Thinking Out Loud: The Days the Music Died

The dark link between airplanes, well-known musicians and death

NOTE: THE AUDIO FILE GOES IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION THAT EXPLAINS SOME OF THE TEXT BELOW.

The other day while driving I heard Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce and I mentally flashed onto a phone call I received from a friend back in 1973. He was in a phone booth somewhere in north Texas on the way to a Jim Croce concert in Sherman, Texas. He had just heard on the radio that Croce had been killed when their Twin Beech hit a tree on takeoff. Without meaning to, my brain started rattling down a long list of similar phone calls and news flashes about noted musicians and fatal plane crashes but the list was too long to remember. So, when I got back in the office I tapped into Wiki’s ever-lasting memory.

Old man Wiki is morbid in the detail he puts into the category “Musicians killed in aviation accidents or incidents.” There was a total of 39 listed, some dying at the same time in the same airplane (Buddy Holly, as is well known, was one of three in that Bonanza). Also, the eight members of Reba’s band who died in a chartered HS-125 jet many years after Holly weren’t in the list. In that case, the pilot, unfamiliar with the airport was advised to stay below 3000 feet to stay out of overlaying controlled airspace. It was 1:45 in the morning so he was on the gauges and his turn took them right into a 3,500 ft mountain. They never knew what hit them.  

Was Glenn Miller the First?

It’s not clear when musicians started dying in airplanes but the first really major musical celebrity was probably army Major Glenn Miller.  It’s a little sad to admit that there are a number of folks reading this (hopefully a smallish number) who don’t recognize the name. This is sad because band leaders Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman were the soundtrack of WW II and the ‘40s. Well into the ‘50s, some of we gray dogs learned to dance to their big bands until Bill Haley and Elvis came along.

(Please, as you’re reading this, if you don’t know a name and the music attached to it, Google it. Uniformly, there are examples of their music attached to the piece on them. You’re missing something, if you don’t.)

Glenn Miller had left his million-dollar position as a popular bandleader and joined the Army to entertain the troops for the duration. The afternoon of December 15, 1944, he left England for France. A simple 30–40-minute flight. He was in a Noorduyn Norseman, and the airplane simply disappeared. 80 years later, it has never been found. There were no radio calls, no sightings of a crash. Nothing!

Glenn Miller was direct-commissioned as a Major and formed a traveling “big band” out of qualified service men. They traveled all over the European Theater entertaining the troops. The Norseman was known as a reliable transport but not a single piece has been found even though their route across the English Channel is well known.

Let’s walk down a sad memory lane of some of the better-known musical tragedies.

The Day the Music Died

Those words were first penned by song-writer/singer Don Mclean in his historic song, American Pie, which eulogized the crash of Bonanza N3794N. The airplane had been chartered by Buddy Holly (22 years old) to take his group from Mason City Iowa airport, which was next to Clear Lake where he, Ritchie Valens (17 years old) and J.P. Richardson (“The Big Bopper”) had just finished performing. Originally, Holly’s bandmates, Waylon Jennings (yes, THAT Waylon Jennings!) and guitarist Tommy Allsup were to be on board with him. Holly had chartered the airplane because the beat-up buses they were traveling on almost 24 hours a day on a bone crushing tour were so cold Alsup actually had frostbite.

When it came time to leave, Valens wanted to avoid the bus torture so on a coin toss with Alsup got his seat. Richardson was suffering from the flu and begged Jennings to give him his seat. Which he did. Country music definitely profited from that decision.

The 21-year-old pilot was relatively low time and wasn’t given a full weather briefing.  It was night in a rural area with scattered ground lights, the weather was definitely closing in with low ceilings and snow and he wasn’t IFR qualified. He was over his head immediately. They never got above 3,000 feet and the airplane hit the ground going nearly straight down. There are still lots of arguments being battered around about what the actual cause was.

Musicians should never travel together

This time the headliner was Patsy Cline. During the 1960’s not many, if any, in Nashville were bigger than she was. The airplane was a Piper Comanche, N7000P and the other seats were taken by two other country favorites, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. The cause of the crash was the so-often fatal combination of night, foul weather and a non-IFR rated young pilot. The wreck was found in the middle of a forest outside of Camden, TN. They had been offered free transportation to free hotel rooms just before they took off, but the pilot wanted to push on.

