On February 3, 1959, a small private plane was charted by Buddy Holly to carry him and two others who were part of his entourage, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (J.P.Richardson) from Cedar Lake, Iowa to Moorhead, Minnesota, with a stop in Fargo, North Dakota. The tour was called The Winter Dance Party and most of the band and backup people took the bus to the next destination, whereas the three featured acts of the tour took the plane.

Shortly after takeoff in Cedar Lake, the plane crashed killing everyone on board. The next morning, a thirteen year old by the name of Don McLean got ready to ride his paper route. He saw the story in the paper of the tragedy and, that was the end of innocence for this boy. It took over ten years, but Don eventually sat down and wrote “American Pie,” the song about “The night the music died.” And, that phrase was never used to describe the event until Don McLean incorporated it into one of the most iconic songs in American music history.

Donald McLean III was born October 2, 1945 in New Rochelle, New York. Don was a sickly child (asthma) and missed a lot of school. He says he liked Buddy Holly much more than he did Elvis Presley. All of his friends like Presley, but Don says Holly “spoke to him.” When he was sixteen, he bought his first guitar and started making inquiries into the music business. He started playing in clubs in New York City like The Bitter End and the Gaslight Café. His specialty was more toward folk music.

In 1971, he wrote “American Pie” and knew right away, he had written a masterpiece. He did not realize, immediately, just how commercial the record was. The record broke all the rules. It was eight minutes and thirty-three seconds long which should have made it too long to play on Top 40 radio. They cut the song in half so as to put the entire song on both sides of a 45 record. But, most the disc jockeys ignored the 45 and played the album version so the listener could hear the entire song. You can’t just play half of “American Pie.”

There are lots of people who try to interpret what Don McLean meant by most of the words to the song. Don, himself would not explain what the song meant and so everyone had their own ideas. I remember hearing a playing of the song on the radio in which they interrupted it every few seconds to play a clip of some other record that they though Don was referring to. But, of course, no one really knew. In 2015, Don did admit that the reference to “the king” was meant to be Elvis Presley and the reference to “the jester” was Bob Dylan. For the rest of it, you can decide for yourself.

“American Pie” debuted on the pop charts on December 4, 1971 and reached number one in the week of January 15, 1972 where it stayed for four weeks. It was the only number one hit Don McLean ever had, but he has become a household name based just on this one song.