Deaths
- January 6 – José Enrique Pedreira, composer, 54
- February 3, in a plane crash (see Events)
- Buddy Holly, singer, songwriter and guitarist, 22
- Ritchie Valens, singer, songwriter and guitarist, 17
- The Big Bopper, disc jockey, singer, and songwriter, 28
- February 12 – George Antheil, pianist and composer, 58 (heart attack)
- February 13 – William Axt, film composer, 70
- February 14 – Baby Dodds, jazz musician, 60
- February 18 – Erich Zeisl, composer, 53 (heart attack)
- February 28 – Maxwell Anderson, lyricist, 70
- March 1 – Mack Gordon, songwriter, 54
- March 15 – Lester Young, jazz musician, 49 (liver disease and malnutrition)
- March 25 – Billy Mayerl, English pianist and composer, 56 (heart attack)
- April 20 - Edward Johnson, operatic tenor, 80
- May 14 – Sidney Bechet, jazz musician, 62
- May 29 – Frank Marshall, pianist and teacher, 75
- June 9 – Sonnie Hale, English actor and singer, 57 (myelofibrosis)
- July 15
- Ernest Bloch, composer, 78
- Billie Holiday, jazz and blues singer, 44 (liver and heart disease)
- August 15 – Blind Willie McTell, blues singer, 61
- August 16 – Wanda Landowska, harpsichordist, 80
- August 17 – Pedro Humberto Allende, composer and ethnomusicologist, 74
- August 28 – Bohuslav Martinů, composer, 68
- September 1 – Jack Norworth, singer and songwriter, 80
- September 6 – Kay Kendall, musical comedy actress, 33 (leukaemia)
- September 8 - Mohammed El-Bakkar, Lebanese tenor, oud player, and conductor, 46 (cerebral hemorrhage)
- September 11 - Ann Drummond-Grant, operatic contralto, 54
- September 17 – Omer Simeon, jazz musician, 57 (throat cancer)
- September 21 – Agnes Nicholls, operatic soprano, 83
- September 22
- Josef Matthias Hauer, composer, 76
- Jane Winton, actress, dancer, operatic soprano, writer, and painter, 53
- September 25
- Helen Broderick, Broadway star, 68
- Gerard Hoffnung, artist, comedian, and musician, 34 (cerebral haemorrhage)
- October 7 – Mario Lanza, operatic tenor, 38 (pulmonary embolism)
- November 7 – Alberto Guerrero, pianist and composer, 73
- November 17 – Heitor Villa-Lobos, composer, 72
- November 22 – Sam M. Lewis, lyricist, 74
- November 26 – Albert Ketèlbey, composer, conductor and pianist, 84
- November 29 – Fritz Brun, Swiss composer and conductor, 81
- December 20 – Gilda Gray, dancer, 58 (heart attack)
- date unknown
- Clotilde Arias, songwriter
- Susan Metcalfe Casals, operatic mezzo-soprano
Read more about this topic: 1959 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)
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“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)