Don McLean label for his second album, "American Pie." The album launched two number one hits in the title song and "Vincent". "American Pie"'s success made McLean an international star and piqued interest in his first album, which charted more than two years after its initial release. McLean's magnum opus, "American Pie", is a sprawling, impressionistic ballad inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash in 1959, and developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to
The Big Bopper gravestone of The Big Bopper in Springfield that Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) used to help commit voter fraud and become elected for mayor. The gravestone is a bust of the Big Bopper holding a telephone receiver, with the epitaph reading "The Big Bopper", his birth and death years (1930–1959), then a parody on the memorable hook by reading "Gooooodbye, baby". He also appeared as a vampire holding a telephone in an "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoon during the episode "C.E.D'oh". An episode of "The X-Files" features the Big Bopper. The episode is called "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". The Big Bopper's estate