1981 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January 1 - Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist and human rights campaigner, 60
  • January 4 - Ruth Lowe, pianist and songwriter, 66
  • January 23 – Samuel Barber, composer, 70
  • January 25 – Adele Astaire, US dancer, actress and singer, 84
  • February 1
    • Geirr Tveitt, Norwegian composer, 72
    • Ernst Pepping, composer, 79
  • February 9 – Bill Haley, rock and roll pioneer, 55 (heart attack)
  • February 15 – Mike Bloomfield, blues guitarist, 37 (accidental drug overdose)
  • February 21 – Ron Grainer, electronic music pioneer and composer, 58
  • February 26 – Howard Hanson, composer, 84
  • April 5
    • Bob Hite, vocalist (Canned Heat), 38 (heart attack)
    • Maurice Zbriger, violinist, composer and conductor
  • April 7 – Kit Lambert, former manager and producer of The Who, 45 (fell downstairs)
  • April 8 – Burt Shevelove, librettist, 66
  • April 14 – Ivan Galamian, violin teacher, 78
  • April 28 – Steve Currie, bassist of T.Rex, 33 (car crash)
  • May 11 – Bob Marley, reggae musician, 36 (cancer)
  • May 25 – Roy Brown, blues singer, 55
  • May 28 – Mary Lou Williams, jazz pianist, 71
  • July 16 – Harry Chapin, US singer-songwriter, 38 (car crash)
  • August 18 – Robert Russell Bennett, composer and arranger, 87
  • August 26 - Lee Hays, folk singer, 67
  • September 2 – Tadeusz Baird, composer, 53
  • September 8 – Master Venu, film composer, 65
  • September 14 - Furry Lewis, country blues guitarist and songwriter, 88
  • September 15 – Chick Bullock, US singer, 72
  • October 5 – Sven Gyldmark, film composer, 77
  • October 13 – Marius Casadesus, violinist and composer, 88
  • October 15 – Elsie Randolph, English actress, dancer and singer, 77
  • October 29 – Georges Brassens, singer-songwriter, 60
  • November 27 – Lotte Lenya, actress and singer, wife of Kurt Weill, 83
  • December 13 – Cornelius Cardew, avant-garde composer, 45 (road accident)
  • December 27 – Hoagy Carmichael, pianist, singer and songwriter, 82
  • date unknown - Frank Merrick, pianist

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Famous quotes containing the word deaths:

    “On almost the incendiary eve
    Of deaths and entrances ...”
    —Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    “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)

    “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)