Deaths
- January 13 - Leo Funtek, violinist, conductor and arranger, 79
- January 14 – Jeanette MacDonald, singer and actress, 61
- January 20 – Alan Freed, DJ who first used the phrase Rock and Roll, 43 (alcohol-related)
- January 21 – Reino Helismaa, singer-songwriter
- February 2 - Charles W. Harrison, ballad singer, 86
- February 7 - Viggo Brodersen, pianist and composer, 85
- February 15 – Nat King Cole, singer and pianist, 45 (lung cancer)
- February 25 – Leo Sirota, pianist
- March 2 – Ján Valašťan Dolinský, composer
- March 4 – Asadata Dafora, drummer
- March 8 – Tadd Dameron, jazz pianist and composer, 48 (cancer)
- March 22 – Harry Tierney, musical theatre composer
- March 29 – Zlatko Baloković, violinist
- April 12 – La Belle Otero, dancer and courtesan
- April 26 - Michael Bohnen, operatic bass-baritone and actor, 77
- May 1 – Spike Jones, comedy musician, 53 (emphysema)
- June 18 – George Melachrino, English conductor, singer and composer
- July 8 – Willie Dennis, jazz trombonist, 39 (car crash)
- July 14 – Spencer Williams, pianist, singer and composer
- July 17 - Frank Ryan, tenor, 65
- September 4 – Albert Schweitzer, missionary and musician
- September 8 – Dorothy Dandridge, actress and singer, 42 (drug overdose)
- September 9 - Julián Carrillo, Mexican composer conductor, violin ist and music theorist, 90
- September 10 – Bobby Jordan, actor and musician, 42 (cirrhosis of liver)
- September 15 – Steve Brown, jazz musician
- September 25 - Nikolai Sokoloff, violinist and conductor, 79
- October 17 – Cléo de Mérode, dancer
- October 21 – Bill Black, US musician, 39 (brain tumour)
- October 25 – Hans Knappertsbusch, German conductor, 77
- October 27 – Peter La Farge, folk singer-songwriter, 34 (cause uncertain)
- November 6
- Edgard Varèse, French composer, 81
- Clarence Williams, jazz musician and composer, 67
- November 18 – Lou Black, banjo player, 64
- November 21 - Cecil Brower, jazz violinist, 50 (perforated ulcer)
- November 25 – Dame Myra Hess, pianist, 75
- December 3 – Hank D'Amico, jazz and swing musician
- December 10 – Henry Cowell, composer
- December 11 – Rafael Hernández Marín, composer, 73
- December 16 – Tito Schipa, tenor, 76
- December 20 – Charlie Burse, blues musician, 64
- date unknown - Craig Campbell, operatic tenor, 77
Read more about this topic: 1965 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“This is the 184th Demonstration.
...
What we do is not beautiful
hurts no one makes no one desperate
we do not break the panes of safety glass
stretching between people on the street
and the deaths they hire.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“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)