Don McClean said it was the day the music died. I don't know if he meant ALL music...I doubt it...probably Rock and Roll music or at most popular music. Even narrowing it down a bit, I am pretty sure it didn't all die. But it was a day that impacted popular music in some profound ways. The plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz, and the Big Bopper created a void in the rock and roll world. There are a couple of side stories from that night that are interesting.
Buddy Holly was touring without the Crickets because of some contractual thing or something. He had put together a replacement group. A last minute change in scheduling that night made it necessary to drop someone off the plane so the
Big Bopper could get on it. They decided to drop the base guitar player Buddy had picked up for the tour. The base player was natuarally upset...he was standing behind one of the biggest names in the business. His name was Waylon Jennings. For the rest of his life he avoided charter planes at all costs, only using them as a very last resort and then only after telling the pilot that if he crashed the plane, Waylon would whup his ass on the way down.
Another side story was in the town where they were supposed to play that night. When they were late showing up, the promoter grabbed a local singer to fill in. This guy was popular in the area but this night he got more notice than he ever counted on. His name was Bobby Vee.
There is still debate over the impact that the death of Valenz had on hispanic participation in popular music. There is no doubt that he was a ground breaker, but did his absence create a void and lose the ground he had gained or create a void the hispanics raced to fill? I don't recall either "impact". The guy only had three or four hits. What void?
As for the Big Bopper...most people don't even know his real name ("JP" Richardson) or anything he sang beyond "Chantilly Lace". If he had been alone on the plane I doubt anyone would be driving from all over the country for a 50th anniversary tribute concert.
I was twelve, living in Japan, when I heard they had died. I knew who each one was but like most, I was more familiar with Buddy Holly and his music than the others. I felt sad about it. My preteen paranoia surfaced and wondered if the Southern Baptists had a plot to eliminate all the rockers with faulty airplanes and automobiles. Or maybe Colonel Tom Parker was eliminating the competition. It just seemed that through 1958 and into 1960 we lost an awful lot of rock-a-billies.
In 1956 and 1957 the debate in the world of rock and roll was "who is the King?" Parker was quick to annoint Elvis with that title but not everyone agreed. Many felt that Pat Boone was the King. He was better suited to it, smoother, sounded more like the crooners of the previous generations' preference, he didn't gyrate and he had a better voice.
Jerry Lee Lewis always thought that HE was the King. In 1957 he sold more records than Elvis. One of the greatest ironies in Rock history was the night in 1976 when "The Killer" was drunk and waving a gun around in the driveway at Elvis' Graceland mansion and got arrested. He was reported to have said that the only difference between him and Elvis was that Jerry Lee always got bad publicity.
Once "Peggy Sue" hit it nationally in 1957, there was only one real contender for that throne, Buddy. The debate shifted away from all the lesser lights and focused on the real serious threat posed by Lubbuck's favorite boy. But on Feb 3, 1959, the debate crashed to a close.
Who knows what could have been. Would Buddy wind up in Las Vegas, bloated and stuffed into a jumpsuit, doped up so high that he couldn't remember the words to songs he had been singing for more than twenty years? Was that just the reserved fate of the King? The arguement could be made that Elvis' music died, too. His music just wasn't the same into the sixties.
So maybe it was the day the music...the rock and roll music...died. Certainly some of the best of it, anyway.