The Winter Dance Party

The following page will document the work of Sevan Garabedian as he continues his work to discover photographs and attendee recollections of The Winter Dance Party of Jan.23rd to Feb. 15th 1959. If you have photographs or attended one of the The Winter Dance Party shows please contact Sevan Garabedian via email at sevan1@sympatico.ca or Call 514.931.6959 Sevan is offering rewards for photographs taken at The Winter Dance Party.

Kathy Wall attended shows regularly at the Danceland Ballroom in Cedar Rapids , Iowa. One of those shows was the night of February 6, 1959.

On the night of February 6th, 1959 at the Danceland Ballroom.,The Winter Dance Party continued after the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. They arrived in Cedar Rapids on that night with replacement artists Jimmy Clanton and Frankie Avalon. Frankie Sardo, Dion and the Belmonts and The Crickets (with Ronnie Smith now singing lead) were also there, as part of the original tour.

Sevan Garabedian :

“My co-producer and I happen to have made the biggest discovery of all in the fall of 2008, just months before the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party tour. We discovered the only known photographs taken the night of Holly’s, Valens’ and the Big Bopper’s final show, February 2nd, 1959, hourse before they were killed. These photos got our film a mention in Rolling Stone magazine (they also used a photo) and they were also used on NBC Nightly News on February 3rd, 2009. This past summer, we donated the photos to the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock (see link below for news story on that). But, to this day, we haven’t sold these pictures to the public yet. They will all be unveiled in our film for the first time together. I say this because, for us, it has never been about making a profit from these pictures (and believe me, we can make a LOT of money with the February 2nd, 1959 photos), it has been about preserving the history and only sharing them with the families of the musicians who died and their musicians friends on the tour. We are close friends today with the Holly, Valens and Richardson (Big Bopper) families because of our intergrity and dedication to the histroy of rock and roll and in particular, this tour.”