An extraordinarily rare keepsake from the most famous rock and roll tour — infamous, too
“The Winter Dance Party of 1959,” it was called. It boasted a line-up of young men on their way toward immortality. Buddy Holly, at the time only 22 but already the father of modern-day rock. Richie Valens, singer of “La Bamba” and “Donna,” hits and treasures. Dion and the Belmonts, then mere teenagers in love. And J.P. Richardson, a singing, songwriting DJ from Texas called The Big Bopper.
On this tour, a frigid and frightening excursion across brutal tundra, there was magic to be had. Bobby Zimmerman, at the time a 17-year-old from Hibbing, Minn., caught the Winter Dance Party at the armory in nearby Duluth on Jan. 31. It changed his life; ours, too.
“Something about him seemed permanent and he filled me with conviction,” Zimmerman said of Holly in June 2017, when he collected his Nobel Prize for Literature. By then, of course Bobby Zimmerman was known as Bob Dylan.
Of Holly, Dylan said “he was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only six feet away. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the eyes behind the glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit. Everything about him. He looked older than twenty-two. Something about him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction. Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I didn’t know what. And it gave me the chills.”
Three days later, Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper were dead, killed in a plane crash around 1 in the morning. The Day The Music Died.
There exists little from that tour save for Don McLean’s epic pop song “American Pie,” some old photos, documentaries and articles that crop up every grim anniversary. But now there is this:
The first-ever tour poster from the Winter Dance Party to hit the auction block — this one, from the tour’s stop in Mankato, Minn., on Jan. 25, 1959. It is one of the many highlights to be found in Heritage Auction’s Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction, to be held April 4 and 5.
The only reason we have it at all is because of Janice Bucek Eggers, who snatched it off the wall of the Kato Ballroom as she exited the venue. As she writes in her letter of authenticity, it was tacked on the wall of her parents’ farmhouse until she graduated high school; then it moved wherever she did, always tucked away until she rediscovered it around the 25th anniversary of that awful day.
“This is arguably the best and rarest rock concert poster of all time,” says Heritage Auctions Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Consignment Director Pete Howard.
And the first time one has ever been sold.
“On the once-in-a-decade occasion when a Winter Dance Party poster changes hands privately,” Howard says, “it’s usually hush-hush among the world’s most elite and wealthy collectors.”
The 1959 “Winter Dance Party” tour poster, featuring Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and the Big Bopper, goes on sale April 4-5 at Heritage Auctions’ Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction.
