Waylon gave up his seat on Buddy’s last flight

A thousand people, mourners and the morbidly curious, squeezed into a Lubbock church on Feb. 7, 1959 for the funeral of hometown rock-and-roller Buddy Holly.

A skinny musician from Littlefield would have given anything to have been there for his hero’s send-off, but Waylon Jennings was stuck in the frozen North finishing the tour that had not missed a beat since the fatal plane crash four days earlier.

Jennings and Holly had known each other for going on five years after meeting in a Lubbock diner back in 1953, when they were 15 and 16 years old respectively.  Even though he was almost the same age, Waylon looked up to the bespectacled singer/songwriter, and Buddy reciprocated by looking after his younger admirer.

Holly’s career took off like a rocket in 1957.  “That’ll Be the Day” shot to the top of the charts closely followed by “Peggy Sue,” which crested at No. 3.  Buddy and his band, The Crickets, performed both smash hits on “The Ed Sullivan Show” that December.

Right around Christmas 1958, Holly showed up at the Lubbock radio station where Jennings worked as a disc jockey.  He handed him an electric bass guitar and announced, “You have two weeks to learn to play that thing.”

That was Buddy’s way of inviting Waylon to join him on the “Winter Dance Party,” a three-week tour of the upper Midwest due to start on Jan. 23.  It was a killer schedule with 25 shows in 25 towns in 25 nights but a dream come true for the delighted deejay.

Holly needed dependable musical backup after his recent falling-out with The Crickets, and he knew he could count on Jennings even if he had never touched a bass guitar.  Tulsa guitarist Tommy Allsup and drummer “Goose” Bunch from Odessa filled the other two vacancies.

The three new Crickets arrived in New York by plane on Jan. 15, 1959 for  rehearsals.  Allsup and Bunch shared a room in a Times Square hotel, while Jennings stayed with Holly and his wife of five months, Maria Elena.

In spite of the fact that Buddy had been living in New York less than a year, Waylon was amazed at how fast he had adjusted to life in the Big Apple.  Everything was alien to the lanky youth from West Texas, but nothing was stranger than the inhabitants.

Jennings found what he called in his 1996 autobiography “the New York attitude” hard to understand and even harder to take.  After buying a pair of shoes from a sullen salesman, he asked, “Ain’t you going to tell us to come back?”

Jennings never forgot the clerk’s response.  “Hillbilly, there’s eight million people in this city, and if I never see you again it’ll be too soon.”

After a week in Manhattan, Jennings was ready to hit the road.  The first stop for the “Winter Dance Party” was a ballroom in Milwaukee, where the dollar-a-ticket crowd saw their rock-and-roll favorites live and in person.

One-hit wonder Frankie Sardo opened the show followed by Beaumont disc jockey J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson belting out his future classic “Chantilly Lace.”  Next came Dion and the Belmonts with their three Top 50 songs and East Los Angeles teen Ritchie Valens with his huge hits “Donna” and “La Bamba.”  Then Buddy and his brand-new band rocked the house for an hour.

Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa in the dead of winter were a sub-zero ice box that took a terrible toll on man and machine.  On any given night, half of the stage talent and support staff were sick – “Goose” Bunch’s feet actually froze! – and the tour bus gave up the ghost in the middle of nowhere.

By the time the road show reached Clear Lake, Iowa on Feb. 3, Holly had had it with all-night rides on the latest mass transit – a converted school bus with a broken heater.  He chartered a private airplane to fly him and two passengers to Fargo, North Dakota.

Ritchie Valens won one seat on a coin flip with Tommy Allsup, and Buddy assigned the other to his Panhandle pal.  But soft-hearted Waylon gave his spot on the warm plane to Richardson, who had come down with the flu.

“You’re not going with me tonight, huh?” Holly joked at Jennings’ expense.  “Did you chicken out?”  Waylon explained fear had nothing to do with it, that he was just doing the Big Bopper a favor.

“Well,” Buddy said in obvious jest, “I hope your damned bus freezes up again.”  Waylon answered in kind, “I hope your old plane crashes.”

And that was what it did less than ten minutes after take-off killing everybody on-board.

“I just wanted to go home,” Jennings recalled 37 years later, “but they wouldn’t stop the tour.”  The grief-stricken guitarist had to wait until he collected his pay after the final performance to return to Lubbock.

Waylon Jennings made the most of the 43 years that an act of kindness on a cold Iowa night bought him.  At his death in 2002, he was a full-fledged legend in his own right with more than 60 albums and 16 No. 1 country-music hits.

Buddy would have been proud.

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