DOTD For Tuesday, February 3, 2026
A Drink To Salute The Spirit Of Rock N Roll
Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is an American Pie Cocktail inspired by the airplane crash outside Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3, 1959, that killed legendary 1950’s rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper, along with 21 year old professional pilot Roger Peterson. The crash was dubbed by the media “The Day The Music Died,” and was memorialized in the legendary 1971 rock & folk song “American Pie” by Don McLean.
The Tour & Crash
Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper were in the middle of a tour known as the “Winter Dance Party,” where the group was scheduled to play 24 shows in 24 days across the U.S. Midwest. Other musicians on the tour included Carl Bunch, Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Sardo, Tommy Allsup, and Waylon Jennings.
The tour began on January 23, 1959, only 11 days prior, and from all accounts, at that point, it had been a somewhat miserable junket.
The touring musicians shared a converted school bus that transported them to and from each venue. The bus lacked heating, and the winter weather presented them with numerous obstacles along the two-lane rural highways that crossed the region at the time. In some instances, travel from city to city lasted as long as 12 hours. The bus suffered repeated mechanical issues and even stalled at one point, resulting in Bunch incurring severe frostbite on his feet.
That night, February 2, was the almost midway point through the tour, and the musicians played to a packed house at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. Buddy Holly, tired of the abysmal conditions on the bus, had chartered a four-seat flight to Fargo, North Dakota, to take off after the show that night. The flight was expected to land in time for Holly & the others to do laundry and rest before the group’s next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. Jennings was initially offered a spot on the flight but gave his seat to the Big Bopper, who was suffering from a bout with the flu. Allsup and Valens flipped a coin for the third seat, which Valens won.
The flight took off from Mason City Municipal Airport at 12:55 AM on February 3. There was a light snowfall on the runway, with sky obscured, and visibility only six miles, but Peterson was not alerted to the worsening weather conditions, and received clearance for takeoff. A few minutes after takeoff, the plane encountered high winds and heavier snow. Peterson quickly lost control of the aircraft, which dipped low to the ground, catching the aircraft’s right wing tip. Air traffic control attempted to make radio contact with Peterson after observing the plane’s taillight descend. It was too late, however; the plane had crashed in a cornfield six miles from the airport. The wreckage was found later that morning by a search and rescue team
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When the official investigation occurred, carried out by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB, precursor to the NTSB), the facts emerged that while Peterson had over four years of flying experience, he wasn’t qualified to fly at night in bad weather conditions. Further, the attitude gyroscope type in the plane he was contracted to fly that night was visually opposite from the kind of instruments he was used to using. So when he thought he was climbing, he was in fact descending.
The song ‘American Pie’
American singer-songwriter and guitarist Don McLean wrote the song “American Pie” when he was just 24. The ballad is full of disparate images and characters. At the center is the event that occurred when McLean was 13: the February 3, 1959, plane crash that killed Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson AKA “The Big Bopper.”
McLean has said the event represented for him the loss of the innocence of early rock and roll—or, as he wrote, “the day the music died.” More broadly, the song deals with turmoil in American culture and politics in the late 1950s and early1960s. Fans, however, have debated endlessly the meaning of individual phrases and verses. Many have speculated that there are references to the Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy, Charles Manson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elvis Presley, and the Beatles, among other figures and events.
McLean recorded the song in 1971, and it first aired on New York radio stations to mark the closing of the Fillmore East, a historic concert venue. The song was released later that year on the album American Pie and spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard chart. For almost 50 years, the nearly nine-minute song was the longest to reach number one on Billboard’s Top 100. That record was finally broken in November 2021 by Taylor Swift’s 10-minute, 13-second version of “All Too Well”.
In honor of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson, the pilot Roger Peterson, Don McLean, and all those who’ve loved the song American Pie, we give you today’s Drink Of The Day, the American Pie Cocktail.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
