The way we were when we were car crazy...

Heffernan's 40 Ford

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/10-5-24

One of my grandsons recently passed his driver’s license test upon turning age 16. He’s very happy to be able to legally drive a car, just as his older brothers and cousins were before him.

But this milestone seems more routine these days compared to when I got my driver’s license many long years ago, at mid-20th century. Being able to drive was a huge deal in the lives of teenage boys of my generation.

 Back then we were able to get a permit and take the driver’s test at age 15, and most of us promptly did so. The reason is we were what was referred to as “car crazy.” I don’t think many of today’s teens, including my progeny, are car crazy, even though they are pleased to have passed this D.L. milestone and sometimes speak of Lamborghinis.

 

Passing the driver’s test for me and some of my friends was considered the overarching achievement of our lives then and forevermore, amen. It was everything we wanted to achieve in life. Crazy? Of course. Car crazy.

 

In those days, the tests were headquartered at the National Guard Armory on London Road where Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform a few years later. You can’t mention the Armory without including that. Never mind that world renowned composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff once performed there too. 

 

A Minnesota highway patrolman known as Officer Blinn (maybe not his exact name, but close) gave the tests, with dreaded parallel parking roped off on Jefferson Street alongside the north face of the Armory.

 

A close friend, a few months older than I, passed the test before me with an almost perfect score — 98 of a possible, flawless, 100. Whew, that was daunting for me when my turn came around a few months later. And I didn’t achieve it but I did OK with an 87. Seventy was passing.

 

Why do I recall all this so vividly lo these many decades later? Because it was so important to most boys of my generation. It opened the door to possibly getting a car of one’s own, and “customizing” it into something akin to a “hot rod.”

 

Customizing involved altering the outside of the car by removing such things as hood ornaments and trunk handles, filling the remaining holes with lead and repainting. Lowering the rear end was also de rigueur.

 

Possibly the most important alteration (other than huge fuzzy dice dangling from the inside rear-view mirror), was installing dual exhausts with “Smitty” steel-packed mufflers that rumbled loudly through chromium echo cans on the tail pipes when the engine was revved. These were called “twin pipes.” (Later, after I got car of my own, I was pulled over and ticketed by a Duluth cop for having those loud mufflers on my twin pipes.)

 

Mechanically minded kids “souped up” their engines so they could beat the drag race competition at downtown traffic signals.

 

But back to the state driver’s test at the Duluth Armory, where, about a week after I passed the test, I almost lost my license.

 

I was allowed to take the family car — no twin pipes — to school on the day of a city-wide high school music festival at the Armory, which I attended with other Denfeld kids. On a lunchtime break from the festival, a friend lined up a trio of girls from another high school to join us for a noontime joyride in my family’s car. Fun.

 

With the girls in the back seat and my friend riding shotgun, I “peeled” out of my parking place on London Road and began roaring through the neighborhood, “scratching” in second gear when I shifted. Scratching meant making the tires squeal by popping the clutch and “goosing” the engine when shifting a manual transmission from low to second gear. Peeling out was also known as “burning rubber.”

 

Just about every 15-year-old driver tried it, and my dad’s car always responded well, even if he wouldn’t have. Ford V-8.

 

Anyway, after tearing around the Armory neighborhood for several minutes we arrived back outside the festival where I screeched to a stop, a uniformed law officer waving me down. Yikes, it was Officer Blinn who had passed me in the road test barely a week before.

 

He strode over to my side window and sternly said something like, “Any more driving like that and I’ll take that license away from you.”

 

I was chagrined, the passengers in the car cowed, and I never drove that way again until the next time I got the family car a few days later. There was something about peeling out and scratching in second that couldn’t be resisted…when you were 15.

 

But don’t tell my grandchildren.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Duluth's 2015 Winter Dance Party fun...

Duluth's Historic Armory fundraiser:  2015 Winter Dance Party, 1-31-15.
The Travelogs provided the music–and the famous black horn-rimmed glasses. 