Patsy Cline is often considered to be the most influential female performer in country music because she shattered the glass ceiling becoming the period’s super star. Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas were just glad to ride along.

Rick Nelson’s Fatal Gooney Bird flight: Dec 31, 1985

Forget what you’ve heard about the fire on Nelson’s DC-3, N711Y. No one was cooking drugs or anything close to it. As it happens, for some years I knew the co-pilot, Ken Ferguson who had little good to say about the airplane. He said the airplane, which had once belonged to the DuPont family and then Jerry Lee Lewis, had a long history of problems. It was just tired. Several engine failures and emergency landings, then, on the fatal flight the gas-fueled Janitrol 17,000BTU cabin heating unit in the tailcone area began to act up. It turned out that a fuel line from a main tank back to the heater had cracked and was spraying gasolene around. Smoke filled the cabin and they were trying for Texarkana airport when smoke and flames started coming into the cockpit forcing them to put it down in a farm field. The landing was close to being normal before ramming into a patch of trees.

Ken said flames and smoke pretty much filled the cockpit as they opened the vent windows. The windows were barely big enough to squeeze through and Ken was badly burned over 40% of his body. He once told me the burns still hurt periodically.

Ken did a presentation on the accident that’s on YouTube. I found that a little surprising because normally he didn’t like to talk about it.

Possibly the last photo of Rick Nelson and his fiancé as they were boarding for their last flight. The airplane had a long history of problems. Photo by McManus.

John Denver: Bad Building Technique, October 12, 1997.

It was hard to tell whether Denver was a musician that flew or a pilot who was also a musician. He was a serious about both and his taste in airplanes and music flowed together. He tended towards sport airplanes including an Eagle and the Long Eze he died in. Most theories of his death center around a homebuilder putting the fuel tank valve in the Eze that he’d just bought in a difficult-to-reach location. He was shooting landings at a Monterey Bay airport and was flying across the bay at around 500 feet and literally dove into the water. The accepted theory is he was twisted around in the seat trying to reach the valve and inadvertently pushed on the stick.

 Denver’s dad was a career Air Force guy and John became a pilot early. He owned a wide variety of sport aircraft including a Christen Eagle and a Long Eze similar to that pictured. The person who built it put the fuel tank valve in a really awkward position and it is speculated that Denver was so low he accidentally pushed the nose into the water while trying to work the valve.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: A Nearly Impossible Pilot Screw up

First, a personal comment: I’m a southern rock and blues junkie and can’t believe an incredibly dumb pilot of a Convair CV-240, a freaking airliner, mind you, ran it out of fuel and killed Ronnie Van Zant (founder and lead singer) and Steve and Cassie Gaines part of the band. On those rare days when I don’t feel like facing the world, I’ll lay back in my typing chair, plug in the headset and let Free Bird and the Allman Bros Fillmore East album play until I’m ready to cope again. Even a Gray Dog benefits from a little edgy music.

This is a Convair 240. It’s not exactly a Cessna or Bonanza, Anyone driving one of these had to be well up the pilot talent chain because a type-rating is required to fly it. How in the hell does someone run something like this out of fuel? Talk about lack of planning!!!

Stevie Ray Vaughn: Another of my Heroes

On August 27, 1990, Vaughan and four others were killed in a helicopter crash coming out of a Double Trouble concert. Again, the fatal combination: Weather and an unqualified pilot. There should be a special place in hell for pilots who know they’re biting off more than they can chew and still let people board their airplane. Stevie Ray Vaughn had “the touch” with a guitar. Talk about edgy!

The Bell 206 has to be one of the most common whirlybirds used for hauling passengers but weather presents a challenge to non-IFR rated helo pilots: The challenge is them knowing they can fly low they think they can go under any weather which often isn’t the case. That’s what happened here. Scud-running has probably killed more pilots than any other cause (if you ignore stall/spin accidents, which are the most preventable accidents…don’t get me started).

We’ve covered 12 of the 39 musicians Google says have died in airplane accidents. I picked those because we all know their names and music (most of us anyway). The other 27 not so much. For many, death caught up with them before fame did so we don’t remember them. In a lot of ways, that’s a race most of us find ourselves in. We’re pushing like crazy but know full well only a talented few will win. However, we race anyway. That’s just what we do. bd