Legendary venue has off-the-wall local connection

Before the regrettable advent of arena rock — which essentially allowed acts to play fewer shows for more money in spaces better fit for boat shows — Iowa was dotted with great ballrooms that played a critical role in rock ‘n’ roll history.

There was the Roof Garden on Lake Okoboji, where the very first lineup of the Byrds made their Iowa debut in the jingly-jangly summer of 1965.

The Yardbirds played the Roof Garden in August 1966, and when the twin lead guitars of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page ripped into “Shapes of Things,” there probably wasn’t a Nutty Bar within a five-mile radius that didn’t instantly melt.

People closer to home have fond memories of the Starline Ballroom along Highway 30 in Carroll (now a bowling alley).

It played host to the likes of the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Just the other night, my dad told me he saw Tommy James and the Shondells there in 1968.

Say what you want about Tommy James and the Shondells, but “Crimson and Clover” — which the band would have been getting ready to release as a single around that time — is as good and as hallucinatory as bubblegum-rock gets. (Now I’ve got it stuck in my head: “Cri--mson and clo--ver, o--ver and o--ver ...”)

Of course, there’s no more hallowed ballroom in Iowa than the Surf in Clear Lake.

It is, simply put, sacred ground.

As the place where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played their final shows before ending up as lifeless lumps in a nearby cornfield (and, hauntingly, on the front page of the Mason City newspaper, complete with arrows pointing out each body in the snow), the Surf Ballroom is now a destination for world travelers.

As my wife and I this past weekend walked through the ballroom — which in the mid-’90s was taken back to the way it looked on Feb. 2, 1959, when it hosted the doomed Winter Dance Party tour — I couldn’t believe I was only now visiting for the first time.

Only a two-hour drive away, it’s been designated a historic landmark by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (which, ironically, I’ve been to three or four times).

And speaking of Iowa ballrooms, it’s been virtually forgotten that the Winter Dance Party (which also featured Dion and the Belmonts as co-headliners) played the Laramar in Fort Dodge on Jan. 30, 1959.

Walking through the doors of the Surf (not to mention walking out onto the stage) and later visiting the field where Holly’s chartered plane came to rest on Feb. 3 — “the day the music died” — was something I’d wanted to do ever since I sat in the Sierra Theatre watching “La Bamba.”

Seeing the pay phone where Holly made his last call home to his wife was something I’d wanted to do ever since I bought a bootleg CD of demo recordings he made in his Greenwich Village apartment just before leaving on the Winter Dance Party package tour. (Those recordings were eventually released commercially a few years ago.)

It’s definitely worth the suggested donation of $5 to walk this hallowed ground.

The Surf is still very much a concert venue, and it’s been a tradition since the ’80s for acts to sign the walls of the backstage green room.

Signatures cover every inch of the walls (and most of the ceiling).

I picked out the signatures of Waylon Jennings (who was playing guitar for Holly on that tour, as he’d recently split with the Crickets), Beach Boy Brian Wilson, ZZ Top and Don McLean, whose “American Pie” is the ultimate tribute to the Clear Lake plane crash.

I also spotted the signatures of two of Holly’s original Crickets — drummer Jerry Allison (now 76) and bassist Joe B. Mauldin (now deceased).

And then my eye caught something totally unexpected: “The Country Bells, Jefferson, Ia.”

“Don, Carol, Hank, Travis, Doug.”

The Muzney family’s country band played the Surf in 1993, and I’m happy to report their signatures are still plain to see on the wall.

Family matriarch Carol Muzney succumbed to breast cancer in 2007, effectively putting an end to Don and the Country Bells after a 38-year run.

A lifelong Jefferson resident, guitarist Don Muzney passed away last year and will long be remembered as our area’s greatest picker. (He even had some rock ‘n’ roll credentials, having done a short tour backing rockabilly legend Gene Vincent while in the Navy in Virginia.)

Believe it or not, though, there’s an even weirder (much weirder) connection between Jefferson and the Surf Ballroom.

Not long after the plane crash in 1959, a story started circulating that the Donna of the Ritchie Valens hit “Donna” was actually a gal born in Jefferson.

According to the local paper, former Jefferson residents Don and Katherine Wherry (Don was a member of the Churdan High class of 1925) were the parents of a daughter, Donna Kay, who had been born here in town before the family’s move to Southern California.

Donna Kay married a man named James “Andy” Anderson, who claimed to have set a poem to his Donna to music, which in turn was passed to Valens.

True? Unlikely.

Valens — who was only 17 when he was killed — is solely credited with writing “Donna,” released in 1958 on the Del-Fi label, as an ode to his real-life girlfriend, Donna Ludwig.

Still, it makes for a good story.

And in rock ‘n’ roll, where half-truths and urban legends are revered as gospel, that’s all that matters.