On this day in 1959, a small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed in a frozen field in Iowa.
It became "the day the music died" and there's a nice collection of appropriate video links on Roger Ebert's blog, as well as a great playlist at Wolfgang's Vault.
It was Buddy Holly and the Crickets who helped popularize both the twin guitar image for bands and the Fender Stratocaster - a lineage that would stretch through players like Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Ry Cooder, Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Mayer; and - on the other side of the Atlantic - Hank Marvin, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler.
That's quite a legacy right there.
But as if to prove that even those who break new ground in rock and roll aren't always appreciated, take a listen to this phone conversation between Buddy and an executive at Decca Records from February 1957 about his contract release and what happened to his recordings from the previous summer.
Here's "That'll Be The Day", the only one of The Crickets' singles that topped the charts in both the US and the UK.
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