The Buddy Holly Winter Dance Party Tour Through Duluth: 59 Years Ago...

The original poster advertising the event

January 31 marks the 59th 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.

Ed Newman, blogger on Ennyman's Territory, interviewed me about that evening.  Read it HERE.

This year the Historic Duluth Armory is again paying tribute to the Winter Dance Party. Tickets may be purchased HERE. For more about the revitalization of the Historic Duluth Armory, follow that link.

You can find more photos and accounts of the original Duluth Dance Party Tour on the News Tribune Attic on January 31, 2014.

Historic Duluth Armory tied to Buddy Holly Winter Dance Party Lore

Historic Duluth Armory (2010) - source Wikipedia

Saturday's open house at the Historic Duluth Armory Arts & Music Center is part of a thrust to restore and revive this historic building. The Armory not only was the home of the Army National Guard but also one of the main performance venues in Duluth of the past. Today the 1959 performance of Buddy Holly and his Winter Dance Party, just before he and the other performers died in a tragic plane crash, serves as its more notable claim to fame. Today's Duluth News Tribune story (read HERE) recounts that Holly moment and the bright future ahead for preserving this history building.

Susan Beasy Latto, originally from Hibbing and a classmate and friend of Bob Zimmerman (now Bob Dylan), was there the night Holly played at the Armory. I was there also and have written about it in previous posts. My childhood friend, Lew Latto, a precocious teen who later became a prominent local radio entrepreneur, was the promoter and MC of this event. Latto later met Beasy Latto at UMD and they married, not knowing each other at the Winter Dance Party concert. Dylan was there that night too and he spoke of it–now quite famously–as he received a Grammy award in 1998. It was a coming together of music of the past present and the future and sparks lore that now centers on preserving those magic moments.

Of course many other famous people performed at the Armory... going as far back as Sergei Rachmaninoff, the great Russian pianist and composer. Johnny Cash, Liberace, Bob Hope, the Mamas and the Papas... and so many more followed.

For more about the Armory and the Winter Dance Party...
You can read more about the history of the Armory HERE on Wikipedia, at the News Tribune Attic HERE, on Zenith City Online and at the Historic Duluth Armory web site HERE.

One of my weekly columns for the Duluth News Tribune (originally appeared on August 5, 1987) is reprinted on my blog HERE: Three Days Before the Rock Stars Died. And... you can check out some of my previous writings about the Winter Dance party HERE. 

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.

Lew Latto: Memories of a 65-year friendship

Lew Latto, 1940-2011

Memories of a 65-year friendship

By Jim Heffernan

Lew Latto: WDSM 710 radio photo

My friend broadcaster Lew Latto is dead. Suddenly, unexpectedly, before we could get together for our next birthday observance (mine), which we have done with a few other friends for many years.

Lew and I were good friends -- good in the sense that we had a high regard for each other and our shared past -- not close friends -- close in the sense that would describe a friendship in which the participants have daily, weekly, regular contact.

We got together on our birthdays, mine in October, his in January. It was enough to maintain a warm friendship, warm in the sense that we liked each other, enjoyed each other’s company, and shared years and years of memories, going back to when we were elementary school-age children and first met at Duluth’s Lincoln school. That adds up to around a 65 year acquaintanceship, much of it friendship.

There are so many stories involving Lew over those years that are interesting, some of which I shared with readers of today’s (Aug. 25) Duluth News Tribune when interviewed by the paper’s John Myers. (Read HERE.) Here are a few more impressions and memories.

When we were at Denfeld High School together, when our friendship cemented, Lew was like no other student. He had physically matured early, and, as the fates would have it, was given a deep, resonant speaking voice, perfect for radio. I don’t know if it was the voice that drove him to his early interest in radio, or just an innate interest coming out, but that voice sure helped, and it never failed him.

During those later teen years, Lew seemed to straddle two worlds like no one else I knew, or have ever known. With his friends he was a fun-loving, sometimes mischievous teenager, doing all of the frivolous stuff that age inspires, but at the same time he was an adult, already working on the air in radio, dealing with station managers and producers and operating in the adult world.

I knew a Denfeld teacher whose first year on the faculty was Lew’s senior year. When she first encountered him, she thought he was a fellow teacher, not a student. That was Lew’s adult side. He seemed to skip adolescence and jump from childhood to adulthood.

But, thinking back on his life and our association, I’m going to share a to-me favorite story that for some reason came rushing back yesterday when I was informed of Lew’s death.

Although I was one class ahead of him (but only four months older) we were assigned to the same gym class at Denfeld. And while Lew had been a varsity junior high basketball player, he had no interest in participating in high school sports. He was too busy getting on with his life. But we had to take physical education – a mandatory class for sophomores and juniors.

So we’d dutifully change into gym clothes and go through the motions of physical education because we had to, often playing shirts-skins basketball, but Lew and I concocted a scheme wherein we could show up for the class during roll call and then slip away for the hour into the parking lot and sit in his car and smoke. Yes smoke. We were high school cigarette smokers, a not uncommon trait in the 1950s when more doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette.

To pull off our exit, we’d stand for roll call – the classes were large, probably about 60 boys – and then fade to a corner door in the gym that led to the parking lot. We’d scamper to Lew’s car – he always had a car – and sit for an hour smoking cigarettes in our gym clothes and listening to music on the radio, most likely on the station that later that day he’d be the deejay himself. At the end of the hour, we’d sneak back into the class in time to go to the locker room and dress for the next class, our urge to smoke satiated for awhile -- at least until school let out.

Why such small, inconsequential and distant memories come to mind these many years later on news of a death of a friend, I don’t know. Maybe it’s those small, shared moments that are the mortar of the building blocks of a long-lasting and deep friendship we share with so few people in our lifetimes.

The last time I heard from Lew, he e-mailed me to remind that our next birthday gathering would be October 4, my birthday. It’s so sad to realize he won’t be there. 

Promo poster for famous Latto sponsored event