniesland for the benefit of ageing west end rockers


"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 Crickets band (Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota . Carl Bunch did not take the flight as he was hospitalized for frostbite three days earlier. J.P. Richardson, "The Big Bopper" came down with the flu and didn't feel comfortable on the bus, so Jennings gave his plane seat to him. 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 into a blinding snow storm and crashed into Albert Juhl's corn field several miles after takeoff at 1:05 A.M. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson, leaving Holly's pregnant bride, Maria Elena Holly, a widow

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This article was posted on 2-Feb-2009, 23:21 by Hugh Barrow.