These are a few scenes from the Winter Dance Party held last weekend marking the 56^th anniversary of the similarly titled event in the Duluth Armory featuring entertainers Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in one of their final appearances before they were killed in the crash of a small plane. 

The event was a fundraiser for the Historic Duluth Armory where Holly et al appeared on the Winter Dance Party Tour before the historic "night the music died." I was introduced at this event as the only person in the audience who acknowledged having been at the original dance party. One other person said that he had been there for part of the event, but was quite young and apparently had been kicked out. 

This year’s observance, held at the Sacred Heart concert venue, was very well attended. Some of the music provided did take on original Holly-Valens hits and were performed in the spirit of the era by Todd Eckert and The Travelogs, a group that includes regional musicians Lonnie Knight, Gary Lopac, Stan Kipper and Jim Steinworth. It was a fun event for a great cause.

Jim Heffernan is introduced as the only person attending
the Duluth 2015 Winter Dance Party fundraiser event who also was at
the original Winter Dance Party held in the Duluth Armory 56 years ago.

Jim Heffernan (l) is pictured with Jerry Schnell (r),
a volunteer with the Historic Duluth Armory fundraiser event.

Buddy Holly and the Winter Dance Party in Duluth three days before "the day the music died"

Today is the 54th anniversary of three days before "the day the music died" when Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash in Iowa. Three days prior to their death–January 31, 1959–these pop stars of the fifties performed at the Duluth Armory in a memorable appearance from my youth. A small private plane carrying these performers crashed following their final performance in Clear Lake Iowa, claiming their lives. The plane was heading to Fargo, North Dakota. As Don McLean wrote in his classic music parable, American Pie, the plane crash resulted in "the day the music died."

I, Bob Dylan and other area youths packed the Duluth Armory on January 31, 1959 to take in the performances of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, three of Rock and Roll’s most promising musicians of that era. “The Winter Dance Party Tour” began on January 23, 1959 with performances scheduled for 24 cities. The Duluth appearance took place three days before the tour tragically ended.

My friend, Lew Latto, was the producer and MC of the Armory show that also included Dion and the Belmonts. Lew was a precocious teen who became a popular disc jockey as a youth and continued on with a successful career in radio until his death in 2011. (The poster advertising this Armory event is above and on your left left.)

I've written about my recollections while attending that event in the past and you can read about it HERE. Also check out Zenith City Online HERE for more about that memorable event, some fun photos and some interesting comments from readers.

Margaret Whiting: Famed saloon singer hit her career high in Duluth...

By Jim Heffernan

Here’s the opening paragraph of an obituary in the Jan. 12 New York Times:

“Margaret Whiting, a songwriter’s daughter who as a bright-eyed teenage singer captivated wartime America and then went on to a long, acclaimed career recording hit songs and performing in nightclubs and on television, died on Monday… She was 86.” (Read the full obit HERE.)

Sounds like that pretty well sums up the career of Margaret Whiting, a singer not quite in the ranks of contemporaries like Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald, as The Times points out, but who nevertheless had quite a career. After all, she introduced “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” in a duet with the distinguished songwriter Johnny Mercer.

Well, it doesn’t quite sum up her career.

Of course you have to be of a certain age and turn of mind to even know Margaret Whiting’s name, not to mention that of Johnny Mercer. But suffice it to say, as The Times did, that “in her heyday she was widely popular in the worlds of big band, jazz, popular music – even country – for more than 30 years…”

The New York Times runs great obituaries of notable people, often including esoteric facts about the deceased that get the attention of obit writers, but they missed one about Margaret Whiting: Her appearance in Duluth – the greatest in her career, according to her.

I was there, at the old Duluth Armory, just a couple of years after Buddy Holly had graced the same stage shortly before he died. (I was there for that, too, as I’ve written so many times I’m getting bored with the story myself.)

