R.I.P. Bobby Vee
Tom Breiham
Oct 24, 2016
http://www.stereogum.com/1907194/r-i-p-bobby-vee/obit/

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Bobby Vee, the late’-50s and early-’60s pop star and teen idol, died earlier today, as the BBC reports. Vee had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for the past five years. He was 73.

Vee was born Robert Veline in Fargo, and he famously got his big break as a 15-year-old. Vee was singing for a group called the Shadows in Fargo when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper all died in a plane crash en route to a show in Moorhead, Minnesota. The promoters booked the Shadows as a last-second replacement for Holly, and their performance was somehow a success. Later in 1959, Vee scored his first hit with “Suzie Baby,” a song that he wrote in answer to Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” A few years later, in 1963, Vee recorded a whole Buddy Holly tribute album and wrote about how deep an influence Holly had been on him before his death.