Deaths
- January 19 – Rosa Mayreder, feminist writer, artist and musician, 79
- January 20 – Nikolai Zhilyayev, musicologist, 56
- January 29 – Carl Venth, violinist and composer, 77
- February 4 – Dominique Heckmes, composer and music critic, 59
- February 25 - Růžena Maturová, operatic contralto, 68
- March 2 – Ben Harney, ragtime composer & entertainer
- March 12 – Lyda Roberti, actress and singer, 31 (heart attack)
- March 18 – Cyril Rootham, composer, 62
- April 5 – Reine Davies, actress and singer, 51 (heart attack)
- April 8 – Joe "King" Oliver, jazz trumpeter & band leader, 52
- April 12 – Feodor Chaliapin, operatic bass, 65
- April 18 – Richard Runciman Terry, musicologist, 72
- June – Fred Barnes, music hall entertainer (suicide)
- June 26 – James Weldon Johnson, US songwriter, author, diplomat and educationalist, 67
- July 27 – James Thornton, English-born US songwriter and vaudeville comedian, 76
- August 14 – Landon Ronald, pianist and composer, 65
- August 16 – Robert Johnson, blues musician, 27 (suspected strychnine poisoning)
- August 30 – James Scott, ragtime composer, 53
- September 4 – Oreste Candi, violin-maker, 72
- September 8 – Agustín Magaldi, tango singer, 39
- September 28 – Con Conrad, songwriter, 47
- October 22 – May Irwin, vaudeville star, 76
- October 27
- Alma Gluck, soprano, 54 (liver failure)
- Khadija Gayibova, Azerbaijani pianist, 45 (executed)
- November 21 – Leopold Godowsky, pianist and composer, 68
- December 10 – Mario Pilati, composer, 35
- December 21 - James Milton Black, hymn-writer and choir-master, 82
- date unknown
- Gianni Bettini, phonograph maker
- Minnie Egener, operatic mezzo-soprano
- Papa Charlie Jackson, blues musician
- Mary Elizabeth Turner Salter, American soprano singer and composer
- Attilio Salvaneschi, operatic tenor
- Gus Wickie, singer and voice actor
- probable – Oskar Böhme, trumpeter and composer
Read more about this topic: 1938 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“This is the 184th Demonstration.
...
What we do is not beautiful
hurts no one makes no one desperate
we do not break the panes of safety glass
stretching between people on the street
and the deaths they hire.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)