50 years ago today, in an Iowa cornfield ...

... the Beechcraft Bonanza carrying Buddy Holly (as well as Ritchie Valens and "The Big Bopper", J.P. Richardson) crashed in a snowstorm, killing all aboard. The story of the crash, and of his death, is one of the first newspaper stories I remember reading; there's still an eidetic complex that merges the image of the story with the disbelief and loss I felt when I read it still rolling around my brain. I'm amazed now to realize that he was only 22 when he died, and had already written songs that would become rock standards - "Not Fade Away", "Peggy Sue", "That'll Be the Day", "Rave On" among them - and pioneered an approach to the guitar that would make him one of the most influential popular musicians of his era.

He'd just be 72 now, were he alive, and had had a much longer career. Not so old.

Rave on, Buddy, on the other side.

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Image from the Buddy Holly Photo Gallery.