http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died - On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa killed 3 American rock and roll pioneers: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. The Big Bopper Richardson, plus the pilot, Roger Peterson. The day was later called The Day the Music Died by Don McLean, in his song American Pie.

The Winter Dance Party tour was to cover 24 Midwestern cities in 3 weeks. The amount of travel was a problem with the tour as the distance between venues was not considered when scheduling each performance. Plus the tour bus was not equipped for the weather and its heating system broke shortly after the tour began. Holly's drummer, Carl Bunch, was hospitalized in Michigan with a severe case of frostbitten feet that developed when the bus broke down en route to Wisconsin. Holly's group was the backing band for all of the acts, so Holly, Valens and Dion DiMucci (of Dion and the Belmonts) took turns playing drums for each other at the Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Clear Lake, Iowa, shows.

Hubert Dwyer, owner of the plane, watched from outside the tower and "saw the tail light of the aircraft gradually descend until out of sight" just after 1:00 AM. Peterson earlier told Dwyer he would file a flight plan with Air Traffic Control by radio after takeoff. When Peterson did not call in the flight plan, Dwyer requested that they attempt to establish radio contact, but all attempts were unsuccessful. By 3:30 AM, Dwyer contacted authorities and reported the aircraft missing.

Around 9:15 AM, Dwyer took off in his own Cessna 180 to fly Peterson's intended route. Within minutes he spotted the wreckage less than 6 miles northwest of the airport in a cornfield. The Bonanza was at a slight downward angle & banked heavily to the right when it struck the ground at 170 mph. The plane tumbled and skidded another 570 feet across the frozen landscape before the crumpled wreckage came to rest against a wire fence. The bodies of Holly and Valens lay near the plane, Richardson was thrown over the fence and into the another cornfield, and Peterson's body remained inside the plane's wreckage. The county coroner declared that all four had died instantly from gross trauma to the brain.

Investigators concluded that the crash was due to poor weather conditions and pilot error, resulting in spatial disorientation. Peterson was still taking flight instrumentation tests and was not yet certified for flight into weather that would have required operation of the aircraft solely by reference to his instruments rather than by means of his own vision. They also concluded that Peterson was not given adequate warnings about the weather conditions of his route, which might have caused him to postpone the flight out of prudence.