Buddy Holly was ... and to this day remains ... my favorite rock 'n roll artist. The song which made famous the line "the day the music died", "American Pie" by Don McLean, is my single all time favorite song.

I was fortunate to have grown up on Long Island and to have attended a 1958 Alan Freed rock 'n roll show at the Paramount Theater in New York City, at which Buddy & the Crickets appeared. I was also a newspaper carrier boy (Long Island Daily Press for any other old-timers who still remember that now defunct paper) and learned of the crash when I picked up my papers to deliver the next day.

Most music fans probably know of the two movies that have been made about the lives of Buddy Holly ("The Buddy Holly Story", starring Gary Busey, Don Stroud & Charles Martin Smith) and Ritchie Valens ("La Bamba", starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales). I keep hoping that someone will make a movie about the third rock star victim of the crash, J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, so as to make a complete set.

There is also an excellent documentary movie called "The Real Buddy Holly Story", hosted by Paul McCartney (who says that Buddy Holly was a seminal influence on The Beatles and their music). And, I also have two books on Buddy: The very readable "Rave On" by Philip Norman and the almost scholarly "Buddy Holly, A Biography", by Ellis Amburn.