Moorhead, Minnesota 1978 film "The Buddy Holly Story" as the next stop in the ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash "en route" to their scheduled performance at the Moorhead Armory Building from Clear Lake, Iowa on February 3, 1959. Moorhead's pioneer Prairie Home Cemetery on 8th Street was the inspiration for the name of Garrison Keillor's national radio program, "A Prairie Home Companion". Although Keillor thought the cemetery was founded by Norwegian Lutherans, in fact it was organized in 1875 by the Rev. Oscar Elmer, a Yankee Presbyterian minister who
The Big Bopper of the upcoming musical acts in both the print and television versions of Stephen King's short story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" about a town inhabited by late musical legends. Buddy Holly is subsequently featured in the story. The Canadian television comedy show "SCTV" featured a character named "Sue Bopper-Simpson", a fictional daughter of the Big Bopper, played by Catherine O'Hara. The character was a part-time real estate agent who appeared in a musical titled "I'm Taking My Own Head, Screwing It on Right, and No Guy's Gonna Tell Me That It Ain't". Shortly after the