Take a Walk on the Dark Side

by R. Gary Patterson

  The emergence of Robert Johnson’s music is due to the many cover versions by his 1960s blues disciples. Elmore James and supergroups such as Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones have each recorded at least one adaptation of a Johnson blues classic. Sadly, many performers have also duplicated the tragic element of Johnson’s life as well as in his music. One of the strangest parallels with Robert Johnson concerns the birth and rise to fame of Elvis Presley. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, just 126 miles north of Greenwood, Robert Johnson’s final resting place. Presley proved to be a sensation as he adapted the infectious beat of black rhythm and blues to the taste of a southern white audience. Elvis’s ascent to fame from his very humble origins was very comparable to the path taken by a young Robert Johnson—showing the power of the blues!

  Elvis Presley’s meteoric rise as a pop icon was found to be somewhat disturbing by the conservative white audiences throughout Presley’s native South. Rock and roll was considered to be Satan’s music. Many radio stations went as far as banning the playing of all rock-and-roll records. Curiously, Elvis enjoyed singing gospel songs and went as far as releasing an album dedicated to his favorite songs of faith. Whereas these gospel ballads hinted at a singer who was at peace with God, Elvis seemed to be fascinated with the occult. He studied reincarnation, UFOs, and Eastern religious practices. Like Robert Johnson, Presley was the by-product of southern poverty whose only hope for a better life was grounded in his deep-rooted faith. It was said that Elvis Presley stated that he would not live to be older than his mother; ironically, Elvis Aaron Presley died at the age of forty-two. His mother lived to be forty-six.

  Elvis has become even more popular in death, with many obsessed fans reporting “Elvis sightings” across the country. Others insist that there are many cryptic messages that hint that Elvis has not left the building after all! These clues include: the mysterious misspelled name upon his tombstone, his Tennessee driving license still being valid, his million-dollar life insurance policy not being claimed, and discrepancies in his autopsy report. Even in the psychic world at least one clairvoyant has claimed to have received messages from Elvis, who, after passing over into the after-life, has finally developed into a first-rate songwriter: According to some sources, a European psychic is in search of a recording contract to bring Elvis’s “new” songs to his long waiting fans.

  The strange coincidences that surrounded the paths of Elvis Presley and Robert Johnson came full circle with the date of Elvis’s death, August 16, 1977. Both men died on the same day, in the same month, thirty-nine years apart.

  2 THE BUDDY HOLLY CURSE?

  “EVERY DAY’S A HOLLY DAY”

  —Mike Berry, “Tribute to Buddy Holly” The snow was snowing, the wind was blowing when the world said, “Good-bye, Buddy.”

  FEBRUARY 3, 1959, will forever be known as “The Day the Music Died.” Shortly after 1:00 A.M. Eastern time, during what was considered to be a routine flight, three of the brightest stars in the rock and roll heavens came plunging back to the earth in a comet of fire and distorted, twisted metal. When the solemn news quickly spread across AM radio airwaves, the victims were identified as Buddy Holly, twenty-two; J. P. Richardson, “The Big Bopper,” twenty-eight; and Ritchie Valens, seventeen. These three young musicians were not the first to be sacrificed upon the altar of musical stardom, but such a cataclysmic loss of life at such an early age foreshadowed countless others who would follow in their tragic path.

  Today, more than forty years since the crash, the events of that terrible night and the strange sequence of coincidences that have followed have become the very substance of urban legend. Many rumors, as well as conspiracy theories, have continued to swirl about the events that have now defined rock and roll’s first great catastrophe, in some ways painting a mental image much like the squall that encased the downed Beechcraft Bonanza in a light shroud of freshly fallen snow as the splintered aircraft lay broken and embedded in the frozen earth just nine miles outside Clear Lake, Iowa.

