Pop singer replaced Holly, Valens after 1959 crash
MINNEAPOLIS — Pop idol Bobby Vee, the boyish, grinning 1960s singer whose career was born when he took a Midwestern stage as a teenager to fill in after the 1959 plane crash that killed rock ’ n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, has died. He was 73.
Mr. Vee, whose hits included the chart- topping “Take Good Care of My Baby” and who helped a young Bob Dylan get his start, died Monday of advanced Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, Jeff Velline. Mr. Vee was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011, and performed his last show that year.
Born Robert Velline in Fargo, North-Dakota, Mr. Vee was only 15when he took the stage in Moorhead, Minnesota, after the Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash in Iowa that killed Holly, Valens and Richardson on their way to the concert. That dark day in rock history was commemorated by singer- songwriter Don McLean in his 1972 pop song “American Pie” as “The Day The Music Died.”
The call went out for local acts to replace Holly at his scheduled show at the Moorhead National Guard Armory. Mr. Vee and his 2- week- old band volunteered, along with three or four other bands. The show’s emcee, Charlie Boone, then a disc jockey at KFGO Radio, turned to Mr. Vee and asked him the name of his band. Mr. Vee looked at the shadows of his bandmates on the floor and answered: The Shadows.
“I didn’t have any fear right then,” Mr. Vee recalled in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “The fear didn’t hit me until the spotlight came on, and then I was just shattered by it. I didn’t think that I’d be able to sing. If I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure anything would come out.”
Mr. Vee called his debut a milestone in his life, and “the start of a wonderful career.”
Within months, the young singer and The Shadows, which included his older brother Bill on lead guitar, recorded Mr. Vee’s “Suzie Baby” for Soma Records in Minneapolis. It was a regional hit, and Mr. Vee soon signed with Liberty Records.
He went on to record 38 Top 100 hits from1959 to 1970, hitting the top of the charts in 1961 with the Carole King-Gerry Goffin song “Take Care Good of My Baby” and reaching No. 2 with the follow- up, “Run to Him.”
Besides his clear, ringing voice, Mr. Vee also was a skilled rhythm guitarist and occasional songwriter. He racked up six gold singles but saw his hits diminish with the British Invasion of The Beatles and other English groups in the mid- 1960s.
Mr. Vee was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. In 2014, he still released an album that included his cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me,” a nod to the folk- rock legend who got his start in Mr. Vee’s band in Fargo.
Dylan grew up in Hibbing, a town on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, and briefly played with Mr. Vee’s band. Although their time playing together was short, Dylan had a lasting effect on Mr. Vee’s career: It was Dylan who suggested Mr. Vee, going by the name Elston Gunn when he hammered on the piano at a couple of The Shadows’ gigs, change his last name from Velline to Vee.
In his “Chronicles: Volume One” memoir, Dylan recalled that Mr. Vee “had a metallic, edgy tone to his voice and it was as musical as a silver bell.” When Dylan performed in St. Paul in 2013, he saluted Mr. Vee in the audience and performed “Suzie Baby.”
Mr. Vee and his wife, Karen, were married for more than 50 years. She died of kidney failure in 2015 at age 71. The couple had four children, including sons who performed with Mr. Vee.