The hero died in a snowstorm early on New Year 's Day , 1953 , after a few years of intense stardom , as he lay sleeping in the back seat of a powder blue Cadillac chauffeured by an 18-year-old college kid named Charles Carr , somewhere between Bristol , Tenn. , and Oak Hill , W. Va. , on the way to a New Year 's Day concert in Canton , Ohio .