This Day in History: A privately-chartered plane crashed in a swamp in Mississippi on this day in 1977, killing three members of rock music group Lynyrd Skynyrd: lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines. Ronnie Van Zant repeatly told people that he would not live to see his 30th birthday. He was 29 years old when the plane crashed. Van Zant was laid to rest wearing his trademark Texas Hatters hat and his favorite fishing pole at his side.
Oh, and the best performance of Sweet Home Alabama is by the Leningrad Cowboys & the Russian Red Army Choir.
1977 was an exceptionally bad year for deaths. That was the year we also lost Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, Jean Hagen, Groucho Marx, Gummo [Milton] Marx, Freddie Prinze, opera star Maria Callas, novelist Vladimir Nabokov, filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, Paul Desmond (Dave Brubeck Quartet), Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flinstone), Ernst Bloch, Sebastian Cabot, Guy Lombardo, Peter Finch, Matthew Garber, Rocket Scientist Wernher von Braun, and Diana Hyland.
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