The Day the Music Died

Fifty years, then, since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the “Big Bopper” died. Yet it could have been even worse: Waylon Jennings was supposed to be on that plane too:

“I remember the last time I saw Buddy,” Jennings said in his interview with CMT.com. “He had me go get us some hot dogs. He was leaning back against the wall in a cane-bottom chair and he was laughing at me. He said, ‘So you’re not going with us tonight on the plane, huh? Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up. It’s 40-below out there and you’re gonna get awful cold. So I said, ‘Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.’ “I was so afraid for many years that somebody was going to find out I said that. Somehow I blamed myself. Compounding that was the guilty feeling that I was still alive. I hadn’t contributed anything to the world at that time compared to Buddy.