Buddy Holly Poster Fetches $447K; Duluth Dylan House Was Much More Affordable

I read the news today, oh boy. A poster for the Buddy Holly concert that never was went up for sale and this week fetched the tidy sum of $447,000. The story of the sale gained wide circulation for a variety of reasons. Foremost is probably the amount of value placed on the poster. That's a lot of clams. Second, because of its rarity. This may be the only one in existence for that specific show, which took place on the very day of the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valenz, J.P. Richardson (the "Big Bopper") and pilot Roger Peterson shortly after midnight. It's a  plane crash made legendary by Don McLean in his song "American Pie."

STOP THE PRESSES!

OK, so Artnet News published the figure of $447,000, but the headline on John Lamb's story on the front page of our Duluth News Tribune announced that the said poster sold for a record $477K. 

Yahoo News posted a CBS News story that also affirms the $447K auction transaction. That story, by Helen Ray, opens like this:

The rarest and only known Buddy Holly poster from "The Day the Music Died," when an airplane carrying Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper (real name J.P. Richardson) crashed and killed all three, sold at auction for a record-breaking $447,000.

Oops. On further inspection John Lamb got it right. Whoever wrote the headline got it wrong. According to advertising guru David Ogilvy, five times more people read the headline than the ad copy. This undoubtedly applies to news stories, I suspect, and some astute readers may notice the discrepancy.

BACK TO THE STORY

Poster for Buddy Holly's last concert at the Surf Club.

There are many layers to this story, though. Like many teens in the 50s and 60s, Bobby Veline had learned to play the guitar and formed a band with a group of friends, much like Bobby Zimmerman had with his Golden Chords. After the plane crash took the lives of three headliners, the Moorhead show promoters scrambled to find someone who could step into Buddy Holly's big shoes. Bobby Veline and The Shadows earned the opportunity to wear the mantle that night, a major kickstart for Bobby Vee's career.

It's well known that all these events have Dylan connections. On January 31, just days before the fateful crash, Bobby Zimmerman and his friend Louis Kemp worked their way to the front of the stage to watch Buddy Holly perform at the Historic Duluth Armory. The 17-year-old kid with big dreams of his own felt that an uncanny something passed between them that night when Holly looked at him. 

Young Dylan's amusing attempt to join Bobby Vee's Shadows has a become another bit of lore.

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Though the Winter Dance Party posters were mass produced, they were left blank on top so that times and dates for the various venues could be filled in for each of the shows. How this particular poster came to be auctioned off as such a rarity can be found in the many stories published this past week. 

What I think is most interesting is how values get established. When Bill Pagel bought Bob Dylan's birth home here in Duluth a little over 20 year ago it was a steal. He got the whole house and property for less than $100K. I'm curious what the house might have fetched if it had been sold through a higher profile, better-connected auction house.  In 2019 Pagel went on to purchase the Zimmerman house in Hibbing as well. That one cost $320,000. In short, he got both houses for less than that singular poster. 

Here are couple other mementos from that week long ago, courtesy 

Floor board from Duluth Armory signed by Carl Bunch, 

drummer for who got frostbite when the bus broke down 

between Duluth and Green Bay.

Another Armory floorboard, this one signed by a number of

Buddy Holly contemporaries including Bobby Vee.

Here's a link to a half dozen stories I've published regarding 

Buddy Holly's final shows on that Winter Dance Party tour. 

Link to John Lamb's Duluth News Tribune story cited above.

.Floorboards courtesy Joe Mann. Photos by Ed Newman.

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW ATTENDED THAT MOORHEAD SHOW WITH BOBBY VEE I WOULD LIKE TO TALK WITH YOU.  ennyman3@gmail.com

Sunday Night's Blood Moon, Plus More Buddy Holly Memories and Insights

Yes Bobby and I went to the Armory together to see Buddy Holly. I talk about it in my not yet released book in the chapter called “Oh Boy”--Louis Kemp

On January 3, 1959 Alaska became the 49th state to enter the Union. Alaska's was the first new star added to the flag in 47 years.

One month later, on February 3, the music world lost three stars when a chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all three along with their young pilot Roger Peterson.

This year will be the 60th anniversary of that event, and with each passing year new stories emerge. I reached out to Mike Tefft, a friend and long time resident of Clear Lake who shared with me some of his insights about the crash.

