1963 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January 2 – Dick Powell, actor and singer, 58 (lymphoma)
  • January 24 – Otto Harbach, lyricist, 89
  • January 30 – Francis Poulenc, French composer, 64
  • February 19 – Benny Moré, Cuban singer, 43 (cirrhosis of the liver)
  • February 20 – Ferenc Fricsay, conductor, 48 (cancer)
  • March 5 – Patsy Cline, American country/pop singer, 30 (plane crash)
  • March 17 – Lizzie Miles, singer, 67
  • March 28 – Alec Templeton, Welsh composer, 52
  • March 30 – Aleksandr Gauk, Russian conductor and composer, 69
  • March 31 – Harry Akst, US composer and pianist, 68
  • April 9
    • Eddie Edwards, American jazz trombonist, 71
    • Benno Moiseiwitsch, Jewish-Ukrainian pianist, 73
  • April 12 – Herbie Nichols, jazz musician, 44 (leukemia)
  • May 6 – Ted Weems, US bandleader, 61
  • May 10 – Irving Aaronson, bandleader and composer, 68
  • May 24 – Elmore James, American blues guitarist, 45 (heart attack)
  • June 24 - Sybil Evers, mezzo-soprano and actress, 59
  • August 15 – John Powell, pianist, composer and ethnomusicologist, 80
  • August 23 – Glenn Gray, American saxophonist and conductor, 63
  • September 3 – Frico Kafenda, Slovak composer, 79
  • September 12 – Modest Altschuler, cellist, conductor and composer, 90
  • September 25 – Alexander Sakharoff, Russian dancer and choreographer, 77
  • October 11 – Édith Piaf, French singing superstar, 47 (liver cancer)
  • October 25 – Roger Désormière, French conductor, 65
  • November 1 – Elsa Maxwell, songwriter, "the hostess with the mostest", 80
  • November 15 – Fritz Reiner, Hungarian conductor, 74
  • November 19 – Carmen Amaya, flamenco dancer and singer, 50
  • November 26 – Amelita Galli-Curci, operatic soprano, 81
  • November 29 – Ernesto Lecuona, Cuban composer, pianist and bandleader, 68
  • December 5 – Karl Amadeus Hartmann, composer, 58 (stomach cancer)
  • December 14 – Dinah Washington, singer, 39
  • December 28 – Paul Hindemith, composer, 68
  • date unknown – Naftule Brandwein, clarinettist

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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)

    “On almost the incendiary eve
    Of deaths and entrances ...”
    —Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    “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)