Buddy Holly ("Maybe Baby"/"Gone") video, 57th anniversary in The Buddy Holly Center

Buddy Holly ("Maybe Baby"/"That's What They Say"/"Gone") video.

The Buddy Center Presents 'The Day the Music Died' on February 3: Wednesday, Feb. 3 will mark the 57th anniversary of the Feb. 3, 1959, death of legendary Lubbock-born recording artist Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly in the crash of a private plane near Clear Lake, Iowa.

Also perishing that night: fellow pop stars J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens, and pilot Roger Peterson. The Buddy Holly Center, 1801 Crickets Ave., offers free admission on Feb. 3 to the Buddy Holly Gallery from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and to the adjacent original home owned by the family of Crickets drummer J.I. Allison house from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Jacqueline A. Bober, Buddy Holly Center assistant manager and curator, will provide a guided tour, using a Citybus trolley, to “four significant Holly sites in Lubbock” at 11 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Feb. 3. Sites being visited include: Lubbock High School, Fair Park Coliseum at the Panhandle-South Plains Fairgrounds, the KRFE (formerly KDAV) radio station and City of Lubbock Cemetery. Source: lubbockonline.com

The story of American popular music in the 1950s has about it the feel of absurdist fiction. Even the bare outline is strange to recount: how the nation drifted away from its love affair with the grand tradition of big band swing music and into a period of musical nihilism; how entrepreneurs with little experience of the music business and just as little capital competed effectively with large and powerful corporations. Before rock and roll was an idiom, it was a process of absorption, revision, and fusion of disparate influences. The new sounds pointed in no particular direction, yet, paradoxically, it was the era’s unfocused meandering that fueled its revolutionary thrust. Adding to the confusion, Billboard identified as “country artists” in the 1957's R&B charts: Elvis Presley (“Jailhouse Rock”), Buddy Holly (“Oh Boy”), Jerry Lee Lewis (“Great Balls of Fire”), Jimmie Rodgers (“Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”), Bill Justis (“Raunchy”), and Bobby Helms (“My Special Angel”). —Source: "I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America" (2012) by Albin J. Zak 

Americans tend to think of the 1950s as an idyllic time when the babies were booming, the jobs were plentiful, and the country was flourishing. The average yearly income rose from $3,210 in 1950 to $5,010 in 1959, and post-war Americans were enjoying access to products and services that were scarce during World War II. Finding good uses for disposable income in the 1950s began the American love affair with consumerism. The median home price in the United States in 1950 was $7,354 (which is equivalent to $71,360 in today's dollars), rising to a median of $11,900 in 1960 ($93,830 in today's dollars), and housing represented about 22% of a 1950s household budget. For comparison, the median home price in October 2015 was $281,500, and the modern household spends about 43% of its budget on housing. While the specifics of what Americans bought in the 1950s might look different from modern purchases, the habits themselves were remarkably similar. That's because the spending habits we consider normal were born in the post-war 1950s. Source: www.wisebread.com