# 20 Part 3 Tommy Allsup recalls events with Buddy Holly, leading to Buddy Dying in a plane crash

Part 3 of a 4 part interview series where Oklahoma Music Maker, Tommy Allsup, recalls, in his own words, his Historical Account, of the Events, with Buddy Holly, leading to Buddy, Richie Valens, J.P. Richardson aka The Big Bopper and the pilot, being killed together, in a plane crash.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay,

Speaker 2: 0:02

this is part three of the autonomy. Also be interviewed in his own words.

Speaker 1: 0:11

Oh, they were all 300 to 400 miles. It's like going, uh, he's from down in England and Scotland, you know, every night we'd, we'd be over on the west side of highway, win that and then the next night we'll be back in Milwaukee, her back in Wisconsin. Then the next night we'd be back over in Iowa, 60 or 50 or 60 miles from where we was two nights before, you know, they didn't have nothing coordinated. It was just, you can look on a map, you can, there's the guy got a book out and there's a map in her shows how zig zag back and forth, you know, and it's kind of ridiculous, you know, just why. Why didn't they just line them up? But that's, that's why they booked them back in them days, you know? It does. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty, pretty weird. We didn't care. It was young, you know, I was 26 years old. I was the oldest guy on the tour, so everybody else, they didn't. It didn't bother him, you know, it was all good. Uh, uh, dion and his guys, they did great, you know, and Richie was exceptional little showman. I mean, he, Richie was really good and played guitar. He played guitar and not, you know, when we sit around and I'd show him licks and uh, uh, he was very interested in learning more and care about it in the big bopper we got to be good buddies. We'd gotten drink beer at night, you know. And uh, so, uh, it was, it was good. Everybody on the tour was good. Well, back then there wasn't very many motels. They were just locked in. Hotels were like one and two story buildings, nice little towns. And uh, they were about like a, what you wouldn't stay in now, you know, and uh, that, that was it for the motel scene. There wasn't that many people traveling, I guess in those days, you know, very few motive. That was before holiday inns and Ramadi ends, you know, we talked a lot, we talked a lot. We talked everyday on the bus, you know, we'd ride and, and excuse me, I had to get a drink of water, we'll talk about what was going to do with that tour is over. And uh, he wanted to go to, he wanted to go back to Lovett and build a studio and have a publishing company and a production company and had the whole thing. He'd already made a deal with coral records for production agreements. So anybody, he, her, he bought that he heard and wanted to produce. Well they said they'd back it, you know, so it was, everything was looking really good, you know, no, there, there never was a, you know, people, their stories have come out. But he may have told me one time that he missed Jay and Joe a job, you know, but we never, never dwelled on it. Never talked about it to. He was going his way and he figured they were going their way, you know, they picked the road they wanted to go and uh, he wasn't going to stand in their way, you know. So now he wasn't even, he wasn't even worried about using the name crickets. He was, uh, uh, more concerned his future. And uh, I knew, I knew I wanted to either just be as road manager and uh, helping try to find talent to promote, you know, and uh, uh, I wasn't looking at, as far as I was looking more into the recording end of it. My staff, I'd kind of, you know, he kinda had me lined up to go back and kind of run the studio, you know, and he and his dad and brothers was going to run the, the music store and he had, he had things and then, you know, he, I don't know what kind of band and he would have had, you know, he was already changing the style of recording. He was, he, no, he was worried about, you know, about his career wasn't as big as it was. And I think that's why he was willing to change, you know, and get away from the sound he started with, you know, I think he felt like it was time to step up, you know, and do something different. And that's what he did when he went in with the volumes, you know, he's trying to, he was trying something different and both those were good records. If you listen close to them and they're just perfect records and uh, I think he would just try to further his career. No, no. You know, back then you had one microphone up in front of the band and that was it. Sometimes some ballrooms up north would have baby to, to Max and a speaker hung on each side of the stage. It wasn't even monitors, it wasn't, they wasn't mocking anything. We turned our amps wide open and play it as loud as we could so we could hear him because the kids screaming so loud. Yeah. We all had fender, basement of jail and we had them wide open man. And Carl was busting heads every night, you know? Yeah, it was, it was a what note mark and there anything back then. And if he was lucky and had a crowd, it wasn't really rowdy, then it sat. It sounded halfway decent. If you had a crowd, it was really getting into it, screaming and clapping her hands and you couldn't hear nothing yet, so you can stand right on top of your app and barely hear, you know. Oh yeah. All they were crazy about him, you know, I mean, he would, they loved him, you know, everybody loved him. He was the, he was the man of the tour, you know, they can talk about the other guys. But Holly's the one they come to see, you know, Duluth. Minnesota was a good gig. Uh, it's at armory. We had several thousand kids there and it was one of the big alarm where they couldn't get louder than the bank because you were up about six feet on a tall stage and they'll. Buildings had lots of Echo Lynam and uh, the music was twice as loud normally as you know, would be, uh, and uh, that was a good, good place. And that's. But that was not. We had the bad bus, a breakdown and Carl's feet froze. The, uh, green bay was a good job. The Riverside ballroom, we played that without Carl, but we had another drummer there from another bad has sat in with us, but now what, they would pay buddy at the end of the week and he'd pay us and it was all cash, you know. So yeah, I gave him, I gave him the gun, I gave him the pistol in the summer of[inaudible] 58 when we were on tour up north and he, we were a it up every night and he was carrying a briefcase full of back then you gotta you gotta remember he didn't have a lot of hundred dollar bills. You had people's Pan, a dollar and a half to get in. So you're just getting a lot of wants and he's getting a lot of fifty cent pieces, you know. So when you set it up at night, if you had$1,500 coming, you've got, you probably had a thousand ones and the rest of them would be in fives and maybe some tents, you know, and then you'd have a lot of change. So you had to have actually, you'd have a briefcase full of money. And uh, so he said something about it. I had a little pistol, a little 22 pistol. I said, well, keep this in your glove box, you know, because we did literally have briefcases full of money back in them days and that's all, as far as solid magnitude, you know, I never heard a word about it. Not One word, not one word was ever said to me about that. And it's kind of odd because the big bopper where everyday was talking about his baby that was fixing be born, but never heard buddy buddy never mentioned it one time. And I stayed in this apartment for five days with him for the tour and there was nothing mentioned there about it here. I think it was something that came out for the movie, you know, I don't know. Well I helped him on the. That makes it tough. There's a little minor chord, a little thing in there that I played for him and, but he had the others already recorded, you know, and he had, that makes it tough a version of. And he said, I'd like to put this little minor. How would you do that at the time it goes up from a, I have to be minor to a d or so, whatever it is right there, and I was showing them the easy way to do that, but that's the only one that and he had it completed. Actually. They were all finished. All those songs were done.

Speaker 2: 7:49

This concludes part three of the Tommy also interviewed parking for is available next.