ROGER PETERSON
Roger Peterson (May 24, 1937 – February 3, 1959) was the 21-year-old pilot of the aircraft whose crash took the lives of rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson as well as himself. The event came to be known as “The Day the Music Died”. (More from Wikipedia)
Buddy Holly split from both the Crickets and Norman Petty in the fall of 1958 and was thus free to pursue his new musical visions. Unfortunately, he got only a meager settlement when Norman Petty’s books were found to be in hopeless disarray – probably Petty took a big slice of the pie for himself, though there was no way to prove it.
With a new, pregnant wife, and short on money, Buddy Holly signed on for the “Winter Dance Party” package tour of the Midwest. It was during this tour that Holly was killed in the airplane crash in February 1959, along with Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper. and the pilot Roger Peterson. Buddy Holly was just 22 years old.
(June 2013/1)
