It would go down in history as rock & roll's Tour From Hell: the Winter Dance Party of 1959 that took place exactly 52 winters ago in February. As their heat-deprived yellow converted Baptist-school tour bus went slipping and sliding in subarctic temperatures along the ice-laced highways of the Upper Midwest, a dozen shivering young musicians inside whiled away the hours huddling under blankets, catnapping, cardplaying, storytelling and making music together on acoustic guitars.
Among the riders were the 22-year-old Buddy Holly, one of the radiant lights of 1950s rock & roll, from Lubbock, Texas; the 17-year-old Ritchie Valens, a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, from California's San Fernando Valley; the 19-year-old Dion DiMucci (better known as Dion) and the Belmonts - soon to rise to the top of the charts with "A Teenager in Love" - from the Bronx; and the 28-year-old group elder, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, a radio DJ from Beaumont, Texas, who, in 1957, had broken the
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