1969 Newton Cessna 172 crash observed the airplane reverse its course and then heard a loud sound as it crashed. Iowa had two other air accidents involving celebrities during the 1950s and 1960s: the 3 February 1959 crash near Clear Lake that took the lives of rock and roll stars Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper (plus their pilot), and an incident involving the Minneapolis Lakers (NBA basketball team) on 18 January 1960, when their DC-3 aircraft crash-landed in a cornfield near Carroll, with no injuries. 1969 Newton Cessna 172 crash On August 31, 1969, a Cessna 172 crashed in Newton, Iowa, killing
Ritchie Valens Keane recommended shortening his surname to "Valens" from Valenzuela to widen his appeal beyond any obvious ethnic group. Valens demonstrated several songs in Keane's studio that he later recorded at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. The demos primarily consisted of Valens singing and playing guitar, but some of them also featured drums. These originals can be heard on the Del-Fi album, "Ritchie Valens – The Lost Tapes". Two of the tracks laid down in Keane's studio were taken to Gold Star Studios and had additional instruments dubbed over to create full-band recordings. "Donna" was one track (although two other preliminary