Deaths
- January 1 – Michael Mann, violinist, son of Thomas Mann, 57 (suicide)
- January 2 – Errol Garner, jazz pianist, 53 (heart attack)
- January 16 - Tom Archia, jazz saxophonist, 57
- January 23 – Dick Burnett, folk songwriter, 94
- February 8 – Eivind Groven, microtonal composer and music theorist, 75
- February 10 – Grace Williams, composer, 70
- February 12 – Ernst Mehlich, German-Brazilian conductor and composer, 89
- February 23 - Margaret Daum, operatic soprano, 70
- February 26 – Bukka White, blues guitarist and singer, 67
- February 28 – Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, comic actor and singer, 71
- March 10 – E. Power Biggs, organist, 70
- May 6 - Joseph Hislop, operatic and concert tenor, 93
- May 22 – Hampton Hawes, jazz pianist, 48 (brain haemorrhage)
- May 30 – Paul Desmond, jazz saxophonist, 52 (lung cancer)
- June 5 – Sleepy John Estes, blues guitarist and singer, 78
- June 13 – Matthew Garber, former child star of Mary Poppins, 21 (pancreatitis)
- July 2 - Gert Potgieter, South African operatic tenor and actor, 47 (car accident)
- July 26 – Gena Branscombe, composer and conductor, 95
- August 16 – Elvis Presley, singer, 42 (heart attack)
- August 19 – Groucho Marx, comedian, actor, singer and performer, 86
- September 1 - Ethel Waters, American blues, jazz and gospel singer, 80
- September 5 – George Barnes, swing jazz guitarist, 56
- September 13 – Leopold Stokowski, conductor, 95
- September 16
- Marc Bolan, singer-songwriter, 29 (car crash)
- Maria Callas, operatic soprano, 53 (heart attack)
- September 30 – Mary Ford, guitarist and vocalist, 53 (diabetes-related)
- October 13 – Shirley Brickley, the Orlons, 32 (shot)
- October 14 – Bing Crosby, singer and actor, 74
- October 20 – Ronnie Van Zant, 29, Steve Gaines, 28, and Cassie Gaines, 29, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd (plane crash)
- November 5 – Guy Lombardo, violinist and bandleader, 75
- November 14 – Richard Addinsell, Warsaw Concerto composer, 73
- December 5 – Rahsaan Roland Kirk, jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, 42 (stroke)
- December 24 - Salvatore Papaccio, Canzone Napoletana tenor, 87
- December 25 – Charlie Chaplin, actor and composer, 88
- December 28 – Sam Brown, jazz guitarist, 38
- December 30 – St. Louis Jimmy Oden, blues singer, 74
- date unknown – Jimmy Cooper, hammered dulcimer player, 70
Read more about this topic: 1977 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)
“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)