The musicians had been playing on the "Winter Dance Party" tour across the Midwest along with other rising artists including vocal group Dion and the Belmonts. Traveling on the tour bus between shows was uncomfortable and the cold weather had affected many of the performers' health, bringing on cases of the flu and even a reported case of frostbite.
After the performance at Clear Lake, Holly made the fateful decision to ride in style to the next destination. In the interest of his and others' health, he chose to charter a plane to the twelfth stop on the tour in Moorhead, Minnesota for their 7:30 and 9:30 shows at the Moorhead Armory. The night was late and visibility was poor in the cold, wintry conditions. Soon after takeoff, Roger Peterson lost control of the light Beechcraft Bonanza. The plane would crash into a cornfield, ending the lives of all four onboard and changing the United States' music landscape forever.
In a first-of-its-kind appearance, a fully original, completely untouched and unrestored, authentic concert poster from the Feb 3rd show the men were traveling to is being auctioned at Heritage Auctions in their
Item description, courtesy of Heritage Auction's Pete Howard, Director of Concert Posters;
"This is the only concert poster from the ill-fated show to ever surface. That's no surprise, given the complete rarity of any Winter Dance Party poster anyway. Heritage has been lucky enough to sell one Winter Dance Party poster in our history, just one, and that was for $125,000 for a poster from a week earlier in Mankato, Minnesota. Then you add in the gigantic cache that Moorhead is the exact date of rock 'n' roll's first tragedy, and you can see why we feel - we know - that it's a Smithsonian piece.
This poster had been primitively stuck to a telephone pole but had fallen to the ground by the next day, according to the family who found it and saved it. Since it has no pin or nail holes but does have the remnants of 'stickum' on both sides (above "Dance" on the front), we assume that's how it was adhered to the board. Rather than have that residue cleaned off, we've decided to leave it all there as a minor but important part of the story.
"This poster was originally on a telephone pole in Moorhead," Mr. Cook, consignor, says in his on-line video of this poster, "Fell to the ground, someone picked it up, took it home, put it in a closet face down [and] it sat there for 50 years."
How many did they make back then? Well, first the attractive yellow & black portion was printed up in quantity weeks before the tour started, leaving a blank white box up at the top. Then the local promoter for each stop on the tour, if they even wanted them (many local promoters opted for only newspaper ads or radio spots), would have their own information printed up top.
So how many were hand-written for Moorhead, a city of about 23,000 at the time? Two dozen? Fifty? Hard to say, but 25-50 does seem logical. And then many were surely ruined on the spot by the snow, ice, and horrible weather conditions in the dead of a Minnesota winter.
A blank, never-filled-in version of this poster has never been found, by the way. Bootlegs yes, but zero genuine blanks that were printed in December 1958 or January 1959 by Murray. So it's not like some nefarious person could've taken a blank and just written in some Moorhead information in the present day, as a fake.
This is such a popular and historic image that naturally, the graphic art has been reproduced and bootlegged endlessly over the last few decades. So, when the poster first surfaced a generation ago from the family who saved it back in '59, the hobby got down to work to vet its authenticity and challenge its veracity. I was involved in that process and everything lined up fine for me, and I'm a real 'Doubting Thomas.' Myself and the other heavies in the hobby gave it our blessing, fully concluding that this Moorhead poster was created six decades ago for one purpose only: to get teenagers into that ballroom on a cold winter's night to have a little fun. So the transaction took place and our consignor, Jim Cook, ended up with the poster in his world-class, top-five-collections-on-the-planet archive.
The tragic and untimely death of Buddy Holly on this tour was immortalized forever in Don McLean's famous song, "American Pie." McLean's poignant lyrics included the line, "Something touched me deep inside / The day the music died." So touched were music fans around the world that the original manuscript of Don McLean's handwritten lyrics to "American Pie" sold at auction seven years ago for $1.2 million."
Pete was kind enough to let us pick his brain a little further...
When it comes to this poster, a relic from the tragedy of that day, what emotions do you feel when you look at it?
"Sadness is the predominant emotion I feel when I look at this poster. It’s not only rock ’n’ roll’s first tragedy, it’s also the most innocent one... no drugs involved, no overdoses, suicides or drowning in bathtubs... this was Mother Nature sweeping three famous lives away, and perhaps a bit of pilot carelessness. The only thing wrong anyone did here was the crime of losing a coin toss.
I think this event drove home to the world that our nascent rock ’n’ roll heroes were not invincible gods, they were everyday people, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. Only four years later, the world lost country singer Patsy Cline in a private plane crash, and then likewise R&B singer Otis Redding four more years after that. Combined, these sad events gave an urgency to the music world that life can be fleeting, and that nothing should be taken for granted."
What long-term impact has that night had on the music industry?
"I don’t believe Don McLean ever would have written “American Pie” without this tragedy and the famous hook in his song... “Something touched me deep inside / The day the music died.” But you know what we would’ve had instead? A lot more Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Big Bopper songs throughout at least the whole 1960s... a trade-off that nobody on earth would turn down.
Concert-poster collectors tend to go for rarity, colorfulness, catchy design work, photos of the musicians, memorable song titles, decent condition, musicians they can identify with, and a good back-story or historical angle. This window card checks every single one of those boxes; I can’t think of a single category this poster falls short of, other than maybe those who collect only mint-condition posters for some reason."
Even if your pockets aren't deep enough to bid on this one, it's still a fascinating snapshot of a more innocent time for music fans, rock n roll, and historians alike.
How lucky are we that it survived long enough for us to catch even just a glimpse of it?
There are some REALLY amazing pieces in this auction - check them out! Heartfelt thanks to Mr. Howard for lending his words to this blog!
*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.
*This blog was not sponsored nor requested by Heritage Auctions