Anyway, Margaret Whiting was the featured entertainer at the annual Duluth Home Show held at the Armory each spring in the years before the Arena-Auditorium opened in 1966. I would say I saw her in about 1961 or ’62.

Why dredge all this up now (aside from the fact that she just died)? A lot of people who performed on that stage were better known than Margaret Whiting, after all. I dredge it up because of what she said at the end of her final performance here, the last evening show on the Sunday night the Home Show closed.

In those days, the various booths and displays were spread throughout the Armory floor, and for the entertainment the crowd simply gathered in front of the stage, mostly standing. That’s where a friend and I were for that weekend’s last Margaret Whiting show. Just standing there with a few hundred other people listening to the music and taking in the acts, which probably also included a juggler or an acrobat or a dog act before the featured entertainer, backed by a big band, performed.

Because it was the weekend’s final show, as soon as the house lights went down and performers took to the stage, you could hear sponsors of the various displays across the Armory floor begin to disassemble their booths. The clatter was pretty loud, it seemed to me, making it hard for the performers on the stage to compete.

But Margaret Whiting was a trouper, and she came out and gave it her all. I don’t recall exactly what songs she included but, according to The Times obit, she was associated with “That Old Black Magic,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” “It Might as Well Be Spring” and “Far Away Places,” all enduring standards of the big band era.

But as she performed, beyond the footlights the cacophony of the dismantling of the home show was distracting, with workers paying no attention to the stage show (by then they’d likely seen it about five times that weekend). Still, Whiting sang on, smiling through it all. I recall feeling badly for her. The Armory was a dump to begin with and then to have to perform with all that clatter in the background, well, it had to be disconcerting.

But it never showed. She went through her set, which closed the program, and then stepped to the apron of the stage and addressed the audience. I’m going to put the following in quotes even though it might not be the exact wording. This is pretty much what she said:

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I just want to say before I leave Duluth that this has been the greatest time in my entire show business career.”

How about that? I was stunned. I just can’t understand how the New York Times could have missed this highlight – call it apex – of Margaret Whiting’s career. They should save the Duluth Armory on that basis alone!

Or maybe not.

Armory Home Show memories...

Richard S. from Texas, formerly from Duluth, wrote a comment on facebook regarding my recent Duluth Armory history piece (posted 1-18-10). He recalled attending home shows at the old Armory. That really brought back some memories for me, too. Just thought I'd have some fun with looking back and invite any of you old enough to share your memories as well...

I attended those Armory annual home shows many times over the years. And yes (as Richard noted), the Mills Brothers (one was the father) were a perennial act at the home show ("Glow little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer..."). I recall seeing virtuoso accordionist Dick Contino perform ("Lady of Spain I Adore you") and then running into him later that night at Sammy's Pizza on First Street. All alone, wolfing down Sammy's. Songstress Margaret Whiting was the featured attraction one year, and I happened to be there on the last night. Even as the performers did their last Duluth show, you could hear booths being disassembled in the dark behind you. Then, at the end of the show, Margaret Whiting, who had had a pretty good career in New York and Hollywood, walked up to the edge of the Armory stage and said to the few hundred stragglers, "...this has been the greatest night of my show business career." (Yeah, right.)

A few years later, the "star" of the Armory's home show was Dorothy Shay, "The Park Avenue Hillbilly." By then I was a reporter for the Duluth paper sent out to interview her. I'd never heard of her, but we met in the late afternoon in the Black Bear Lounge at Hotel Duluth to chat over coffee and a Danish. She was a very nice lady, very much in the twilight of her career as a New York nightclub singer. She asked me if I'd drive her to the Armory for rehearsal, which I happily did, but in the shuffle of leaving I forgot to pay the check at the Black Bear. Walked out on it. Really felt stupid, but I stopped back on my way back to the paper and paid the bill.  --Jim

Old Duluth Armory has storied history beyond Holly, Dylan...

