1961 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January – Margaret Balfour, mezzo-soprano
  • January 13 – Blanche Ring, US singer and actress
  • January 14 - Henry Geehl, pianist, 79
  • February 4 – Alphonse Picou, jazz musician
  • February 7 – Noah Lewis, jug band musician
  • February 20 – Percy Grainger, pianist and composer
  • March 3 – Paul Wittgenstein, pianist, 73
  • March 6 – George Formby, English Music hall comedian, singer & songwriter and ukulele player extraordinaire
  • March 8 – Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor
  • March 9 – Wilber Sweatman, jazz musician and composer
  • March 16 - Václav Talich, Czech conductor, violinist and teacher, 77
  • March 24 - Freddy Johnson, jazz pianist and singer, 57 (cancer)
  • April 2 – Wallingford Riegger, composer
  • April 29
    • Cisco Houston, folk singer
    • Miff Mole, jazz trombonist and bandleader
  • May 8 – Victor Cornelius, Danish composer, pianist and singer, 63
  • May 29 – Uuno Klami, composer
  • June 6 – Art Gillham, songwriter
  • July 6 – Scott LaFaro, jazz bassist
  • August - Nadezhda Obukhova, operatic mezzo-soprano
  • August 8 – Mei Lanfang, Beijing opera performer, 66
  • August 14 – Heddle Nash, operatic tenor
  • August 15
    • Stick McGhee, guitarist
    • Morton Harvey, vaudeville entertainer
  • August 24 – Clarice Vance, "the Southern singer"
  • September 21 – Maurice Delage, pianist and composer, 81
  • September 23 – Elmer Diktonius, composer and poet
  • September 26 – Bulbul, singer
  • September 27 – Peter Dawson, bass-baritone
  • October 5 – Booker Little, jazz musician, 23
  • October 11 – Chico Marx, comedian and pianist, 74
  • October 12 – Marguerite Monnot, songwriter, 58
  • October 13 – Maya Deren, dancer and choreographer, 44
  • October 20 – Sylvia Rexach, singer and composer, 39
  • November 1 – Joan McCracken, dancer, 43
  • November 22 - Ninon Vallin, operatic soprano, 75
  • November 23 – York Bowen, pianist and composer, 77
  • November 25 - Adelina de Lara, pianist and composer, 90
  • November 26 - Alexander Goldenweiser, pianist and composer, 86
  • December 18 - Leo Reisman, violinist and bandleader, 64
  • December 20 – Moss Hart, musical theatre librettist, 57
  • December 30 – Boris Ord, organist and choirmaster, 64
  • date unknown – Ernest Ka'ai, ukulele virtuoso

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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)