One of the hottest Super Bowl parties outside of Tampa went down in a Holiday Inn bar in Iowa. Rockabilly legend Joe Ely, Graham Nash of CS&N, former Crickets member Sonny Curtis and Traffic's Dave Mason ("Feelin' Alright") were among the luminaries squeezed into the Mason City lounge, nibbling on cheese cubes and paying extra special attention to Bruce Springsteen's halftime show. Longtime Minneapolis band Jack Knife & the Sharps provided the postgame entertainment.
The reason for the bizarre sight: Monday night's all-star salute to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, who perished in a plane crash in northern Iowa exactly 50 years ago. Five days of seminars, concerts and memorabilia sales led up to the big show at Clear Lake's Surf Ballroom, the location of the musicians' final performances.
During one Q&A session Sunday, Curtis explained how he penned "Love Is All Around," the theme song to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," in record time. He got the pitch and summary of the show in the morning, wrote the tune before lunch, met with co-creator James L. Brooks in the afternoon, then performed it 10 more times for other producers before it dawned on him that he might have something special.
"It all happened before the sun went down," he said.
Later, Curtis confessed that he had left out part of the story. "One of the producers wanted me to change a lyric," he said. "He thought that the line, 'And it's you girl" was "And it's Jew girl."
NEAL JUSTIN
