The recent deaths of rhythm-and-blues legend James Brown, the hardest working man in show business, and Thornton James “Pookie” Hudson, lead singer and songwriter on the Spaniels’ doo-wop classic, “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight,” are a grim reminder: While millions of turned-on, tuned-in baby boomers are facing their so-called Golden Years, the early pioneers of rock ’n’ roll are facing their mortality.

Of the hundreds who helped define rock’s beginning, many already are gone. The first to go — on Feb. 3, 1959, 48 years ago this weekend — were Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson, the “Big Bopper,” who died in a plane crash following their Winter Dance Party show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, not far from Hudson’s home town, Des Moines.