Deaths
- January 9 - Eugen Coca, violinist and composer, 60
- January 11 - Oscar Straus (composer), Viennese operetta composer, 83
- March 3 - Noel Gay, English songwriter, 55
- March 11 - Frankie Newton, American trumpeter, 48
- March 19 - Walter Braunfels, pianist and composer, 71
- March 27 - Carl Fischer, composer and jazz pianist, 41
- April 5 - Claude Delvincourt, pianist and composer, 66
- April 8 - Edwin Grasse, violinist and composer, 69
- April 9 - Philip Greeley Clapp, pianist and composer, 65
- April 11 - Paul Specht, violnist and bandleader, 59
- April 14 - Lil Green, blues singer, 34 (pneumonia)
- April 17 - Torsten Ralf, operatic tenor, 53
- May 1 - Arthur Johnston, songwriter, 56
- May 19 - Charles Ives, composer, 79
- May 20 - Linda Lee Thomas, socialite and wife of Cole Porter, 70
- May 31 - Pedro Elías Gutiérrez, musician and composer, 84
- June 17 - Danny Cedrone, session guitarist (soloist on "Rock Around the Clock"), 33 (fell downstairs)
- July 16 - Lucien Muratore, operatic tenor and actor, 77
- August 8 - Phil Ohman, film composer and pianist, 57
- August 13 - Demetrius Constantine Dounis, violin teacher
- August 17 - Billy Murray, singer, 77
- August 24 - Fred Rose, songwriter, music publisher, 56
- October 24 - Pepito Arriola, pianist, 57
- October 27 - Franco Alfano, composer and pianist, 79
- November 11 - J. Rosamond Johnson, composer and singer
- November 29 - Dink Johnson, jazz musician, 56
- November 30 - Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor and composer, 68
- December 14
- Papa Celestin, jazz musician, 70
- Sergei Protopopov, Russian composer and music theorist, 61
- December 25
- Johnny Ace, American rhythm and blues singer, 25 (shooting accident)
- Rosario Scalero, violinist, teacher and composer, 84
- date unknown - Per Reidarson, composer and music critic
Read more about this topic: 1954 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)
“Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are also practiced in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death—that is, they attempt suicide—twice as often as men, though men are more “successful” because they use surer weapons, like guns.”
—Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940)
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)