Locally, Jerry Dwyer, owner of the charter service out of Mason City airport (Mason City named because of FFA funding and their larger population base, although the airport is just a couple of miles from the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake) defended the pilot's ability to his dying day, literally. Jerry was working on an exposé-type book about the flight and crash that included some inside analysis of possible violence during the flight that included Buddy Holly's pistol that had two empty chambers.

Tefft states that this story is rumored about town but has never been read since Mr. Dwyer died before he could publish.

He also claimed that the weather was not like the news had widely claimed. He was also successful in winning a lawsuit against him. There also seemed to be some question about why the Big Bopper's body was on the north side of the fence and oriented differently than the other three...as if he might have, briefly, walked away from the crash site before he died.

I had met Mr. Dwyer several times through casual encounters about town and local school events. By the way Mr. Dwyer had kept most of the wreckage that is now owned by his wife, who just happens to be working with a ghost writer to finished her husband's book. He always seemed friendly and he and his family had a good reputation about town and in the area. Here's an article in the Des Moines Register archives about Mr. Dwyer.

You can see photos of the crash site and learn more in this Des Moines Register story: RIP Jerry Dwyer, a man haunted by the Buddy Holly crash.

Purportedly Mr. Dwyer's wife is attempting to finish the book project  and tell another side of the story about what happened that night.

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Buddy Holly at the Duluth Armory
Photo courtesy AAMC
Photo credit: Sharon Johnson

Another book with still more untold stories is scheduled to come out later this year. Louis Kemp, a boyhood friend from Bobby Zimmerman's Camp Herzl days, hopes to see the book released late this summer. One chapter, titled "Oh Boy," is devoted to the impact of the Winter Dance Party and Buddy Holly's visit to the Historic Duluth Armory.

In the back of my mind I'd often wondered who Bob was accompanied by that night. I couldn't imagine him just going by himself. Sure enough, I just learned he was with his friend Louis Kemp. We often hear that it was a cold one, 20 below zero. But temps get colder than the thermometer reading. According to Kemp it was minus 44 when you add the wind chill factor.

I asked what it was like to learn a couple days later that these men were killed in a plane crash. "I was in study hall at Duluth Central when the news was circulated." It was a shock.

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Other than the Buddy Holly shot, the photos on this page were submitted courtesy Mike Tefft who also included this personal story, a Blood Moon remembrance.

On a trip out to the crash site during a Blood Moon a few years back I spent several hours out there just meditating and taking an occasional photo. A couple of eerie (to me) things happened. After sunset and soon after I had paid respectful tribute, African style, by pouring a fifth of Tequila onto the ground at the memorial. 

A small aircraft was passing in the near distance and then circled in closer. The hairs stood up on the back of neck as I realized it was on a similar approach and height as the hired Beechcraft that had crashed. Of course, the plane circled away and continued its filed flight plan but definitely had me going. Nothing else of note, besides the spectacular moon, happened... until I was leaving. 

I paid my final respects for this visit to each of the dead and then collected all of my equipment and had the tripod in place on my shoulder and then started down the trail. Almost immediately I had a strong sense that I was being followed... closely! I paused several times and carefully looked around, as best I could in the fading light of the Blood Moon, and saw nothing but the sensation of being followed didn't go away. When I approached the gravel road near the large Buddy Holly glasses memorial and trail signpost the feeling of being followed disappeared. This had not happened before the night of the Blood Moon or since on any of my visits to the site.

Mason City Airport, aerial view, courtesy Mike Tefft.

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Tonight, from around 10:00 p.m. till early Monday around 2:30 there will be a total lunar eclipse as the earth passes between the moon and the sun. Depending on how clear the night skies are, millions of people in North and South America will have a prime view of this event. At a certain point the full moon will become fully tinted with the red-orange color of sunset, hence the nickname Blood Moon.

In our age of audacious headlining, some are now calling it a Super Wolf Blood Moon. Last year, if you recall (which you may not) we had two full moons in January, the latter being a Blue Moon which coincidentally was also a lunar eclipse event. Tonight's Blood Moon total eclipse will be the last we'll experience here for 18 years.

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Related Links
How this event led to the start of Bobby Vee's career.
AP story about Bobby Vee's passing in 2016 with still more details of his start.