Buddy Holly: Biography by Ellis Amburn

Author:Ellis Amburn [Amburn, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians, Nonfiction, Retail, Singer
ISBN: 9781466868564
Google: 3EAGAwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Winterkill

It was after eight P.M. and the first of their two shows that night was going to begin late. In the Surf’s communal “Backstage Band Room,” a shantylike affair annexed to stage left, Buddy listened to the stirrings of the crowd of thirteen hundred and “said he was worried about girls … pulling his hair,” Carroll Anderson recalled in 1980.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that at all here because security is pretty heavy,” Anderson said. Also, 125 to 150 parents were in attendance at the first show, Anderson added, and no doubt their presence would keep the kids on their best behavior. Fred Milano stood next to Buddy as they changed their clothes before going on. He noticed that Buddy wasn’t wearing an undershirt, he told Wayne Jones years later. The drafty old ballroom still used gas turbine heaters and was quite chilly, so Milano asked Buddy why he wasn’t more warmly dressed. Buddy replied that he never wore undershirts because if he wore them for several days and suddenly took one off, he’d “catch a cold,” he explained, as if he always was defying the elements. His nakedness was a constant theme of his life—a desire to expose himself directly to danger, whether through the music that he introduced to Lubbock or the challenge that he took on when he told Norman Petty to go packing.

Fred then inquired about the charter flight that everyone in the tour party was talking about. Buddy repeated that he’d take everyone’s laundry and it would be ready for them on arrival, Milano recalled. The flight would be over in “three or four hours,” but the bus trip would require “at least ten hours,” Milano added.

In its planning stage, the manifest for the flight to Fargo underwent numerous changes, which began around showtime February 2 and ended after midnight, when the passenger list was finalized just prior to takeoff. According to Waylon Jennings, Buddy leased the plane strictly for himself and his band, but other eyewitnesses, such as Anderson and Milano, later claimed that the Bopper was on the list from the beginning. Early on the evening of February 2, the Bopper somehow lost his seat, possibly when Buddy realized that his own sidemen, Waylon and Tommy, were entitled to first dibs.

Though Tommy Allsup stated in 1979 that he was on the passenger list from the outset, Fred Milano told Wayne Jones in 1977 that Tommy could not afford to make the flight. Dion revealed in 1988 that he saw Buddy going from musician to musician, soliciting passengers, saying he needed more people to share the charter fee. Dion liked the idea of flying but declined, calculating that it would cost him the equivalent of a month’s rent.

That was when “Holly rounded up Ritchie,” Dion wrote in The Wanderer. But if Ritchie made it onto the manifest before midnight, he didn’t stay on it for long. The final seat on the plane went to Tommy. At showtime the manifest read: Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Tommy All-sup, and Roger Peterson, pilot.

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