On its final flight, above the thick green canopy of trees that cover this part of the state, the aircraft began to run out of fuel. But alternate flight arrangements were never made, and repairs would never come. The company that owned the ailing aircraft had scheduled it for maintenance soon, and some band members had considered taking a commercial flight to their next performance. The day before the doomed flight suspicions about the plane, a Convair CV-240, were apparent. While the group were in top form, their chartered air transportation was tragically not. Assistants attended to them like royalty. They now performed for larger audiences throughout the United States and beyond. Flying from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had played a show the night before, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a scheduled concert that would never be, the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd had every reason to feel elated. On October 20, 1977, the band were in the early stage of an ambitious tour to promote "Street Survivors". Twenty of the twenty-six passengers survived, most with serious injuries. But among the dead were lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, back-up singer Cassie Gaines (sister of Steve Gaines), assistant tour manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray. The absence of fire, plus the speedy actions of the volunteers on the ground and the medical staff who assisted them at local hospitals, were factors behind most of those aboard the plane surviving. In the darkness the main light available to the first responders was the giant spotlight beaming eerily down from this helicopter that floated above the wreckage for a long time while rescuers worked below. However, a helicopter had been dispatched to the emergency, and it was from this chopper hovering above the trees that the volunteers were able to track to the downed plane. The tragedy occurred because the plane had run out of fuel, so there was no fire or smoke to signal to the rescuers the crash's exact location in the wooded obscurity. Within moments after the crash, as evening descended, farmers, hunters, and other volunteers converged on this area, carrying blankets, flashlights, and other tools for what they reckoned would be a grim, urgent undertaking. By the time the plane hit the trees word was already spreading in this corner of Amite County, Mississippi. Several passengers were killed, including the charismatic front man and founder, Ronnie Van Zant.Įyewitnesses on the ground had sighted a plane flying low, much too low, over the treetops. In the warm early evening of October 20, 1977, a chartered twin-engine prop plane carrying members and crew of the popular musical group Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed in the forest near this marker. But that autumn day had otherwise been beautiful, with the late afternoon light slowly fading to dusk in the sky from which the plane fell. "All I saw was treetops" (Billy Powell, keyboardist for Lynyrd Skynyrd) This last album, released just three days before the plane crash, would eventually reach the highest record chart ranking of all their work. In the few short years leading up to the crash Lynyrd Skynyrd released music that has become a permanent part of the rock lexicon: their self-titled debut, followed by four other studio albums, "Second Helping," "Nuthin' Fancy," "Gimme Back My Bullets," and "Street Survivors". Tracks like "Simple Man," "Tuesday's Gone," "Gimme Three Steps," and what would become an anthem for fans across the globe, "Free Bird," demonstrated the band's ability to mix melody with hard-driving rock and roll. Like other albums to come, this introductory work contained well-crafted yet musically unpretentious songs for and about the common man. In 1973 their debut album "Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced: Leh-nerd Skin-nerd)" announced the group to the world. Helming the show, Ronnie Van Zant sang about fighting or loving with equal passion. Bassist Leon Wilkeson and drummer Bob Burns established a backing for it all. Billy Powell provided keyboard and piano accompaniment. Guitarists Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Ed King formed what became known as "the three-guitar attack". In the sweltering Southern heat the band solidified as a tight musical unit. Eventually, after numerous police interruptions of the band's loud and rowdy practice sessions, the group moved their rehearsals outside the city limits, to an unairconditioned one-room cabin they nicknamed the "Hell House". The founding members jokingly named the band after a gym coach, Leonard Skinner. In 1964 Lynyrd Skynyrd began humbly in Jacksonville, Florida.
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