You’ve heard the Don McLean song “American Pie”, but did you know that the song gave name to one of Rock’n Roll’s first great tragedies? Fifty-three years ago today, February 3rd, 1959, music lost three great pioneers of the rock’n roll genre in a plane crash just outside Clear Lake, Iowa. Twelve years later, McLean wrote “American Pie” in honor of one of those lost in the crash, Buddy Holly, and named the day of Holly’s death along with that of Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, “The Day the Music Died.”

McLean has resisted many opportunities to interpret the lyrics of “American Pie”, leaving that to his listeners, but he has said that writing the first verse of the song helped him to get over his long-standing grief over Buddy Holly’s death:

February made me shiver
with every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

Though his success as a recording artist only spanned a year and a half prior to the plane crash that claimed his life that fateful night in 1959, Buddy Holly has been hailed as one of rock’s most influential creative forces in its early years. Here’s one of his most well-known hits, originally written as “Cindy Lou” but changed by Holly to honor the girlfriend of his drummer in “The Crickets”, Jerry Allison, whose name was Peggy Sue.

Ritchie Valens’s career proved to be even shorter than Holly’s – he was only 17 when he signed his first recording contract with Del-Fi Records, just eight months before his death. In those eight months he had four Billboard Hot 100 hits, including “Come On, Let’s Go”, “Donna”, and “Little Girl”. But today’s audiences might remember Ritchie Valens and his music best for Lou Diamond Phillip’s heartfelt portrayal of Ritchie and Los Lobos’s performances of his songs in the 1987 film “La Bamba.”

In addition to being remembered for his biggest radio hit, “Chantilly Lace”, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson is also credited with recording the first rock video, and coining the term “music video” in an article in 1958.