As he sped out of Hurley on southbound US 51, the Iron County sheriff must have wondered if he would find any survivors.

A trucker had notified the sheriff’s department that a group of men -- without hats, gloves or winter coats -- was seen standing outside a stranded bus ten or fifteen miles south of town. Any person exposed to Artic cold without proper clothes or shelter would be in serious trouble, life-threatening trouble. Every minute that passed made it more likely the people stuck out on Highway 51 were succumbing to exposure.

It was early hours of February 1, 1959.

One mile north of Pine Lake, the sheriff found the darkened bus on the roadside. Stepping inside with his flashlight the sheriff was greeted by a group of pale and sick young men, some huddled together under blankets. One person couldn’t stand up.

Maybe the only thing that kept the group alive was the fact that they had no idea how close they were to dying. They were musicians – rock-n-rollers – on their way to Appleton, Wis., after a show in Duluth, Minn. A number of the young men hailed from Texas, another was from southern California. None had ever experienced weather like this.

The sheriff heard of one of the singers. His name was Buddy Holly.

Holly spent 1958 touring non-stop at home and abroad, yet by the end of the year he was virtually penniless thanks to bad management. He was also expecting a baby with his new wife and had begun plans to create his own record company and recording studio.

Holly reluctantly agreed to headline the Winter Dance Party of 1959, a tour that was beneath his stature but offered quick cash.

“The only reason Buddy went on that tour was because he was broke - flat broke,” Waylon Jennings, Holly’s bass player on the ill-fated tour, would say years later. “He didn’t want to go but he had to make some money.”

The tour of the upper Midwest was organized by General Artists Corporation (GAC), a shoestring outfit headed by a druggist who sold records from his pharmacies and cared little about rock-n-roll.

The schedule for the Winter Dance Party was absurd. The group had to endure daily bus travels back and forth across Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. GAC accepted any offer that came along and filled the dates regardless of the distance involved. Holly was appalled when he received the schedule. He told GAC he wanted out, but it was too late, the deal was done.

Expectant dad Holly reluctantly said goodbye to his wife – both had experienced premonitions in the days leading up to the tour – and headed to Milwaukee where the Winter Dance Party was set to debut January 23, 1959.

Wisconsin was experiencing the deadliest winter in decades. Temperatures had plunged at the start of the year and remained below zero for more than three weeks straight when a winter storm dumped 13 inches of snow on the region. Fourteen weather-related fatalities occurred in January alone. A weather emergency was declared.

“It was crazy, daddy – the goings-on Friday at George Devine’s Million Dollar Ballroom,” reported the Sentinel. “Nearly 6,000 young people turned out to hear such rock ‘n’ roll stars as Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Big Bopper, Dion and the Belmonts and Richie Valens. If you haven’t heard them, you haven’t lived, man.

“It’s obvious the Big Beat still has a hold on the kids and it takes steady nerves to withstand the sound. Backed by the Crickets – two young guitarists and a drummer – Buddy Holly rocked his beanpole figure on stage, clutched his little guitar against his loud red coat and jerked his way through ‘Peggy Sue.’ His voice was scarcely audible over the raucous guitars, but he itchy-twitched in grand style, and that’s what the kids wanted.

“Electric guitars boomed through two loudspeakers with the force of two symphony orchestras in full sway, and the twitching rock ‘n’ rollers invoked screams that surely melted the snow on the roof of the ballroom."

Far from it. Holly grabbed the wad of cash – he was paid about $500 after every show – stuffed it into the sweaty shirt pocket under his suit jacket and walked outside where the winds off Lake Michigan felt like shards of glass on his exposed skin.

Making matters worse, GAC had accepted the lowest bid for the bus service. Not surprisingly, there were constant problems with the substandard vehicle. The musicians crammed into the bus, some took to the luggage racks to sleep, soon realizing that the heating system was woefully inadequate – if it was working at all.

“Such lousy old buses,” Holly’s guitarist Tommy Allsup would recall bitterly decades years later. “They weren’t really buses. They were jokes.”

Bronx native Dion DiMucci, in an interview for the 2004 book “The Day the Music Died,” was more direct:

“It wasn’t a bus, it was a piece of shit.”

Drummer Carl Bunch’s toes began to tingle.

In Eau Claire temperatures dropped to minus 25.

“Buddy roared through seven songs” at Fournier’s Ballroom Jan. 26, according to Holly biographer Ellis Amburn: “Gotta Travel On,” “Peggy Sue,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “Hearthbeat,” “Be Bop a Lula,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

“After the show, Buddy, Ritchie, and the Bopper ate dinner at Sammy’s Pizza,” according to Amburn. “Carl Bunch discovered that he’d lost his gray and black stage clothes, which meant the musicians would now have to wear their one remaining costume, the brown tweed, until their clothes were filthy.”

The tour provided hotel lodging when the schedule allowed. Other nights the group, still wet with perspiration following their performances (and loading their equipment), had to endure a grueling ride on a freezing bus stinking of diesel fumes, body odor, sardines, and booze. It was impossible to sleep.

At first, the musicians endured the conditions by singing and placing bets on guitar contests between Holly and Dion. Within days, however, the group’s discomfort began to deteriorate to treacherous levels as colds and flu began to waylay the musicians. Holly almost collapsed backstage at the Montevideo show. Carl Bunch began losing the feeling his feet.

The tour trudged on to St. Paul, Minn., Davenport and Fort Dodge, Iowa.