  Several documented accounts have stated that all three performers had some sort of premonition of the calamity that would befall them. The Big Bopper had served as a DJ for radio station KTRM in Beaumont, Texas, as he continued to develop his rock and roll career both as a songwriter and performer. As a DJ, the Bopper’s zany radio antics included a sleepless Disc-A-Thon in 1957. The Disc-A-Thon was a popular gimmick that required the station DJ to stay awake and on the air for as many days as possible playing record after record until he collapsed from the terrible weariness. Curious onlookers would rush to the studio to watch the radio personality and silently wonder how long he could possibly last until he succumbed to exhaustion.

  Jerry Boynton, who served as radio announcer for KTRM, remembered the Disc-A-Thon and a near-exhausted Richardson who had been awake for slightly more than three straight days. Richardson asked, “Jer, you think I’m going to die?” And Boynton replied, “J. P., I think you are. [Laughs].”1 During the course of the day several breaks were arranged to help refresh the DJ and keep him going just a little longer. Cold towels, hot coffee mixed with adrenaline, and an iron will kept the Big Bopper continuing his spectacular sleepless production. Finally, after setting a new record of 122 hours and eight minutes (just over five days) without sleep and constantly being on the air, the Big Bopper was carried out of the station by an ambulance. During the sleepless marathon he had begun to hallucinate. In one hallucination he told of foreseeing his own death, later reporting that “the other side wasn’t that bad.”2

  For Ritchie Valens, the very thought of flying was terrifying. Donna Fox, subject of Ritchie Valens’s hit song “Donna,” re-called, “He would have nightmares about that [flying]. He just had a horrible fear of small planes, and planes in general. He indicated that he would never fly. He just would never fly.”3

  That horrible fear began on January 31, 1957. This day was the funeral of Ritchie’s grandfather. Ritchie had missed school that day to attend the funeral service. Shortly after the family returned to the Valenzuela home, a deafening explosion shook the earth. When Ritchie and his older brother Bob Morales looked into the heavens, they saw a plane plummeting from the sky totally engulfed in flames.

  Quickly, the family members jumped into a car and followed in the general direction of the now crimson sky. Almost like children searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Valenzuela family found the wreckage of the doomed aircraft. Ironically, the crash site was the playground of Ritchie’s school, Paicoma Junior High School. The school ground resembled a battlefield, with pieces of contorted, burning metal intermixed with playground equipment. The scene created a ghastly paradox of childhood innocence and untimely death. Horribly, three students were killed and ninety others injured. One of the students killed was Ritchie’s best friend. Every day Ritchie would sit on these same playgrounds playing his guitar while his fellow students would gather around him. He was convinced that if he had not attended his grandfather’s funeral he would have been one of the victims lying on that pockmarked school ground. But malevolent fate had other plans; two years and three days later he would be at the scene of another plane crash, as one of three rock and roll stars lying sprawled upon the snow-covered grounds of Albert Juhl’s farm just outside Clear Lake, Iowa.

  When Ritchie’s career took off like a shooting star he realized that he would have to overcome his fear and dread of flying. With the release of “Come On, Let’s Go,” “Donna,” and “La Bamba,” Ritchie Valens was very much in demand. He had a cameo role in the film Go, Johnny, Go! with fellow rocker Eddie Cochran and was asked to join Buddy Holly on the Winter Dance Party. Just before Valens was to catch his flight to join the tour he attended church services with a friend: “On his final night in Los Angeles, he’d gone to the Guardian Angels church on Laurel Canyon Boulevard with his friend Gail Smith and prayed for a safe journey. He was afraid of airplanes, he told Gail, … but he was getting used to them and might even take one at some point dur
ing the Winter Dance Party. Gail warned that it was snowy and storming in the North and asked, ‘What’d you do if you crash?’ ‘I’ll land on my guitar,’ Ritchie said.”4 Strangely, Ritchie Valens’s mother was also said to have had a premonition concerning the death of her son on that fateful tour. She had refused to say anything to him because she didn’t want to interfere in his career.

