Deaths
- January 7 – Colin McPhee, Canadian composer and musicologist, 63
- January 9 – Big Boy Goudie, jazz saxophonist,
- January 15 – Jack Teagarden, jazz trombonist and vocalist, 58 (pneumonia/heart attack)
- January 22 – Marc Blitzstein, composer, 58
- January 27 - Leib Glantz, musicologist, 65
- February 25 – Johnny Burke, lyricist, 55
- April 4 – Georgia Caine, Broadway star, 87
- May 10 – Carol Haney, dancer and choreographer, 39 (pneumonia)
- June 10 – Louis Gruenberg, pianist and composer, 79
- June 29 – Eric Dolphy, American jazz saxophonist, flautist and bass clarinettist, 36 (diabetic coma)
- July 1 – Pierre Monteux, French conductor, 89
- July 10 – Joe Haymes, bandleader and arranger, 57 (heart failure)
- July 31 – Jim Reeves, American country singer, 40 (plane crash)
- August 14 – Johnny Burnette, rockabilly singer, 30 (drowned)
- September 20 – Lazare Lévy, French pianist and teacher, 82
- September 28
- Nacio Herb Brown, songwriter and film/TV composer, 68
- George Dyson, English composer, 81
- Harpo Marx, American comedian and musician, 75
- October 10
- Eddie Cantor, comedian, singer and songwriter, 72
- Heinrich Neuhaus, Soviet (of German extraction) pianist and teacher, 76
- October 15 – Cole Porter, songwriter and composer, 73
- October 29 – Vasily Agapkin, Soviet composer
- November 5 – Buddy Cole, jazz pianist and orchestra leader, 45 (heart attack)
- November 30 – Don Redman, US arranger, bandleader and saxophonist
- December 2 – Sam H. Stept, Russian-born US songwriter, pianist and conductor, 67
- December 9 – Edith Sitwell, poet and collaborator of William Walton
- December 11
- Alma Mahler-Werfel, songwriter and widow of Gustav Mahler
- Sam Cooke, singer, 33 (shot)
- December 14 – Francisco Canaro, Uruguayan violinist and tango orchestra leader, 76
- December 21 – Theodor Blumer, composer and conductor, 83
- date unknown - Gali Penchala Narasimha Rao, film composer
Read more about this topic: 1964 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“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)
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“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)