By Jim Heffernan

The apparent raison d’etre for saving the abandoned and decrepit Duluth National Guard Armory on London Road is that Buddy Holly performed there a few days before he died in a plane crash in 1959 and Hibbing High School student Bob Dylan was in the audience.

At least that’s what supporters of saving the old building say when they attempt to advance their campaign. Their call. I’m ambivalent about the architecturally undistinguished building, even though, as I’ve written many times, I was there that night, too – the night 51 years ago three days before the music died.

The Sunday (Jan. 17) Duluth News Tribune included a well-researched story by Brad Snelling, a librarian at the College of St. Scholastica, recounting that the famous composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was also a virtuoso pianist, played a concert at the Duluth Armory 90 years ago this week.

No, I was not at that concert, but I was well aware of it. My mother, 21 years old at the time and a classically oriented pianist herself, often spoke of seeing Rachmaninoff in Duluth. And she spoke of seeing other world-famous artists at the Armory, most notably the great Russian basso Feodor Chaliapin and the Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger.

Until 1966, the Armory was the only sizable venue for such performances in Duluth. That all ended with the opening of the Duluth Arena-Auditorium (now called the DECC) in 1966, after which the Army National Guard also moved out of the building and it fell into ruin – the building we see today.

But it did have its moments, some of them possibly more significant artistically than Buddy Holly and his fellow performers – the Big Bopper, a novelty act, and young singer Ritchie Valens, both of whom died with Holly in the crash of a small plane in rural Iowa.

Librarian Snelling’s Sunday newspaper account noted that nine days after performing in Duluth, Rachmaninoff, back in New York City, played his notoriously difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 at Carnegie Hall. That’s the work featured a few years ago in the movie “Shine” – the “Rach 3.”

The Armory stage also served as a platform for numerous other notables in the arts over the years, including guests performing with the Duluth Symphony from the front ranks of artists of their day. And there were theatrical presentations, too, featuring well-known artists such as movie star Tyrone Power, Britain’s Dame Judith Anderson (see Hitchcock’s “Rebecca”) and others. In the late 1940s, a young tenor by the name of Mario Lanza gave a solo concert at the Armory literally months before he became a national phenomenon and movie star (“The Great Caruso”).

Local pageants graced the stage as well, as Duluth celebrated its Fall Festivals and Portoramas and other events associated with civic boosterism. Bob Hope hosted one of those at the Armory (believe it or not, he also hosted one in the former Washington Junior High School auditorium that featured a young songstress named Doris Day), and joked about the Armory building, calling it “a barn.”

I wasn’t there, but I do recall as a youngster that the town was up in arms over Bob Hope’s insult to the Duluth Armory. As they say, the truth hurts.

The ranks are thinning in Duluth of people who actually attended events at the Armory. In the Rachmaninoff story it was pointed out that some 3,700 people were in the audience (the DECC auditorium holds about 2,400). They would have sat on row after row of wooden folding chairs. The armory auditorium was designed as a drill hall for soldiers, with a large, well-equipped stage at one end – huge velvet curtain within an imposing proscenium arch. The stage was fine; the hall was, well, Spartan. Or perhaps barn-like.

Rachmaninoff, Chaliapin, Percy Grainger – all great artists of the past who graced the Armory stage. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper, pop stars of the past, are the performers the building is remembered for.

Oh, and also Bob Dylan, who did nothing more there than stand (there were no wooden chairs that night – it was a teen dance) in the hall with other teenagers, making it immortal in the minds of many.

For some  great pictures and more information about the Buddy Holly performance at the Duluth Armory, check out the buddyhollyonline.com link  HERE.

Buddy Holly: 51st anniversary of the day the music died...

