Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the plane that crashed and killed Buddy Holly
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Sixty-one years ago Monday, a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza took flight from a small-town Iowa airport, carrying three pioneers of early American rock ânâ roll music.
The musicians, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. âBig Bopperâ Richardson, chartered a plane with hopes of cutting travel time between frigid Midwestern tour stops. A few extra hours of sleep waited at the destination, Moorhead, Minnesota.
But the plane wouldnât make it out of Clear Lake, Iowa, crashing in a field just miles north of the Surf Ballroom, where the early rock stars wrapped a gig hours earlier. It was one of the first tragedies to strike modern American music and a figurative end to 1950s culture. Don McLean coined it âThe Day the Music Diedâ in his 1971 opus âAmerican Pie.â
And the events that unfolded Feb. 3, 1959, at the airport in neighboring Mason City, Iowa, haunted one of Hollyâs bandmates â a forefather to country musicâs original outlaw movement â for years to come.
More:What you need to know about Buddy Holly and âThe Day The Music Diedâ
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A young Waylon Jennings, playing bass in Hollyâs backing band for the âWinter Dance Partyâ tour that brutally zigzagged through upper Midwest cities, offered his seat on the plane to a sick Richardson.
The tour had been stranded on more than one occasion that winter and, before takeoff, Holly jestingly told Jennings he hoped the bus broke down. Jennings responded with âI hope your olâ plane crashes.â
"I was so afraid for many years that somebody was going to find out I said that,â Jennings told CMT in 1999. âSomehow I blamed myself. Compounding that was the guilty feeling that I was still alive. I hadnât contributed anything to the world at that time compared to Buddy.
"Why would he die and not me? It took a long time to figure that out, and it brought about some big changes in my life â the way I thought about things."
More:Sorry, 'American Pie,' but the music didn't die in Iowa. Just ask the fans.
Jennings and Holly bonded in the latterâs hometown, Lubbock, Texas. Jennings spun records on local station KLLL and Holly would visit during his shifts. In 1958, the âPeggy Sueâ star would produce Jenningsâ first record, a cut of Cajun standard âJole Blon.â
The friendship led to Jennings picking up a bass for the "Winter Dance," a tour he told Rolling Stone in 1973 that Holly did only âbecause he was broke. Flat broke.â
The "Winter Dance Party" played on for two weeks after the crash, including that night in Moorhead. Jennings would continue his music career, forging a celebrated outlaw sound heard on 1970s records such as âDreaming My Dreamsâ and âThe Ramblinâ Man.â
Jennings was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. He died from diabetes complications in 2002.
âBuddy was the first guy who had confidence in me,â Jennings told CMT. âHell, I had as much star quality as an old shoe. But he really liked me and believed in me.â
More:'American Pie' isn't a song about Buddy Holly, Don McLean says: 'It's about America'