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
More Than I Can Say Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in February 1959, a then-teenaged Vee was one of a group of local musicians recruited to play at the next leg of a scheduled concert in Fargo, North Dakota. In 1961, Vee (whose other hit singles include "Take Good Care of My Baby" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes") recorded "More Than I Can Say", and it reached No. 61 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. It was a bigger hit in the United Kingdom, where the song and its B-side, "Staying In", peaked at No.