Buddy Holly remembered...
It's getting close to the anniversary date of "the day the music died" here in Duluth. Those of you who read this blog know that I was there at the Duluth Armory on January 31, 1959 for the Winter Dance Party Tour" with Buddy Holly and a crew of other promising musicians. Bob Dylan was there too. Local youth DJ (now local radio personality/executive)  Lew Latto sponsored this memorable event. The Winter Dance Party Tour never reached completion when the plane carrying the performers, including Holly, crashed not long after leaving Duluth. The day of the plane crash has been memorialized in song as "the day the music died." Read more in my blog post written last year at the 50th anniversary of "the day the music died" in Duluth by clicking  HERE. And click HERE to read the referenced newspaper column also included in my book, Cooler Near the Lake.

Can Bob Dylan save the county jail?

By Jim Heffernan

Taken from the county jail
By a set of curious chances;
Liberated then on bail,
On my own recognizances;
Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances;
Surely, never had a male
Under such like circumstances
So adventurous a tale,
Which may rank with most romances.
– W. S. Gilbert, “The Mikado”

So, Duluth preservationists have six months to save the old St. Louis County Jail in the Civic Center. Find another use – and user – or the wrecking ball will drop on the venerable lockup in November, decrees the Duluth City Council.

Daunting assignment. Experts say it would be enormously expensive to rehabilitate the former hoosegow because, news reports state, the entire building is held up from the inside by the jail cells installed when it was built in 1923. Remove the jail cells and, the story goes, the four walls would tumble.

Potential investors who might consider turning it into a hotel or apartment building say the cost is prohibitive: Millions upon millions of dollars – more than it would cost to build a new structure of similar size.

Hmmm. It’s a problem, that’s for sure. And only six months to solve it, or the jail is turned into a pile of rubble fit for Del Zotto’s Pit in Gary-New Duluth. I don’t know if they still dump building refuse there, but somewhere beneath the overburden in that western Duluth neighborhood lie the old Lyceum Theater, Spalding Hotel and other buildings preservationists would have liked to save if there had been preservationists when they were torn down.

I’m all for saving the jail – I’d miss it rounding Second Street in my car. And it is handsome on the outside. Looks like it could house offices for important government officials or deliberative legislative bodies or the Lord High Executioner who sings the song at the top of this treatise.

Clearly drastic measures must be taken to save the building.

I have a suggestion that has worked in the past and can be stated in two words: Bob Dylan. (I’m going to dispense with explaining who Bob Dylan is because everybody knows.)

Who has saved the old Minnesota National Guard Armory on London Road in Duluth from being razed? Bob Dylan. He has admitted attending a rock ‘n’ roll concert there in 1959 featuring singer Buddy “That’ll Be the Day” Holly and two other famous musicians a few days before the performers were killed in a plane crash. Save the Armory folks have used that one influential night of rock‘n’roll history – Holly and Dylan, together once – as the raison d’etre for preserving the historic building. Never mind that Liberace also performed there. (I’m going to dispense with explaining who Liberace was because nobody cares.)

Surely preservationists could come up with some link of Dylan with the old St. Louis County Jail. As with the Armory, it wouldn’t take much.

Of course, we can’t have Dylan arrested and held there overnight on a wild Duluth visit as a teenager in the late 1950s. That could stain the reputation of this revered singer-songwriter, although it didn’t hurt the late Johnny Cash to seem like he was a county jail kind of guy.

But what about the night Dylan and his buddies sped down to Duluth from Hibbing to see a movie that hadn’t made it to the Range yet (maybe “Blackboard Jungle” featuring the anthem “Rock Around the Clock”), after which a Dylan pal who shall go unnamed got hold of some rotgut, caused a ruckus at the Coney Island and was hauled off to the stately St. Louis County Jail and held overnight.

And wasn’t it great that Bob Dylan went to the jail the next morning and bailed out his buddy, who was actually a good lad who had just this one bad experience? What a friend he had in Dylan.

It could have happened. Just think, Bob Dylan inside the portals of the architecturally and historically significant St. Louis County Jail in Duluth.

Save that building, for heaven’s sake!

Oh, and while they’re at it, save the Norshor Theater, where Dylan and his buddies might have seen “Blackboard Jungle.” You can’t let a movie house Bob Dylan once might have attended go to wreck and ruin.

