DALLAS — A rare piece of memorabilia from a 1959 rock 'n' roll tour made famous by the tragedy that inspired Don McLean's lyrics to "American Pie" is now up for auction. The poster for the "Winter Dance Party" headlined by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper — who were killed in a Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash — is for one of the stops on the Midwest tour: Fort Dodge, Iowa.
The stop was just three days before the fateful crash that was immortalized in the 1971 hit "American Pie" as "the day the music died," a term that has become synonymous with the tragedy. The 14-by-22-inch poster for the Fort Dodge show is being offered at auction by Heritage Auctions in Dallas. It has been displayed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
The auction that includes the poster will close Dec. 2-4. "This poster is nothing less than a key jewel in the crown of the world's most valuable concert posters.
.. those from the very brief, ill-fated 1959 Winter Dance Party tour," Pete Howard, concert posters director for Heritage Auctions, wrote in the poster's listing.
Howard estimated only 50-100 of the posters would have originally been made for the Fort Dodge show, with many discarded or damaged by weather and time. The poster is one of four known to exist for the Winter Dance Party tour, including one from the fateful Moorhead performance, to which Holly and the others were heading when the plane crashed into a cornfield near Mason .
