Music’s Aviation Tragedies: Ritchie Valens

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Yes, this is not in alphabetical order in the monthlong look at aviation disasters that involved musicians. However, today is February 3, and we can’t get to this day without remembering it. So, out of order but most significant, here’s today’s artist. Ritchie Valens Ritchie, you were just starting to realize your dreams Everyone calls me a “kid,” but you were only 17 (Eddie Cochran, “Three Stars”) Yes, it’s the 65th anniversary of The Day the Music Died. And, as I mentioned in the teaser, there were cases where more than one single artist died in a plane crash, and they’d be handled individually (as opposed to the bands we’ve had for the first two days). Here’s the first example of that. On January 31, 1957, a DC-7 that was slated for commercial use and an Air Force jet collided over the San Fernando Valley, raining debris down on Pacoima Middle School. Four students were killed in addition to the four people on the plane. Although 15-year-old Richard Valenzuela was a student at the middle school, he was absent that day to attend the funeral of his grandfather. Fast forward two years and Valenzuela, performing under the name Ritchie Valens, is a young hit singer. (The papers referred to him as an “idol of the current rock and roll craze.”) He’s on a national tour, called the Winter Dance Party, with one of the biggest singers around (since Elvis was in the Army at the time), Buddy Holly. Oh, and he’s afraid of flying because of what happened at his middle school. If you’ve ever watched the VH-1 Behind the Music documentary on “The Day the Music Died,” you’ve seen the venues and the dates. It looked like Stevie Wonder had drawn the itinerary (although I’m sure he could do better!). Four days before their appearance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa they had performed two dates in Iowa. The night before, they’d been in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I mentioned with the Blackwood Brothers that they had a bus that was converted into what we now know as the tour bus, with plenty of amenities. These young rock singers didn’t have that luxury. They were on buses that would have had to be destroyed to be improved. The conditions were so bad that Buddy Holly’s drummer, Carl Bunch, developed frostbite on his feet so severe that he had to be hospitalized. To fill the void, Ritchie drummed for Holly during his set. Although Dion DiMucci told a different story much after the fact, the longstanding and accepted story was that Holly chartered a plane for himself and his two bandmates: Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings. After the show, J.P. Richardson, complaining of the flu, asked if he could fly instead of Jennings. Waylon willingly agreed. Allsup told the story many times of how he was actually in the car to go to the plane, then got out to go back inside the Surf Ballroom to check and make sure that no instruments or personal belongings had been left behind. While in the dressing room he ran into Valens, who, like Richardson, wasn’t feeling well. Allsup pulled a half-dollar out of his pocket and flipped it. Valens called “heads.” Heads it was. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever won anything,” Ritchie reportedly quipped before talking Allsup’s seat on the plane. There’s a half-dollar on display at the doorway of the dressing room at the Surf Ballroom. It’s from Tommy Allsup, along with a letting explaining that it’s hanging where the two had been when flipping for the final seat on the plane. In “American Pie,” Don McLean sings, “For ten years we’ve been on our own.” Now it’s 65 years that we’ve been on our own. At 17, Valens is the youngest person on this list. Ritchie Valens Born Richard Steven Valenzuela May 13, 1941 - February 3, 1959 (age 17) Place of crash: Clear Lake, Iowa You know Ritchie’s “big three” hits, so here’s a ballad that you don’t get to hear much of, “We Belong Together”: