Today is 49th anniversary of the Day the Music Died.

KF Raizor has a wonderful post regarding the impact the tragic plane crash had on music as a whole.

I tend to think of Buddy Holly, J. P “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens as being way older than they were. It’s kinda startling to think that Buddy was 22, J.P was 28 and Ritchie…a kid of 17 when they lost their lives in that frozen Iowa cornfield on February 3, 1959. They were kids.

The late Waylon Jennings was supposed to have been a passenger on that plane. He gave his seat up to J. P. Richardson. Waylon was haunted for the rest of his life by the final conversation he had with his then boss…Buddy was teasing Waylon about how he hoped they would freeze on the bus and Waylon threw back at him “Yeah, and I hope your plane crashes.” No wonder Waylon seemed a bit, well, crabby.

Guitarist Tommy Alsup, who has been Nashville-based forever, was first thought to have been one of the people that died on the plane. He had flipped a coin with Ritchie Valens to see who would take the seat. He had asked Buddy to pick up a registered letter for him in North Dakota (their next stop on the “Winter Dance Party” tour) and he gave him his billfold so he could have some identification. Can you imagine how freaked out his family was to hear that he was dead and then that he wasn’t?

Fate is weird…you wonder what these three men would’ve accomplished had they not gotten on that plane? How would music have been different? How would Country Music have been different if Waylon had been on the plane? Questions we’ll never have answers to in this life.