Yup: it was 50 years ago today that Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens were killed in an icy plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
(Don MacLean called it “the day the music died” in his 1971 hit “American Pie.”)
The Surf Ballroom, where they performed that night, is still there. (Though it’s now the “Surf Ballroom & Museum / North Iowa Cultural Center and Museum.”) And they’ve got T-shirts.