Lynyrd Skynyrd joined a long, harrowing line of musical legends who perished in a plane crash when a Convair CV-240 carrying the band and crew members from South Carolina to Louisiana went down in a marshy swamp outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi, on October 20, 1977. Though some musicians survived, the accident took the lives of Steve and Cassie Gaines, road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, co-pilot William Gray, and Lynyrd Skynyrd founding member Ronnie Van Zant.
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The events that unfolded that October night were violent and tragic. In hindsight, it seems as though this tragedy was hiding in plain view. Perhaps most eerily, several colleagues would later say Van Zant began calling himself the Mississippi Kid, despite having been born and raised in Florida. Van Zant also used to tell his bandmates that he would never make it into his 30s, apparently so much so that it became annoyingly repetitive.
Yet the moniker seemed to take on new meaning after Van Zant met his end at 29 in a Mississippi swamp. Even the song that Van Zant was undoubtedly referencing, “Mississippi Kid” from the band’s debut album, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), has a strange connection to the crash.
This Lynyrd Skynyrd Song Seemed to Foreshadow This Tragic End
Tucked early into the B-side of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut album, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), is a track called “Mississippi Kid” by Van Zant, Al Kooper, and Bob Burns. “Now when this kid hits Alabama, people,” Van Zant sings in the debut track, “Don’t you try and dog him ‘round / ‘Cause if you people cause me trouble / Lord, I’ve got to put you in the ground.”
The Conair CV-240 transporting Lynyrd Skynyrd and crew was traveling west-southwest from South Carolina to Louisiana, which means they would have covered Georgia and Alabama before landing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. An incident report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board determined the cause of the crash was most likely “fuel exhaustion and total loss of power from both engines due to crew inattention to fuel supply.” When the plane went down in Gillsburg, Mississippi, it had already crossed the Alabama state line and was only 60 miles from its destination.
Interestingly, this foreshadowing phenomenon happened more than once. Three days before the fatal plane crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd released its fifth studio album, Street Survivors, which included a song Van Zant wrote with Allen Collins called “That Smell”. Van Zant had set out to write a track about the band’s increasingly dangerous indulgence. After October 20, 1977, Van Zant singing the words, “Ooh, that smell, the smell of death surrounds you,” took on an entirely different meaning.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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