They dug up the Big Bopper last week.

This is not the usual Dentonian bullshit. I am not telling you a flying-monkey tale today.

No, this is real life here on Planet Earth:

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007, the body of J.P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson was exhumed from its grave in Beaumont, Texas and examined by Dr. Bill Bass, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Tennessee. The exhumation and examination were performed at the request of the Big Bopper’s son, Jay Richardson, in order to finally answer persistent questions regarding his father’s death.

While that’s sinking in, here’s a bit of background for those who might need it:

In the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft crashed in a farm field near Mason City, Iowa, killing rock’n'roll musicians Buddy Holly (age 22), Ritchie Valens (age 17), and J.P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson (age 28). Also killed was the twenty-one-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson.

Holly, Valens, and Richardson had been touring the Midwest as part of the “Winter Dance Party,” one of the worst-managed rock tours of all time. The weather was freezing and miserable. The tour bus had no working heater and kept breaking down. The gigs were hundreds of miles apart. The performers were getting no rest, and several (including Valens and Richardson) had fallen ill. There wasn’t even a chance to do laundry.

So after the February 2 show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly decided that he would at least give himself and two backing musicians — guitarist Tommy Allsup and bassist Waylon Jennings — a chance to wash their clothes before the next night’s gig in Moorhead, Minnesota. To that end, he hired Dwyer’s Flying Service in Mason City to fly the trio to Fargo, North Dakota (which was the closest airport to Moorhead).

But Tommy Allsup lost his seat to Ritchie Valens on a coin toss, and Waylon Jennings gave his spot to the ailing Big Bopper.

The Bonanza took off in the middle of the night with snow falling, and a few minutes later, it hit the frozen ground in a shallow dive at about 170 miles per hour. All on board died.

That’s the story as almost everyone knows it. But a few of the story’s lesser-known details would eventually lead to last week’s exhumation in Beaumont.

One of these details is that the Big Bopper’s body was found lying almost forty yards from the plane wreckage.

Another is that, a few months after the crash, a farmer found a pistol in the field. The authorities determined that the pistol had belonged to Buddy Holly, and that two shots had been fired from it.

Over the years, these details have expanded into persistent speculation to the effect that The Day the Music Died wasn’t simply a tragic accident — but something far more sinister.

Perhaps it was even a Conspiracy:

Something happened on the plane that made Buddy get out his gun. Yes, he carried it for protection because he was paid in cash, but there was another reason, too. Or maybe someone else on the plane took it from him. Someone on the plane was shot, that’s for certain. That’s why it crashed. Jerry Dwyer said Roger Peterson had to have been incapacitated for the plane to crash. And after the crash, the Big Bopper survived long enough to try to go for help. In fact, it was the Big Bopper who was shot. They probably shot him so he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. You see, certain powerful people wanted Holly dead because he had plans to form his own record company. So one of the others on the plane must have been working for those people. It wasn’t an accident . . .

Ten years ago this week, I met someone who at one time had been a close friend of Buddy Holly. We had a fine chat, and I learned a few things about Mr. Holly’s teenage years that I hadn’t known before.

But then the old friend’s voice changed, becoming grim and angry. This new voice began speaking of dark conspiracies in the music industry, of a Latin American cartel that might have wanted to kill Buddy . . . and of a certainty that there was a Reason why Buddy had died:

There was a pistol found at the crash site with two bullets missing. That was Buddy’s pistol. And you know, Buddy had taken flying lessons. He would have tried to take control and prevent disaster if he knew the plane was going down. That was the kind of person he was. And the magnetos were turned off, according to the CAB report. You only turn off the magnetos if you’re going to glide. So why were the magnetos turned off? It must have been intentional. There must have been a Reason . . .

I had a little trouble following all of the various crash-related threads that Buddy’s old friend brought up. But one thing was quite clear, because it was repeated several times:

“I just want to know what happened,” Buddy’s friend said.

