Early on the morning of February 3, 1959, after a performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, the small four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza took off from the Mason City airport during a blinding snow storm. It crashed into Albert Juhl’s corn field several miles after takeoff at 1:05 a.m. The crash killed all aboard: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Richardson and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. In his 1971 hit song "American Pie," Don McLean referred to this crash in his song as "The Day the Music Died".
Richardson was survived by his wife and 4-year-old daughter. His son, Jay Perry Richardson, was born two months later in April 1959. At the time of his death, Richardson had been building a recording studio in his home in Beaumont, Texas, and was also planning to invest in the ownership of a radio station. He had written 20 new songs he planed to record himself or with other artists.
"The Big Bopper" Richardson suffered massive fractures and likely died immediately in the 1959 plane crash that also killed early rock 'n' rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, a forensic anthropologist said Tuesday after exhuming the body.
The performer's son, Jay Richardson, hired Dr. Bill Bass, a well-known forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, to look at the remains in Beaumont, Texas.
There have been rumors a gun might have been fired on board the plane and that the Big Bopper might have survived the crash and died trying to get help.
10-07-2008, 08:21 PM
