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How Waylon Jennings & The Band Got Stiffed By A Club Owner The Night Buddy Holly Died, Even Though They STILL Performed
The sad truth about the music business is, it's ruthless... to put it lightly.
I think many of us have heard stories from our favorite artists, and even icons like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and others who had to, quite literally, fight tooth and nail to make a name in country music.
Waylon started out playing bass in Buddy’s band on Buddy’s “Winter Dance Party” tour in 1959 before he had his own solo career. They became close friends, and was famously and tragically tragically killed in a plane crash that same year, and it haunted Waylon for most of his life.
Now known as "the day music died," the (short) story goes that Holly and several other artists took flight in a Beechcraft Bonanza from a small Iowa airport and flew into a blizzard, crashing about five miles from the airport, killing everyone on board on February 3rd, 1959.
Their tour bus heat had gone out days before, and one of the other band members actually had to leave in the middle of tour because they got frost bite on the bus… it was that cold on their Midwest run. Because conditions were so bad, Holly chartered a plane that was supposed to take some of the group to Moorhead, Minnesota, where they would be able to get a few more hours of sleep (and warm up) before the next run of shows on the Winter Dance Party tour.
Waylon famously gave up his seat to a sick J.P. Richardson, and decided he would take the bus and meet up with the rest of the band at the next stop, and due to fate, or whatever you want to call it, went onto have a legendary career in country music because he did not get on that plane.
And during a recent interview, Gary Nicholson (singer-songwriter and record producer who worked with Waylon many times) on Otis Gibbs’ stellar YouTube channel, he gave a little more detail about what happened after the horrific accident, which he heard straight from Waylon.
He recalled a time Waylon went to speak to students at Belmont University in Nashville, where they wanted some inside scoop on the music industry, and obviously, the man to ask if you want a completely honest and real answer was Waylon Jennings.
He recalled the night Holly died, and how the surviving band members went ahead and played the show they were all originally headed to before the crash, because the club owner wanted them to and they had signed a contract.
I imagine they didn't really want to, but my guess is, they probably thought it's what Holly would've wanted and decided to due to pressure from the club owner:
"He told me the story about the Buddy Holly thing, not getting on the flight. You know, one time, Waylon told this story about how they played the gig that night, the night that Buddy died...
Waylon had some kind of thing, he was talking to the students at Belmont, they said, 'Tell us something about the music business.' He says, 'Well, the night Buddy Holly died in the plane wreck, we went ahead and played the gig because the club owner asked us to play the gig, you know, go ahead and make some music.'"
They play the full show, in the wake of unbelievable tragedy and the loss of several friends (I don't even know how they got through it), and at the end of the night when they went to payment from the owner... he refused to pay them.
He told them it was because their contract had stated that Buddy Holly would appear, and he refused to pay:
"So we play the gig, at the and of the night, we went to get the payment. The guy said, 'It says here on the contract, Buddy Holly's supposed to be here.'
He didn't pay them. And he's talking to a bunch of Belmont students, he says, 'That's what the music business is all about. There you go, that's my example for you.'"
I think any one with any sort of moral compass, or even a minuscule amount of heart, can tell that's an absolute a**hole move, and the guy truly sounds like a horrible person.
But, sadly, especially at this time in 1959, it was just a different time, and like I said, completely ruthless... still is, just in different ways. I can't see this happening now, especially because it would probably get blasted all over social media (rightfully so, in this hypothetical case), but it just goes to show how hard it was to make it and how much these artists had to fight for every last thing.
They really earned every bit of their success, and there's no better example of that than Waylon Jennings.
You can watch that prat of the interview below, and I'd highly recommend it:
https://youtu.be/tpr1qHafsro?t=343
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