  The center of the rock and roll universe was Buddy Holly. The other stars would orbit around his presence during the Winter Dance Party tour. Though Holly had the reputation based on his many past hits, the hottest star in this galaxy tour was Ritchie Valens, who was shooting straight up the charts with “Donna” and “La Bamba.” Holly’s last two compositions, “Heartbeat” and “It’s So Easy,” had failed to make a splash on the charts. He was determined to get back to the top as a solo artist since his split with the Crickets. In a deal worked out with his producer and cowriter Norman Petty, the Crickets—Jerry “J. I.” Allison and Joe B. Mauldin—would retain the rights to the band’s name and would continue to perform without Buddy. In another sense of irony, both Jerry and Joe had tried to contact Buddy the night of the plane crash in hopes of reuniting the band. Sadly, this was not to be.

  For the Winter Dance Party tour, Holly had hired longtime friend and protégé Waylon Jennings to be the bassist. According to Jennings, Buddy purchased a new electric Fender bass guitar and told Jennings he had two weeks to learn to play the instrument. For backup guitar, Holly chose Tommy Allsup. With the addition of these two fellow Texans, the band was complete.

  The chief reason for Holly’s agreement to do the Winter Dance Party was to generate enough income to support his new wife, Maria Elena, who was also pregnant with the couple’s first child. The income would also help support Buddy’s new publishing company. Though he hated to go in the dead of winter—the midwestern winters could be brutal and unbearable in early February—he had no choice. In recalling their first date, Maria mentioned that Buddy proposed to her then and there. When she asked that just maybe Buddy should get to know her a little better, he smiled and replied, “I haven’t got the time.” Perhaps this was a premonition that Holly had, that he would have a short life, and so he had decided that he should find all the happiness to fill his tragically numbered days.

  Shortly before leaving for the Winter Dance Party tour, both Maria Elena and Buddy were shaken by disturbing but strangely prophetic dreams. Maria was awakened suddenly from a nightmare in which she was standing in a vast open area, much like a farm: “I didn’t know where I was or how I got there. And then all of a sudden I could hear noises, like shouting, and it got closer and closer in the distance. I could see all these people running, running, running and shouting, ‘They’re coming! Hide!’”5 Maria was convinced that she would be trampled by the onrushing mob. As the crowd parted around her, she heard a terrible noise and then she saw a descending ball of fire falling from the heavens. She was convinced that this flaming cometlike object would crush her but it passed by her. She heard a terrible crash and in the distance witnessed a huge explosion, much like that of a plane crash. As she approached the site, all she could see was a great burning hole in the ground. At this point she awakened Buddy.

  As Buddy tried to comfort her, he related to Maria a dream he had just moments before in which he was flying in a small plane with his brother Larry and her. For some reason Larry convinced Buddy to leave Maria on the top of a building but reassured him that they would soon return to pick her up. The dream created so much guilt within Buddy that he broke into tears saying that he just couldn’t understand why he left her and she wasn’t with him. In a few short weeks both these dreams would come back to haunt Maria Elena: “We were both dreaming the same dream at the same time. And there was so much that came true if you put two and two together. Buddy leaving me [the day he left for the Dance Party Maria had her bags packed to go with him but he convinced her to stay due to her morning sickness] … an airplane crash … on a farm … it was like someone saying something to me but I didn’t listen.”6

  Eerily, Buddy Holly had been fascinated with piloting small planes and had taken at least one flying lesson shortly before his death. His brother Larry was along with him. In this particular lesson the flight instructor cut the small plane’s engine and put the plane into a nosedive. Holly recalled that the dive felt like it lasted a good forty minutes before the pilot calmly leveled the plane and continued the flight. Sadly, this saving motion would not occur on the night of February 3, 1959.

  During his successful tour of England in 1958, Buddy was startled to find a note delivered to him personally by legendary British recording engineer and producer Joe Meek. Meek had become fascinated with the occult and had graduated from his Ouija board to tarot card readings. During a tarot session in January of 1958, vocalist Jimmy Miller of Jimmy Miller and the Barbecues joined Joe Meek. Miller had enjoyed using his Ouija board as a method to help pick up girls. He noticed it helped break the ice, and many of his dates found the spooky readings to be fascinating. It just seemed natural that Jimmy would graduate to higher forms of spiritualism with Joe Meek, especially since Joe was the band’s producer.

