The popular Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera died in a plane crash Saturday night at the age of 43. The mother of five was renowned for her work in the Nortena and Banda genres, a diva of the Latin styles. She and six others died in the crash, after their Learjet went off radar about 62 miles from Monterrey. There were no apparent survivors.
Rivera joins a long list of musicians who have died in plane crashes. Some of the more notable ones include:
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper
Known as The Day the Music Died, Feb. 3, 1959, was a tragic day for rock ‘n’ roll. Three hall-of-famers met their deaths in Iowa on a stormy winter night. Buddy Holly, 22, the Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), 29, and Ritchie Valens, 18, perished along with the pilot of their plane.
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline was a bright star of country’s first wave, famous for her romantic country ballads like “Back in Baby’s Arms.” She and three others died when their Piper PA-24 Comanche crashed in Tennessee in 1963.
Otis Redding
Soul singer Otis Redding was only 26 when he and four members of his Bar-Kays band died in 1967 when their plane crashed into Lake Monoma near Madison, Wis. Despite his young age, Redding left behind a sizeable legacy of rock and soul hits, most succesfully “Sittin on the Dock of the Bay.” He had recorded the song three days before his death.
Jim Croce
Singer-songwriter Jim Croce, whose singles "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Time in a Bottle" were both number one hits, died at age 29 in 1973 on the day his single "I Got a Name" was released, along with four others, when their chartered plane failed to gain enough altitude after taking off in Natchitoches, La.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
In 1977, three members of the Southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd died along with three other passengers when their plane went down near Gillsburg, Miss., and crashed in swampy woods. The band’s lead singer RonnieVanZant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and vocalist Cassie Gaines all died.
John Denver
“Leaving on a Jet Plane” has remained one of the most tragically ironic songs ever written, where John Denver sang , “don’t know when I’ll be back again.” An amateur pilot with 2,700 flight hours, he died in 1997 at age 53 when his experimental aircraft plunged into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
Aaliyah
Aaliyah Dana Haughton, who performed simply under her first name, was one of the most successful and promising R&B artists of the 1990s. She was a dancer, model, and actress who began a recording career at the age of 10. She and eight others perished in a crash in 2001 when they were taking off from a Bahamas airport in an overweight plane.