Buddy Holly & The Winter Dance Party

Larry Lehmer wrote down in 1997 the most concise and sharp look at the Winter Dance Party. “The Day the Music Died” has stood the test of time and proven itself as a “must have” for any serious rock and roll fan. Lehmer was able to gather most of the known material on the crash and present it in such a way that answered many longstanding questions. It also posed its own series of disturbing and troubling questions that have yet to be resolved. Martin Huxley and Quinton Skinner assembled a book of the same title as Lehmer’s for the VH1 book series, “Behind the Music.” Want to see a Buddy Holly fan sent into a fit of apoplexy? Mentioning of Ellis Amburn’s “Buddy Holly: A Biography” is a sure way to create rancor and strife amongst the more hard line Holly enthusiasts―Amburn is way off base on many of his arguments. Like Diane Ackerman said of America, Holly's life “began in mystery and it will end in mystery.” Buddy Holly was an avid baseball fan, as well as a comic book buff, and he developed a love for country, bluegrass, gospel and rhythm and blues. 

Buddy Holly connected with a vast wilderness of music fans because of his innate ability to make record buyers feel as if he was speaking directly to them. A lot of his music dealt with dashed love affairs or the stubbornness to not give up on a prospective love even in the face of insurmountable odds. His wedding created a stress with producer Norman Petty, who believed his young star was being impulsive with a marriage to a woman he hardly knew. Puerto Rican by birth, the slightly older Maria Elena had met Buddy as early as January of 1958 (this according to her own account from the February 3, 1959 New York Journal American). Jerry Allison and Joe Mauldin remembered to author John Goldrosen meeting her as early as 1957. Buddy Holly was a pioneer in rock and roll songwriting (also Chuck Berry) in an era which still followed the studio tradition of the 1930s. In an interview with Greg Milewski, Joe Terry of Danny & the Juniors, noted his observations of Buddy: “Basically, writers were not performers. Everybody can say he was a great performer, but Buddy was a better writer than he was a performer in my opinion. A real quiet, introverted kind of guy.” Fellow Texan and rock and roller Buddy Knox pointed out to interviewer Gary James that “Holly was ambitious, more so than most of us and a little hard to deal with sometimes…” In 1995 Bob Thiele weighed in on the Norman Petty controversy: “Despite the fact that Norman Petty had an iron grip on every creative and business aspect of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, he was jealous that Buddy also wanted to record in New York with me as producer.” 

Maria Elena recalled to author John Goldrosen the tumultuous confrontation between her husband and Petty: “Norman asked Buddy, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want? You know I can’t give you any money until we get settled who gets what money, and just how much money each of you has coming. I’ll need time.’ And Buddy said, ‘I don’t have the time. Just give me the money and I’ll give it to them―we can split it ourselves.’ And that’s when Norman told him―he said, ‘Uh―they’re staying with me.’” Holly's composure melted, and he appeared totally devastated, as if he would cry at any moment. As Maria Elena told Goldrosen: “He felt sort of betrayed. ‘I thought I had treated them fair,’ he said, ‘I don’t see why they should have done that to me.’ He felt like they had put a knife in his back; but if that was how they felt, he wasn’t going to beg them. But he cried that night.” Holly, beginning to feel the pinch of tight finances which were now tied up in a legal dispute with his former manager, jumped on the Winter Dance Party tour and assumed the headliner status.  

The slow death his last release―“Heartbeat”―was experiencing just at that moment could not have been heartening either. To offset the whole thing, Holly and his new bride were able to at least celebrate her January 7th birthday and look forward to brighter days ahead.  On a sour note, Holly’s issues with Petty were not going away, although the rock and roll star was intent on handling the matter as gracefully as he could, sending Petty a polite note on January 8, 1959, urging him the cancellation of his contract. Wilma Stromley, a waitress at the Holiday Inn and Lounge remembered how Buddy Holly made a bold pass during the WDP tour: “I went over there to wait on them and Buddy Holly pulled me down on his lap. It seemed like they were laughing after he pulled me down on his lap.” This was out of character behavior for Buddy Holly from most known accounts that have been catalogued over the years. The final show at the Surf Ballroom also left Barbara Matson  (WDP attendee, February 2, 1959) quite unimpressed with Buddy Holly: “That night I can remember thinking, ‘He’s not very friendly.’” Holly was the lone holdout to most fans that night, choosing to stay out on the bus in between sets. Barbara Matson, Wilma Stromley and Paul Gallis had no way of knowing of course that Holly was in the middle of a nasty face-off with his former manager and band. To make matters worse, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore”―certainly one of the prettiest songs he had ever cut―was nowhere to be seen on the record charts. There are some people who believe that this out of character behavior for Holly might have ultimately played into the crash of Jerry Dwyer’s Beechcraft Bonanza.

