Deaths
- January 7 — Owen Bradley, 82, legendary record producer for top artists. (respiratory illness)
- January 17 — Cliffie Stone, 80, music executive and bassist.
- January 19 — Carl Perkins, 65, top picker and rockabilly artist. (complications from multiple strokes)
- January 24 — Justin Tubb, 62, singer-songwriter who fused honky-tonk and rockabilly in the 1950s.
- February 19 — Grandpa Jones, 84, banjo player, old-time country/gospel singer, comedian and regular on "Hee Haw" (stroke)
- February 25 — Rockin' Sidney Simien, 59, rhythm and blues, Zydeco, and soul musician best known to country audiences for his 1985 hit, "My Toot Toot." (cancer)
- April 6 — Tammy Wynette, 55, top country female vocalist of the 1960s and 1970s, best known for hits "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "Stand By Your Man." (blood clot)
- April 16 — Rose Maddox, 71, female honky-tonk and rockabilly pioneer who fronted the Maddox Brothers and Rose (kidney failure)
- May 7 — Eddie Rabbitt, 56, prolific songwriter and pop-country vocalist who once had 35 Top 10 hits in as many releases. (lung cancer)
- June 10 — Steve Sanders, 45, member of the Oak Ridge Boys from 1987 to 1995; replaced and succeeded by William Lee Golden. (suicide)
- July 6 — Roy Rogers, 86, actor, singer and "King of the Cowboys." (congestive heart failure)
- October 2 — Gene Autry, 91, actor and "The Singing Cowboy" (lymphoma).
Read more about this topic: 1998 In Country Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“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)
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“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)