The Buddy Holly Story the tour bus has broken down. The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens join him on the flight. Meanwhile, the Crickets, feeling nostalgic, appear unexpectedly at Maria's door, expressing their desire to reunite the band. They plan to surprise Buddy at his next tour stop. After playing his final song, "Not Fade Away", Holly bids the crowd farewell with: "Thank you Clear Lake! C'mon. We love you. We'll see you next year." A caption then reveals that Holly, Valens, and the Bopper died in a plane crash that night "...and the rest is Rock and Roll." Actor Gilbert Melgar is briefly
University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility more recent case came to light in 2007 with Bass' agreement to exhume the body of the late J.P. Richardson, Jr, more famously known as "The Big Bopper". He was one of the three musicians that died in a plane crash in February 1959. His son, Jay Richardson, had never met his father and, knowing the strange controversies surrounding the plane crash, decided to contact Bass to see if he could gather any answers. Questions lingered as to whether or not Buddy Holly's gun found at the scene of the crash had been fired earlier or if Richardson had managed