Friends, music lovers, C&Lers, lend me your ears: I've come to celebrate Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, not to bury them. The music t
February 3, 2009

Friends, music lovers, C&Lers, lend me your ears: I've come to celebrate Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, not to bury them. The music that men make lives after them; The songs unrecorded are oft interred with their bones; So be it with these men. The noble Donald Hath told you.... Well, you get the point, right? The music NEVER dies. EVER. Let's celebrate the music these men did make, and those songs that were performed, recorded and written by others because Charles Hardin Holley, Richard Steven Valenzuela and Jiles Perry Richardson, jr. lived. Let's celebrate the music these men made, that still lives 50 years after their deaths.

Fifty years ago, on Feb. 3, 1959, a single-engine plane crashed shortly after midnight near Clear Lake, Iowa, claiming the lives of rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as pilot Roger Peterson.

(BTW, the song featured here is a demo written and performed by Holly and original Cricket Bob Montgomery in 1955 as a demo, before they signed with Decca Records. And a word to the wise: You aren't going to find a lot of Holly's recordings at YouTube that haven't had the audio removed at the request of the copyright holders.)

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