Deaths
- March 23 — Cindy Walker, 87, prolific songwriter ("You Don't Know Me," "Cherokee Maiden"). (extended illness)
- March 25 — Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens Jr., 76, one of the pioneers of the Bakersfield Sound; co-host of Hee Haw. (heart attack)
- April 24 — Bonnie Owens, 76, singer-songwriter and ex-wife of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard (complications from Alzheimer's disease).
- May 21 — Billy Walker, 77, Grand Ole Opry legend best known for "Charlie's Shoes" and "Cross the Brazos at Waco" (car accident).
- August 14 — Johnny Duncan, 67, country music stalwart of the 1970s, best known for a series of duets with Janie Fricke. (heart attack)
- October 14 — Freddy Fender, 69, Tex Mex-styled singer-songwriter who achieved his greatest success in the mid-1970s ("Before the Next Teardrop Falls," "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights"), and recorded with two Tejano bands. (lung cancer)
- December 22 — Dennis Linde, 63, well-respected songwriter of hits for acts ranging from Elvis Presley and Roger Miller to Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks. (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis)
Read more about this topic: 2006 In Country Music
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)
“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)