So what happened on board that plane? During a 2011 dinner with Jerry and Barb Dwyer it seemed as if their impression was that of Buddy Holly taking over N3794N from pilot Roger Peterson. According to the couple, the Holley’s visited with them during the early 1960s and inquired about their son’s pistol which had been retrieved from the crash site. It was then brought up Holly’s flying lessons in the latter half of 1958 and how his interest in flying may have played a key element in the mystery surrounding these sad events. It appeared that this went a long way into explaining the sudden loss of altitude of the aircraft. The reports of the plane struggling to stay in the air―according to the Dwyers―would have been Holly attempting to correct the plane and regain altitude. Jerry also heavily stressed how simple it would have been for Holly to use the Beechcraft’s throw―over flight wheel, demonstrating that it was in close proximity to where Holly was sitting in the front passenger seat. The Dwyers professed knowledge of Holly actually seeing a psychiatrist before leaving on the WDP and that he had caught his wife flirting with a “music insider.” This had apparently led to a nervous breakdown on Maria Elena’s part, even before the crash happened. Prescription drugs were mentioned by Jerry throughout the night, leaving little doubt as to what the Dwyers thought might have led Holly to act so out of character. Jerry asserted that while the stars were at the airport, Holly made a telephone call to his wife back in NYC from a telephone booth at the Dwyer Flying Service, and a nasty fight ensued between the two. Apparently, this claim does not line up with the 1959 CAB Report and seems to have stepped out of an Oliver Stone film.

There was a cover―up involving several key members of the Mason City/Clear Lake area, this according to the Dwyers. Albert Juhl, on whose rented soy bean field Roger crashed into, was told by Sheriff Jerry Allen to stick to a story that had been come up with for the newspapers regarding the discovery of Buddy Holly’s gun and the spent cartridges found therein. Whenever asked about the firing of the gun, Albert Juhl and his family would either claim responsibility for firing off the gun, or simply explain that they did not remember. The gun and its spent chambers was a hot potato with different parties claiming or denying responsibility for firing it after the crash. Upon quizzing Dorothy Juhl, I got an interesting response: “No, I don’t think dad ever fired that gun. I would be awfully surprised if he did.” Dion DiMucci recalled during his 2009 interview by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I said, ‘Buddy, why do you have a gun?’ He said, ‘Dion. I’ve got to protect myself.’” The gun carried by Holly while on tour provided a sense of security and was not intended to be a point of braggadocio. At the age of 22, Holly was looked upon as an elder statesman by his contemporaries in the rock and roll scene. Buddy Holly could be fun, but he also possessed an extraordinary light of wisdom and maturity. A problem I had with the story told by the Dwyers is why would have this crash been covered up in this tragedy? I have some nagging doubts about the more remarkable claims put forth by the Dwyers. ―"In Flanders Field: Death and Rebirth of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson" (2017) by Ryan Vandergriff 

Simply Buddy - His Life His Music His Legend (2017) by J. Forriest McGrew. He was Charles Hardin Holley. He was a simple country boy from Lubbock, Texas. He was warm, kind, good humored, friendly, but yet shy and cautious. He was a performer, songwriter and a musician. He was a draftsman, a producer, and a superstar. He was a son, a brother, a husband and a father to be. He was a lot of different things. But above all, he was a good man. Maybe Buddy Holly would have made the album that made Brian Wilson make Pet Sounds, which made McCartney make Sgt. Pepper. Only Buddy Holly ever did this stuff before. Musicologists marveled at the Polynesian chord changes in some of The Beatles' songs. Fans didn’t know how to dissect the unique chords of Holly's songs: A Polynesian shift is like C – Ab – C.  

So it's only natural we could piece together the path Buddy Holly might have taken by looking at the careers of artists like John Lennon, Lou Reed or Nick Lowe. Part of what we think of when we think of Buddy Holly is his mythology and aesthetic. Before Buddy Holly, there were no weirdos, no geeks, no one to claim rock and roll for the outsiders. When everybody else was racing off in their cars and hitting the beach, Holly was this reedy singer who had the guts to be wistful, sad, and vulnerable. He was on a trajectory toward something that wouldn’t have been as angelic as his previous sound, something else that we can never know. Source: consequenceofsound.net