And save Clyde Iron. Surely Bob Dylan… Oh, never mind. They already saved it without him.

KUWS hosts Winter Dance Party anniversary program...

Just one more thing about the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party Tour held at the Duluth Armory 50 years ago this Saturday (see previous posts)....

I'm scheduled to join an on-air conversation with some folks who, along with me, were there that evening 50 years ago at the Duluth Armory. I'll be recording a session tomorrow that will air on Friday at 5 PM (Final Edition program) on KUWS  (91.3 on your FM dial or live stream at www.kuws.fm  on the web). We'll be reminiscing and sharing some lore about Duluth's connection to rock 'n roll history. Be sure to tune in as who knows who'll join us in this on air conversation. Bob Dylan attended that event at the Armory 50 years ago and, just maybe....well, tune in and find out.

If you want to learn more about all the hype involved with the now famous Buddy Holly rock 'n roll tour of 50 years ago, click on this NY Times link to learn about the coming invasion of Clear Lake Iowa, the last stop before "the music died."

Saturday night: I'll be there...

Well–not physically, but in spirit. Saturday night, January 31, is the 50th anniversary of "Three Days Before the Rock Stars Died" at the Duluth Armory. (See the previous posts.) We had a bit of rock 'n roll history right here in Duluth that night fifty years ago and I was there, along with Bob Dylan and a couple thousand area teens. (It really was cooler near the lake that night.) I'm heading for a long vacation in a warm part of our country soon and will have to miss the in town salute to Buddy Holly and the now famous Winter Dance Party this Saturday. 

I'll have the lap top along on my travels and will be writing my Duluth~Superior Magazine in print columns and some musings on that web site as well as my regular posts right here on this blog. So please continue to stay tuned...

More on the Winter Dance Party in Duluth

A great story in today's Duluth News Tribune by Kevin Pates, DNT sports writer and pop culture aficionado, tells more about Buddy Holly and the Winter Dance Party. He interviews Lew Latto, a friend from my youth who was then a popular young DJ and was the promoter and MC of the Duluth Armory event. Kevin does just a great job of pulling together the aura of that event as it was then and is today. The DNT web site also includes links to great pictures discovered by locals attending the event and a bit more about the armory, those who follow the road of "The Party" each year, and more. Kevin, as usual, creates a story that is well worth reading. Check it out...  

Also if you missed Kevin's annual year end column in the DNT, you can find it on his Rink and Run blog where he makes reference to the Winter Dance Party and me. 

50th Anniversary: The Day the Music Died...

“…when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory, and I was three seats away from him, and he looked at me and, …I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.”     

   Bob Dylan,  accepting the 1998 Grammy for “Album of the Year”

I, Bob Dylan and other area youths packed the Duluth Armory on January 31, 1959 to take in the performances of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, three of Rock and Roll’s most promising musicians of that era. “The Winter Dance Party Tour” began on January 23, 1959 with performances scheduled for 24 cities. The Duluth appearance took place three days before the tour tragically ended. Duluth radio talk show host and broadcast executive, Lew Latto, was then a popular young DJ who promoted the event and served as the MC. 

On a cold winter’s night, the small private plane carrying the performers crashed, claiming their lives. The plane was heading to Fargo, North Dakota following what ended up to be the tour’s final performance in Clear Lake, Iowa. As Don McLean wrote in his classic music parable, American Pie, the plane crash resulted in "the day the music died."

While I had a different experience than Bob Dylan, neither of us forgot that moment in Duluth history. The 5oth anniversary of “Winter Dance Party Tour” is taking place this week–with the anniversary of the Duluth performance coming up next week, January 31st and the anniversary of the now famous plane crash this February 3rd.

To commemorate this moment in Rock and Roll history, I'm including one of my Duluth News Tribune columns about the Duluth event as I remembered it, “ Three Days Before the Rock Stars Died.” The DNT column is included in my book, Cooler Near the Lake, in a section titled, “The Rich and Famous Collide With Duluth.” That section of the book also includes writings about Calvin Griffith, Hubert Humphrey, Jessica Lange, John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Gregory Peck, Johnny Cash and Paul Wellstone. The column follows in the post below...

