On October 17, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd released Street Survivors, its fifth studio album, and for three days the future looked wide open. Then, on October 20, the band’s chartered plane went down in the Mississippi woods. Singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines were among the six people who lost their lives.
Today marks 49 years since the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, and for anyone who grew up on Southern rock, the date still lands hard.
The Plane Crash That Impacted Lynyrd Skynyrd
The band had been flying from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, aboard a Convair 240 when, according to History.com, the plane ran out of fuel. The crew attempted an emergency landing, but the aircraft came down in a heavily wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi.
Three more men died with the musicians: assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. Twenty of the 26 people on board survived. History.com notes a haunting footnote, too, because Aerosmith had looked at chartering the same plane that summer and passed over concerns about the flight crew.
For the Gaines family, the loss was doubled. Steve had joined the band only the year before, and it was his older sister Cassie, one of the Honkettes trio of backup singers who toured with the group, who recommended him when the band needed a new guitarist.
A Monument In The Woods
For decades, nothing marked the place where it happened. That changed in 2019, when a monument was dedicated near the spot on the anniversary of the crash. As Scenic 98 Coastal reported, the effort was led by a nonprofit headed by landowner Dwain Easley, who was 26 in 1977 and among the first people to reach the wreckage.
Some of the survivors carried the music forward. Guitarist Gary Rossington kept playing for decades after the crash, and he was the band’s last original member when he died in 2023 at 71.
Ronnie’s younger brother Johnny Van Zant has fronted the band since its 1987 reunion, and this fall, according to Ultimate Classic Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd is still on the road with a headlining run that stretches to November 15 in Phoenix. Night after night, the crowds still sing every word of “Free Bird,” nearly half a century after the voice who first sang it was lost on the way to Baton Rouge.