A few summers ago I took a road trip through Iowa and stopped at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson gave their last performances. Just after midnight on February 3, 1959 they crashed in a nearby cornfield during a snowstorm. You know, “The Day the Music Died”.
The Surf Ballroom, built in 1948, has a museum, located in the former Cypress Room. It’s free (although there’s a suggested donation) and has a number of related artifacts on display, but the best part is just walking around the building. It’s like stepping back in a time machine. Although the owners could charge visitors during the day, this perfectly preserved and very active music venue is open to all (although you do have to pay for a guided tour). You can wander through the lobby where the original ticket window is located; and just off the entrance is the original public telephone that was used by Buddy Holly to call his wife and by Ritchie Valens to call his manager.
The darkened ballroom itself is small and intimate with the original maplewood dance floor and cozy green vinyl booths and oldies music playing overhead. The restored murals depict a seaside beach motif with images of crashing waves, and there are even tropical fish carved into the wooden booths, which makes sense if you’ve ever experienced a winter in the Midwest. After all, it was the harsh weather conditions that killed these musicians.
A must-see, after walking across the original stage, is a very small backstage “Green Room”, which is covered in drawings and autographs by musicians who have performed here, like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys as well as famous people who have just stopped by, like President Obama. There is even a verse of “American Pie” written by Don McLean himself. The “Green Room” is where Ritchie Valens bet on the fateful coin toss that got him a seat on the plane that crashed in that snowstorm. You can see it for yourself as it is only about ten minutes away from the ballroom.
Known as the Buddy Holly Memorial Crash Site (well, at least according to the Facebook check-in), this cornfield is hard to find because there is no signage on the drive up there. You might feel ridiculous driving around dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, but with a bit of research and dedication, you’ll most likely find it. On the side of the road is a giant pair of signature Buddy Holly glasses, but this is just a marker. The actual crash site with the memorial is about 200 yards inside the cornfield. It’s private property, but luckily the farmer who owns this land doesn’t really care about trespassers and has left an unplanted row to allow access for people like us.
The memorial, erected in 1988 by fan Ken Paquette, is a metal sculpture of a guitar marked with the names of the three musicians along with three records of their popular hits: “Peggy Sue”, “Chantilly Lace” and “Donna”. There is also a tribute off to the side, a set of pilots wings with the name of the plane’s 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson, who also died in the crash. Visitors leave bouquets of flowers, personal notes, and other tokens (when I was there a microphone and…what a surprise…some lyrics from “American Pie” were tied to a fence post). And that’s about it. A “smaller than you’d expect” site, but still a fitting tribute for musicians who left the world nearly sixty years ago.
