{"id":31367,"date":"2025-02-03T18:02:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T18:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/on-this-day-feb-3-1959-the-day-the-music-died-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-die-in-a-plane-crash\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T18:02:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T18:02:27","slug":"on-this-day-feb-3-1959-the-day-the-music-died-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-die-in-a-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/on-this-day-feb-3-1959-the-day-the-music-died-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-die-in-a-plane-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day, Feb. 3, 1959: The Day The Music Died: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper die in a plane crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/syndication.abcaudio.com\/files\/2025-02-03\/ABCAudio_ThisDayInHistory_v03_ag.jpg\" alt><\/figure>\n<p>Musicians <strong>Buddy Holly<\/strong>, <strong>Ritchie Valens<\/strong> and <strong>\u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d J. P. Richardson<\/strong> died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>The trio was\u00a0touring together as part of the Winter Dance Party tour. In order to not have to travel on a cold tour bus, Holly chartered a plane to the next venue. Richards got his spot on the plane because he had the flu, and Valens got the last spot on the plane in a coin toss with one of Holly\u2019s band members <strong>Tommy Allsup<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The pilot, who also died in the flight, lost control of the plane due to poor wintery conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The trio\u2019s death became known as \u201cThe Day the Music Died,\u201d after singer\u00a0<strong>Don McLean<\/strong> referred to it as that in his classic 1971 song \u201cAmerican Pie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and \u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d J. P. Richardson died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The trio was\u00a0touring together as part of the Winter Dance Party tour. In order to not have to travel on a cold tour bus, Holly chartered a plane to<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/on-this-day-feb-3-1959-the-day-the-music-died-buddy-holly-ritchie-valens-and-the-big-bopper-die-in-a-plane-crash\/\">Read More &rarr;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,43,4],"tags":[7,134,317,114,315,316,142,106],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/101gold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}