SHORT TAKES : Buddy Holly Memorial Settled

The battle of the show-biz barons in Clear Lake over Buddy Holly’s legacy appears to be over.

The winner is Surf Ballroom owner Darrel Hein, who plans to hold “The Winter Dance Party” on Feb. 2-3 in honor of Holly, the rock legend who played his last concert in the ballroom in 1959. Hein apparently won a feud with another promoter, Darryl Hensley, a Burlington radio station owner, who was going to stage a rival event at a cattle barn.

Clear Lake has held a highly popular Buddy Holly memorial concert the last 11 years in the Surf on the anniversary of his death, but the two promoters had a falling out, prompting the two different plans.

The lure of the Surf Ballroom was apparently the bigger draw. Hensley said he was not selling any tickets to his family-sanctioned Holly event at the Cerro Gordo County fairgrounds, so he had to cancel.

Hein cannot use the Holly name but says Holly fans will come to see the Surf. He may negotiate with Holly’s family in the future for the right to attach the rock star’s name to the annual concert.

Holly, a native of Lubbock, Tex., was killed along with Ritchie Valens, J. P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson when their light plane crashed in a farm field outside Clear Lake on Feb. 3, 1959, while flying to Minnesota for another concert. The event was immortalized in song as the “Day the Music Died.”