Jim Lounsbury also hosted one of the last shows with Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, in Kenosha, Wisconsin on January 24, 1959, on the Winter Dance Party tour. Later in his career, he became well known as a radio news journalist, ending his career as the national news anchor for UPI Radio News. Lived in Skokie, IL in the early 60's. Daughter: Debbie. Lounsbury retired to Tucson, Arizona in the early 1980s. He and Helen Mason, whom he described as his "biggest fan", traveled around the Southwest in Jim's Cessna 182 airplane which he piloted. Jim occasionally wrote for
The Big Bopper June, 1958. It slowly began picking up airplay through July and August, and reached #6 on the pop charts spending 22 weeks in the national Top 40. In "Chantilly Lace", Richardson pretends to have a flirting phone conversation with his girlfriend; the record was comical in nature, with The Big Bopper presenting an exaggerated, but good-natured caricature of a ladies' man. In November 1958, he scored a second hit, a raucous novelty tune entitled "The Big Bopper's Wedding", in which Richardson pretends to be getting cold feet at the altar. Both "Chantilly Lace" and "Big Bopper's Wedding" were receiving top