Dancing As If There's No Tomorrow

Dancing As If There's No Tomorrow is an ambitious five book set which chronicles the entire history of a 1959 General Artists Corporation rock and roll tour dubbed the "Winter Dance Party."

 

This was a five act rock and roll show which crisscrossed the frozen Midwest in January and February of 1959. The tour featured rock and roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (known to fans as "The Big Bopper"), Dion and the Belmonts and Frankie Sardo. This travelling band of musicians braved freezing conditions to play a host of ballrooms, theaters and armories to an enthusiastic population of teenagers. After eleven days on the road and countless difficulties with transportation, three of the headliners - Holly, Valens and Richardson - were killed with their pilot in the crash of a small 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza.

 Studying this doomed tour chronologically by tour date, author Ryan Vandergriff takes you through the extreme highs and the considerable lows of a rock and roll tour that never should have happened. One part traditional history and one part love letter to Teenage America in the 1950s, these books stand as one of the most solid looks of the Winter Dance Party of 1959.