  According to Miller, on this particular night Joe Meek had invited Faud, an Arab friend and another dabbler in the occult sciences, to make up the third party, and the tarot cards were brought out into an appropriately darkened room. Miller recalled, “That was the first time I had handled tarot cards, and even now I am getting tingles down my spine.”7 These slight tingles would later turn to petrifying fear as the evening progressed. Meek told Jimmy to shuffle and cut the cards with his left hand. The right hand of each man securely gripped the left of the man sitting next to him. Joe placed himself in the middle and Faud’s right hand was kept free to write down on a writing pad any spiritual messages that might make their way through the veil. Miller recalls that the cards felt strange and that he became nauseated.

  Slowly, he turned each card with his left hand. Halfway through the deck, Jimmy grasped Joe’s hand so tightly that the singer’s fingernails dug deeply into the producer’s knuckles, cutting into the flesh. Faud began slowly writing down individual letters that created the message now being obtained from the beyond.

  When the cards were completely turned, Joe Meek screamed in pain and wrenched his hand free from the now equally terrified Miller. In horror the three men looked at the spiritual message that had been recorded by Faud. The message stated a date—“February the third.” The date was followed by the name “Buddy Holly” and “Dies.” “The whole affair was amazing because the message was written in what looked very much like my [Miller’s] own handwriting,” Miller said.

  As Miller recalled it, Joe Meek was now a man filled with a terrible urgency. Not only was he a fan of Buddy Holly, but now he had only a few short weeks to get the message to Buddy to be extremely careful on February the third. Meek contacted record companies, music publishers, and any other inside sources that could carry the prophetic message of doom to the popular American singer.

  When February 3, 1958, finally came and passed without incident, Miller said Joe felt relieved but still felt it was his responsibility to personally deliver the message to Holly when the singer and his backup group the Crickets arrived in Great Britain in mid-February to begin their UK tour. When Meek told Holly the incredible events of the tarot reading the singer very politely thanked Joe for his concern and promised that he would always be extremely careful in the future when February the third would come around.

  In an interview with the BBC at the tour’s end, Holly remarked that his tour of England had been very strange. First, a fan threw a brick with an autograph book attached through his dressing room window, almost hitting him, and then he received a message telling him that he was going to die. If only Buddy Holly had remembered Joe Meek’s warning the next year when on February 3, 1959, Holly climbed into a small chartered airplane on a cold winter’s night in Iowa. Fate would not present Buddy Holly with a second chance.


  Fate had a different outcome in mind for the members of Holly’s backing band. Drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized due to his contracting severe frostbite on his feet. Providence would also play a major role in allowing both Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup to escape the one-way flight in the doomed Beechcraft Bonanza. The band was forced to honor a grueling schedule of performances. Sometimes they would be forced to travel over five hundred miles in one night following a performance.

  To make matters even more unbearable, the musicians were forced to travel on reconditioned school buses that kept breaking down during the long road trips. Coupled with temperatures that reached twenty-five degrees below zero, the musicians’ morale was quickly diminishing. After performing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly made arrangements to charter the small plane to help escape the misery of the school bus caravan. Gaining a few hours would allow him to have his clothes laundered.

  When the Big Bopper discovered the plan to fly to the next show, he asked Waylon Jennings for his seat on the plane. The Bopper was sick with the flu and wanted to see a doctor. For Jennings, who enjoyed the camaraderie of the other performers, it was no great sacrifice to give up his seat. The final bargaining item was the Big Bopper’s new sleeping bag. When Buddy found out that Jennings had given up his seat he admonished Jennings to have fun on the Arctic school bus and laughingly joked that he hoped the school bus would break down. Jennings quickly shot back a comment that haunts him forever when he remembers that night. Jennings quipped, “Yeah, and I hope your old plane crashes.”