Buddy Holly: Three Days Before the Rock Stars Died

by Jim Heffernan

Every time it comes up–and it keeps coming up more often as time passes–I find myself somewhat of an oddity among younger people when I tell them I was there the night Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played Duluth three nights before they died in a plane crash.

When a movie based on Holly’s life was released a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about the Duluth connection. Now the movie “La Bamba,” which portrays Valens’ life and career, is showing here.

Many people from around here know the entertainers played Duluth shortly before they met their deaths in Iowa, but I am not aware that anyone has written a first-person account of it. So that is what I am up to today. These are just my recollections–and impressions–of the occasion. Memory is not always accurate, but this is how I saw it.

It was Saturday night, January 31, 1959, that the “Winter Dance Party” played the old Duluth Armory on London Road. My friend Lew Latto, now owner of several local and area radio stations, promoted the concert. He met the performers. I was just in the audience.

The program was one of a succession of “Armory dances” held in those days and they drew big crowds of teenagers. The audience did not sit down. The Armory floor was left clear for dancing. Holly and Valens, along with the Big Bopper, were all hit artists at the time. Duluth often gets entertainers on the way up, on the way down or on the way to nowhere. These guys were somewhere right then. They were on the charts, and they were here in person.

Everyone was aware it was a special Armory dance because of that. Holly was the headliner, but Valens had made such a hit with his tune “La Bamba” he wasn’t very far behind. If you were young and in Duluth that night, there was absolutely nowhere else to be. I was a 19-year-old UMD student, and half the campus was at the dance.

Reading old newspaper clips, I see that Dion and the Belmonts were on the program, too, but I don’t remember them. And I only vaguely recall the Big Bopper as a novelty act. He was supposed to be funny and yelled a lot (“Chantilly Lace!”).

The social dynamics at those dances, it need hardly be pointed out, involved meeting members of the opposite sex as much as artistic appreciation–probably more. The dances were largely attended by boys and girls (young men and women) who would go “stag.” For many, like myself, the performance was secondary to the other. Maybe lightning would strike and you’d meet the love of your life, the thinking went. Maybe not, life often shot back. It was the ‘50s.

Anyway, I remember standing maybe 75 feet from the stage during the performances. The girls went absolutely gaga over Holly–screaming, jumping, clapping. When he sang “Peggy Sue,” the place went wild. I couldn’t figure out what the girls saw in him. Dressed in a sport-coat and tie, he wore horn-rim glasses and had a mop of dark hair, but he was as plain as the Texas countryside from which he had sprung. 

I couldn’t understand all the fuss.

Valens was a classic Latin type¬–black hair, even features–but I thought he was kind of chubby for a singing idol. He wore black, but it didn’t hide his baby fat (he was only 17). He had a great song in “La Bamba” and, once again, the crowd went wild. But as with Holly, I couldn’t understand why the girls were so crazy for him.

Holly and Valens must have had something, though. I went to a lot of those Armory dances, and that is the only one I can remember so clearly. Perhaps it is because three days later the news broke that they had been killed. It was the Tuesday after the Saturday Duluth performance.

Everyone around UMD’s Kirby Student Center was talking about it in hushed tones. The reaction of young people to death is often emotionally askew, but I don’t remember anybody crying or hugging.

One boy I was talking to about it that morning captured the moment. I think I can quote him precisely: “Why did it have to be Buddy Holly? Why couldn’t it have been me?”

I didn’t believe for a moment that he meant it. Or, as Holly put it himself, “That’ll Be the Day.”

Originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on Wednesday, August 5, 1987 and reprinted in Cooler Near the Lake: Fifty Two Favorites from Thirty-four Years of Deadlines by Jim Heffernan in 2008.