As much as I really hate that song, Don McLean wrapped the answer up with a bow on top, but there were plenty of other extenuating circumstances as well.
Any explosive musical trend has a short shelf life and an arc, and after four years, it happened. Adults generally still hated the music, thought it was a communist plot to destroy the moral fiber, etc, etc, but other factors came into play. RCA tamed Elvis’ feral power, fed him blander, safer material to perform, but beyond that, not for a minute did I ever believe that him being drafted was a random occurrence. So public enemy #1 was taken care of.
Bill Haley had pretty much run what he was doing into the ground, Jerry Lee Lewis had outraged enough people with his kissin’ cousin situation, Chuck Berry got entrapped and sent up the river, Little Richard had his identity crisis, Alan Freed was taken down(thrown under the bus by Dick Clark, who stood to gain), a payback for getting the whole thing going in the first place as a promoter, and then that plane crash.
Big Bopper was a novelty act footnote, Valens may have been a hero in the barrio, but overall had not really established himself in a big way, so there was Buddy, on his way to greater things, barely getting to his potential, then gone.
Eddie Cochran as well, soon to follow. He really hadn’t hit his stride, and could have done so much more. Gene Vincent was still trading on his badboy image when that accident happened, but his appeal, like all the indie rockabilly at the time, was limited. When the smoke cleared, there was only the watered down “maltshop” and vocal group stuff left, entertaining but not compelling. The beast had been contained.
Black entertainers were only going to get so far, and let’s face it, so much of that original era sounded the same. In spite of the excitement it originally created, the genre had played itself out(not to mention the body count), and anything that replaced it was carefully controlled. The next stop was the Brylcreamed Frankie and Bobby era.
