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Vintage pencil signatures, "Big Bopper" and "Ritchie Valens," on an off-white 3 x 6 slip, also signed by members of Buddy Holly's Crickets—"Waylon [Jennings], Crickets" and "Carl Bunch, Drums, Crickets"—plus Frankie Sardo. In very good condition, with creasing, light irregular toning, and minor separation to the central horizontal fold. Accompanied by a photocopied letter of provenance, in part: "My wife…got to go backstage on January 29, 1959, at the Capitol Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, and got autographs [of] Ritchie Valens…the Big Bopper…5 days later they were killed in the charter plane north west of Mason City, Iowa."
Rock 'n' roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) headlined the 1959 Winter Dance Party Tour, playing dates throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. On January 29th, they played at the Capitol Theater in Davenport, Iowa—the only seated auditorium on the tour, leading it to be termed a 'Concert of Stars,' rather than a 'Dance Party' as at the other ballroom venues.
Two days later they played in Duluth, where a young Bob Dylan was in attendance. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in June 2017, Dylan recalled witnessing Buddy Holly and the Crickets as a transformative experience: 'If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I’d have to start with Buddy Holly. Buddy died when I was about 18 and he was 22. From the moment I first heard him, I felt akin…Buddy played the music that I loved, the music I grew up on—country western, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues. Three separate strands of music that he intertwined and infused into one genre. One brand. And Buddy wrote songs, songs that had beautiful melodies and imaginative verses. And he sang great, sang in more than a few voices. He was the archetype, everything I wasn’t and wanted to be. I saw him only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn’t disappointed.'
Crisscrossing the midwest in mid-winter resulted in a number of logistical issues for the touring party: the unheated tour buses twice broke down in freezing weather, resulting in drummer Carl Bunch's hospitalization to treat frostbitten toes. Fed up with freezing, Buddy Holly chartered a small plane—a four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza—for his band to leave after their show at the Surf Ballroom in Cedar Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959. With takeoff imminent, the seating plan needed to be set: Holly was in, as was the flu-ridden Richardson (bassist Waylon Jennings offered up his seat); the third seat was taken by Valens, who won it on a coin flip with guitarist Tommy Allsup.
Shortly after embarking from the Mason City Municipal Airport just shy of 1 a.m., the Bonanza disappeared. Its wreckage and the bodies of its passengers were found the next morning, less than six miles from the airstrip. The tragedy left a void in world of popular music and inspired countless tributes, including Don McLean's iconic song 'American Pie,' which immortalized the moment in cultural memory.
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