On February 2, 1959, The Big Popper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly had just played a gig in Clear Lake, Iowa, and they were scheduled to travel to Moorhead, Minnesota next. Prior to that, the musicians had been traveling in a freezing tour bus, and Holly decided to charter a plane to get to their next gig. The three boarded a small Beechcraft Bonanza plane at approximately 12:30 a.m. on February 3. Shortly after takeoff, the plane crashed into a cornfield just a few miles from the airport, according to Live About.
Valens, Holly, and Richardson were thrown out of the plane, while the pilot was found in the cockpit; all four of them died. Per Biography, initial investigations into the incident blamed the 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson and bad weather for the accident. It was later found out that although Peterson had sufficient flying hours and had passed his written test, he was yet to qualify for flying using only reference instruments, which was what he had to do that night. In 2015, aviation expert L.J. Coon pushed to reopen the investigation into the accident, as he said that it may have been caused by other factors, such as weight distribution and technical issues, but the National Transportation Safety Board had declined to reopen the case, as reported by the Des Moines Register.
In 1972, singer Don McLean memorialized the death of the three musicians in his song “American Pie,” where he referred to the date of the accident as “the day the music died.”
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