Jay Richardson views The Big Bopper

Chantilly means something different to just about everyone. To my wife, a talented baker, it’s the whipped Chantilly cream she serves atop her pecan pie. Those who rely on Pepperidge Farm to cook up their desserts will know the Chantilly brand of raspberry cookie.

Then there’s the French city of Chantilly, a section of Fairfax County, Virginia, named Chantilly, and even a small neighborhood bearing that name in the city of Charlotte, N.C.

The strongest imagery for me involves The Big Bopper’s 1958 rock and roll hit Chantilly Lace, which has since been covered by dozens of bands. The opening line, “Hello, baby!” is arguably one of the most recognizable lines in rock.

The Big Bopper, aka Jiles Perry Richardson Jr., and two other young pop superstars, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, were killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, an event memorialized as “the day the music died” in Don McLean’s balled American Pie.

Leaping ahead nearly 50 years, a marketer with the appetite for publicity and the stomach for controversy has the opportunity to become a hero to The Big Bopper’s son, Jay Richardson, and the sponsor of a rock concert to keep his dad’s musical memory alive.

What’s the catch? Only the fact that Jay Richardson has decided the only way to fund his dream is to sell The Big Bopper’s used coffin. And he plans to do it via an eBay auction.

Jay Richardson, 49, has owned the 16-gauge steel casket since last year, when it was exhumed from Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas, which just erected a large statue and memorial to the Big Bopper. The re-interment into a new casket gave the funeral industry a chance to test the quality of their circa-1950s product which, upon close inspection, stood up to 49 years of muddy entombment with only minor rust spots and lime stains.

Inside, as chronicled by Ron Franscell of the Beaumont Enterprise, “forensic examiners found the Big Bopper’s well-preserved corpse, dressed in a black suit and a blue-and-gray striped tie. He wore socks, but no shoes. Most remarkably, his thick brown hair was still perfectly coiffed in his familiar, 1950s flat-top.”
eBay has been a remarkable vehicle for marketers to acquire the oddest objects, along with plenty of media attention and the associated surge in web traffic:

– Goldenpalace.com, an online casino, paid $28,000 for a partially eaten grilled cheese sandwich auctioned by a woman who claimed an image of the Virgin Mary suddenly appeared on her lunch. In 2006, actor William Shatner sold his kidney stone to GoldenPalace.com during an auction that helped victims of Hurricane Katrina.

– Dr. Pepper Snapple Group earned an avalanche of positive media coverage, including NBC’s Today Show, this past June when it heard a Virginia hairdresser was trying to fund her wedding by auctioning off a bridesmaid spot on eBay. The beverage company and its agency, Ketchum, spent $10,000 and could very well send a celebrity bridesmaid to the April 19, 2009, nuptials.

Will a rusted casket that for nearly 50 years held the remains of The Big Bopper find a home with a familiar brand?  I’m dying to know.