Though Buddy Holly's career lasted only two short years, his impact on rock 'n' roll and
pop culture is undeniable.
Born Charles Hardin Holley to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas, Holly spent his youth learning
and playing music.
In 1955, Holly, then just a teenager, opened for Elvis.
In 1957, he released his song "That'll Be the Day" with his band, The Crickets.
The song topped the charts and made the band a hit, and soon after the group went on tour.
In August of that year, they became the first white act to take the stage at Harlem's famed
Apollo Theater.
Holly also found love during this time in his life.
In 1958, he met Maria Santiago, a receptionist at a music publishing company in New York.
He asked Santiago to marry him on their first date, and shortly after, the pair married
in Texas.
Sadly, Holly and the Crickets parted ways soon after, apparently due to creative differences
— it didn't help that Holly wanted to stay in New York, either, while his bandmates wanted
to return home.
Now a solo artist, Holly reluctantly agreed to perform on the Winter Dance Party Tour
in the Midwest in early 1959.
Maria wanted to join her husband on the road, but because she was pregnant with their first
child, Holly said no.
By all accounts, conditions on the tour were brutal and people were getting sick from the
freezing Midwestern conditions.
The bus was unheated and broke down frequently, and, when the tour made its way into Iowa,
Holly decided he was over it — so he chartered a plane that would take him and his tour mates
to Fargo, North Dakota.
As the plane was small, however, they had to figure out who would fly and who would
continue the miserable journey on the bus.
In the end, Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P.
"The Big Bopper" Richardson boarded the ill-fated flight.
Valens and another guitarist actually flipped a coin to see who would get a seat.
Moreover, Richardson was suffering from the flu and convinced Waylon Jennings, then Holly's
band member, to give up his seat for him.
In a remark that would haunt him for the rest of his life, Jennings jokingly told Holly
he hoped his plan would crash after Holly said that he hoped the bus would freeze.
"When you feel like, when you feel guilty about it, and everything, you try and find
reasons that you might have caused it, you know?"
After a successful show at the Surf Ballroom, Holly and his colleagues headed to the nearby
Mason City airport and departed sometime before 1 a.m.
The plane crashed just a few miles into the journey, killing Holly, Valens, Richardson,
and their young pilot.
The three singers had been ejected from the aircraft in the crash, and Holly's body was
found 20 feet away from the wreck.
It was later determined that poor weather conditions and pilot error were to blame for
the accident.
Holly was only 22 years old when he died.
His autopsy report painted a gruesome picture of the accident — it found that his skull
had been split and that most of his brain tissue was missing.
Both of his ears were bleeding and his face and scrotum were lacerated.
His chest had been crushed, too, and he had multiple fractures, including in his left
forearm, right elbow, and his thighs and legs.
Holly's wife, Maria, learned of his death through the news and suffered a miscarriage
shortly after.
She refused to attend the funeral and has never visited Holly's grave.
She is still alive today, too, and owns all the rights to his name, image, trademark,
and intellectual property.
In 1987, she helped enact the Buddy Holly Bill, to prevent the families of dead celebrities
from being exploited.
In 2019, she told The Mirror that she thinks about Holly "every day."
Don McLean later commemorated the plane crash in his 1971 song "American Pie" as the day
the music died.
Holly's music, however, did not fade away.
The Texas native's legacy lives on in the acts he influenced, from the Beatles to Bob
Dylan and many, many more.
Buddy Holly is buried in Lubbock, Texas.
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