Deaths
- January 10 – Annette Mills, partner of "Muffin the Mule", 60
- February 14 – Charles Cuvillier, composer of operettas, 77
- March 12 – Charlie Parker, jazz saxophonist, 34 (lobar pneumonia, bleeding ulcer and cirrhosis of liver)
- April 10 – Oskar Lindberg, composer, 67
- April 12 – W. H. Anderson, composer, 72
- May 4 – George Enescu, composer, 73
- May 15 – Oskar Adler, violinist and music critic, 79
- May 17 – Francesco Balilla Pratella, composer and musicologist, 75
- June 11 – Marcel Samuel-Rousseau, organist, composer and opera producer, 72
- June 19 – Willy Burkhard, composer, 55
- June 28 - Göta Ljungberg, Wagnerian soprano, 56
- July 4 - Ruth Vincent, operatic soprano, 78
- July 7 – Franco Casavola, Futurist composer, 63
- July 25 – Isaak Dunayevsky, conductor and composer, 55
- August 5 – Carmen Miranda, singer and dancer, 46 (heart attack)
- August 13 - Florence Easton, soprano, 72
- August 22 - Olin Downes, music critic, 69
- August 24 – Edgar Henrichsen, organist and composer, 76
- October 7 - Frieda Hempel, operatic soprano, 70
- October 14 – Harry Parr-Davies, composer and songwriter, 41 (perforated ulcer)
- October 20 – Adolf Mišek, double bassist and composer, 80
- October 27 - Bernardo de Muro, operatic tenor, 73
- November 11 – Jerry Ross, songwriter
- November 22 – Guy Ropartz, composer and conductor, 91
- November 27 – Arthur Honegger, composer, 63
- November 30 – Josip Štolcer-Slavenski, composer
- December 5 – Lucien Durosoir, violinist and composer, 67
- December 11 – Franz Syberg, composer, 51
- December 21 - Gladys Ripley, operatic contralto, 47
- date unknown
- Bessie Brown, blues singer
- Vernon Isley, original Isley brother, killed in an accident aged 13
Read more about this topic: 1955 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“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)
“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)
“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)