That much, I understood. I understood that in spades. So I was sympathetic, and I said sympathetic things.

But I didn’t say everything I was thinking. Because it wouldn’t have helped.

What I was thinking was that sometimes there isn’t a Reason. And sometimes we can’t ever really know what happened. Sometimes planes crash just because twenty-one-year-old pilots screw up — especially if they’ve failed instrument tests in the recent past, if they’re trying to read an unusual altimeter, and if they’re flying in bad weather at night.

Sometimes when three out of four people are thrown from a plane at 170 mph, one of the bodies slides farther across the snow.

Sometimes when a farmer finds a pistol in a field, he fires a couple of rounds on impulse before he thinks to turn it over to somebody.

Sometimes a magneto gets turned off just because somebody flipped the wrong switch.

Sometimes there aren’t sinister conspiracies at work, because sinister conspiracies aren’t necessary for the universe to rain shit down on our heads. Sometimes brilliant young artists die just because they’re trying to get to the next town in time to do their laundry before the show.

But that’s a tough thing to accept. It’s a tough thing to think that Buddy, Ritchie, and the Bopper could have been killed by ordinary bad luck. That they could have died for no Reason at all.

It’s far more comforting to believe in a Conspiracy. At least that way there’s a Reason to match the size of the Loss.

[Side Note: In 1997, when I wrote a letter to Howard Waldrop about my encounter with Buddy’s friend, Howard replied: “Probably the Big Bopper was shooting Buddy’s gun out the window as they took off because he either 1) saw a snowshoe rabbit on the runway, or 2) hallucinated Johnny Ace in the propwash.”]

So last week, forty-eight years after The Day the Music Died, having heard the dark rumors his entire life, Jay Richardson had his father’s body exhumed and examined by Dr. Bass.

After X-raying the Big Bopper’s remains, Dr. Bass concluded that there was no evidence of a gunshot wound or of any other sort of foul play. Furthermore, the body had sustained massive fractures “from head to toe” at the moment of impact, which meant that J.P. hadn’t walked anywhere after the crash. He had died instantly.

I can hear most of y’all now: “Well, DUH!”

And I’d be saying that too, except –

If J.P. had been my father, and if I’d been hearing those conspiracy theories my whole life, I probably would have done the same thing. I would have wanted to “put the rumors to rest,” just as Jay Richardson did.

Of course, the conspiracy theories and rumors will persist anyway. Already, I’ve seen comments on the Web protesting that “just because the Big Bopper wasn’t shot, that doesn’t mean the gun wasn’t fired on the plane!”

But whether or not we can ever really know or accept what happened on that cold Iowa night in 1959, I think we can at least take comfort in what those three young men left us — not only in their own music, but in the music they sparked in others.

I won’t run down the list of all the artists who owe obvious debts to Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper. You already know most of that tale, and you can figure out the rest of it (and its sequels) on your own. So instead, I’ll just relate one of the somewhat lesser-known, less obvious details of the story:

Two days before the Clear Lake performance, the Winter Dance Party played the Armory in Duluth, Minnesota — where one of the kids in the audience was a 17-year-old named Bobby Zimmerman. He stood as close to the stage as he could get . . . and that night, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

Today, down in the cemetery in Beaumont, the Big Bopper is at rest again. The rumor is that a statue of him will be installed there soon.

And that’s one rumor I choose to believe.

‘Cause, oh, baby . . . that’s-a what I like.
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Buddy Holly, “That’ll Be the Day” and “Oh Boy!”

Ritchie Valens, “Ooh My Head” and the 1958 recording session for “La Bamba”

The Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”*

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*Clearly, J.P. Richardson didn’t have the deep-to-the-bone impact on subsequent artists that Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had. Nevertheless, I would argue that “Chantilly Lace,” for all its novelty-tune cheese, is an open and joyous acknowlegement of healthy lust that was both subversive and revolutionary for mainstream pop music of its time. For that alone, every sex-crazed musician since owes the Big Bopper a debt of gratitude.