A second bus was brought in following the St. Paul show. Like the first, the heater was on the blink. Bunch began having trouble coordinating his feet. The group resorted to wearing light clothing after the shows and huddling under blankets in small groups, usually with a bottle to help tolerate the cold.

“Holly and I used to climb under a blanket together to keep warm,” Dion wrote in his autobiography. The two would sing “Teenager in Love.” Jennings and J.P Richardson, the Big Bopper, drank vodka under another blanket and composed country songs.

From Fort Dodge it was 370 miles north to Duluth, Minn. Valens phoned his manager at a stop along the way. After describing the conditions, the young Chicano singer was told to leave the tour immediately and return to Los Angeles. He opted to stay, the thrill of the shows outweighing the misery of the bus.

That night at the Duluth armory a young Robert Zimmerman, later known as Bob Dylan, angled close to the stage and was mesmerized by Holly. (Dylan recounted night when he accepted a Grammy Award in 1998.)

Turning south on U.S. 51 shortly after midnight, Feb. 1, the bus approached a hill fifteen miles south of Hurley when disaster struck. The bus died.

“We didn’t know enough to be afraid, or what a mid-winter night by the side of the road meant,” Dion said in his autobiography.

Unprepared and sickly, members of the tour party were trapped in the worst possible predicament. The temperature inside the bus was roughly the same as outdoors, with pounding winds sending drafts through the windows. Frozen tree limbs were snapping like twigs in the wind, crashing to the ground in the forest surrounding the group.

The group began burning newspapers in the aisle for heat, which provided only a few fleeting moments of relief. Carl Bunch was unable to move his legs at all.

One backup musician began to panic. “We can’t stay in this bus,” he begged the others. “They’ll read about us in the paper tomorrow.”

Some of the musicians stepped outside hoping to flag down a vehicle. At that time of night in remote Iron County with conditions being what they were -- not a soul was traveling.

“I’m looking for traffic,” road manager recounted in an interview. “Nothing. I’m worried about it. The kids in the back were freezing.”

The group was in serious danger. With no other option, the men grabbed their instruments and began a jam session in the bus to stay active. Carl Bunch prayed for deliverance.

After an hour, the group saw the headlights of a semi-truck approaching through the darkness. They hurried off the bus and into the middle of the road. The trucker slowed enough to maneuver around the men but never stopped. Dejected, the musicians filed back on the bus.

“We just sat there and froze,” Tommy Allsup said. Holly and Dion told their life stories to one another under a blanket, passing time “through the dark hours while we waited for something to happen,” according to Dion.

After two hours on the roadside, the Iron County sheriff arrived. The trucker had notified the police when he reached town. The group was shuttled, a few people at a time, back to Hurley’s Club Carnival Café, a strip joint on notorious Silver Street, where they were fed breakfast – except for the group’s black bus driver, who had to eat in the county garage.

Carl Bunch was rushed to Grand View Hospital in Ironwood, Michigan.

The group boarded the 11:30 a.m. Chicago Northwestern train out of Hurley and made it to Green Bay with time to spare before the 8 p.m. show at the Riverside Ballroom. They reportedly checked into a downtown hotel, most likely the Northland.

It was the tenth performance for the Winter Dance Party, Holly’s second-to-last performance ever. Tickets were 90 cents in advance, $1.25 day of show. “No jeans or slacks permitted, and no intoxicating beverages will be served.”

Roughly 2,200 young people crowded under the arched ceilings of the Riverside, “where entertainment reigns supreme,” according to the postcards sold at the ticket window. WDUZ radio jock Bill Walters emceed. Frankie Sardo opened the show followed by Dion, the Big Bopper, and headliner Holly, who again opened his set with the country song “Gotta Travel On.”

The group was desperately looking forward to a scheduled day off after the Green Bay show to recuperate from their harrowing experience, but GAC had added a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, 357 miles away.

It was minus 20 when they boarded the latest tour bus delivered by CAG. The group departed Green Bay on US 41, rolling past the exit for Austin Straubel Airport, where later that day local officials would welcome the Green Bay Packers’ new head coach, Vince Lombardi.

Three hundred and forty miles to Clear Lake, Minn., and to the group’s disgust, the bus heater was not functioning as it sputtered across Wisconsin.

At a pit stop in Prairie du Chien, Richardson returned to the bus with a sleeping bag purchased at a sporting goods store. “Man, I’m gonna be warm tonight,” the Big Bopper told the others.

After the evening performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, the tour was scheduled for a ten-hour ride to Moorhead, Minn. CAG had arranged for a school bus to get them there, 440 miles away.

That was enough for Buddy Holly. He chartered a small plane to reach Moorhead. A warm hotel room, clean sheets and hot food would await him there. And he could take the groups’ dirty laundry for proper cleaning. Valens and Richardson, who was feeling ill, asked to fly along.

***

ClassicWisconsin.com is pleased to acknowledge the following sources for this story:

Amburn, Ellis. Buddy Holly: A Biography. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995.

Lehmer, Larry. The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. Music Sales Group, 2004.

Steuer, Mark. “A Night Before the Music Died,” Voyageur Magazine, Winter/Spring 1993, pp 17-22.

The Official Community of Buddy Holly, www.buddyholly.com.

Buddy Holly Center, www.buddyhollycenter.org.

Eau Claire Leader Telegram

Green Bay Press Gazette

Milwaukee Sentinel