1980 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January 1 – Adolph Deutsch (82), American composer
  • January 3 – Amos Milburn (52), R&B singer and pianist
  • January 6
    • Poley McClintock, jazz musician
    • Georgeanna Tillman (36), pop and R&B singer
  • January 7 – Larry Williams (44), singer, songwriter and pianist
  • January 13 – Andre Kostelanetz (78), Russian-born conductor and arranger
  • January 21 - Elvira de Hidalgo (88), coloratura soprano and singing teacher
  • January 29 – Jimmy Durante (86), pianist & entertainer
  • January 30 – Professor Longhair (61), pianist
  • February 17 – Jerry Fielding (57), American conductor and music director (heart failure)
  • February 18 – Gale Robbins (58), American singer and actress (lung cancer)
  • February 19 – Bon Scott (33), lead singer of AC/DC (alcohol poisoning)
  • March 5 – Winifred Wagner (82), daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, close friend of Adolf Hitler (b. 1897)
  • March 14 – Anna Jantar (29), Polish singer (air crash)
  • March 18 – Jessica Dragonette (80), American singer
  • March 23 – Jacob Miller (27), reggae artist
  • March 25 – Walter Susskind (76), Czech conductor
  • March 26
    • Jon Paulus (32), the Buckinghams, drug overdose
    • Ted Shapiro (80), songwriter & pianist
  • March 28 – Dick Haymes, (63), Argentinian-born US singer and actor
  • March 29 – Mantovani (74), Italian-born British orchestra leader and composer
  • April 4 – Red Sovine (61), American country & folk singer & songwriter
  • April 20 – Katherine Kennicott Davis (87), American composer
  • April 28 – Tommy Caldwell (30), bassist of Marshall Tucker Band (car accident)
  • May 18 – Ian Curtis (23), lead singer of Joy Division (suicide)
  • May 30 – Carl Radle (37), rock bassist
  • June 16 – Bob Nolan (72), country singer and songwriter
  • June 20 – Allan Pettersson (70), Swedish composer
  • June 21 – Bert Kaempfert (56), German composer, bandleader and arranger (stroke)
  • June 27 – Barney Bigard (74), jazz clarinetist
  • June 28 – Jose Iturbi (84), pianist
  • July 5 – A. J. Potter (72), Irish composer
  • July 14 – Malcolm Owen (26), Lead singer The Ruts (overdose)
  • July 15 – Ben Selvin (82), "The Dean of Recorded Music"
  • July 23 – Keith Godchaux (32), keyboardist with Grateful Dead (car accident)
  • July 25 – Vladimir Vysotsky (42), Russian singer-songwriter, poet, actor (heart failure)
  • July 31 – Mohammed Rafi (55), Indian singer (heart attack)
  • August 17 – Harold Adamson (73), lyricist
  • August 20 – Joe Dassin (41), singer (heart attack)
  • August 26 – Miliza Korjus (71), Estonian-Polish opera singer
  • September 7 – Arvella Gray (74), blues and folk singer and guitarist
  • September 12 – Lillian Randolph (81), actress and singer
  • September 15 – Bill Evans (51), jazz pianist
  • September 16 - Ludmila Červinková (72), operatic soprano
  • September 25 – John Bonham (32), drummer (Led Zeppelin) (alcohol poisoning)
  • October 25 – Virgil Fox (68), organist (cancer)
  • October 27 – Steve Peregrin Took (31), bongo player for Tyrannosaurus Rex later a solo artist/frontman, choking
  • December 7 – Darby Crash (22)(The Germs) (suicide)
  • December 8 – John Lennon (40), singer, guitarist and songwriter (The Beatles) (gunshot)
  • December 24 – Siggie Nordstrom (87), American model, actress, entertainer, socialite and lead singer (The Nordstrom Sisters)
  • December 29 – Tim Hardin (39), singer-songwriter (heroin overdose)
  • December 31 – Robert Pete Williams (66), blues singer and guitarist

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Famous quotes containing the word deaths:

    “I sang of death but had I known
    The many deaths one must have died
    Before he came to meet his own!”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    “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)

    “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)