How Buddy Spawned Bob
Thought not.
People know what happened next. As Don McLean sang in American Pie it was “The day the music died.” However, for Robert Thomas Velline of Fargo North Dakota, the exact opposite was true.
When the tour rolled into Minnesota, and everyone cried, the promoters were adamant that the show must go on. Unfortunately, three of its headliners were now dead, so a talent search was quickly organised. This is how Robert Thomas Velline, who billed himself as Bobby Vee, found himself a headliner in Moorhead Minnesota. Prior to that, the fifteen year old Velline and his band of school pals The Shadows (not to be confused with Hank B. Marvin’s Apache combo) had never played a real engagement, let alone one which would headline on a package tour.
Needless to say, they were a hit with the teenage crowd, and Bobby Vee was catapulted to instant fame. After the show ended, Vee was offered a tour, and he needed a piano player. After auditioning some players, Vee settled on a young unknown musician who called himself Elston Gunn, and the expanded combo played a few shows before Elston Gunn enrolled at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis under his real name Robert Zimmerman.
