1968 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January 18 – Gribouille, French singer, 26 (alcohol and drug-related)
  • February 5 – Luckey Roberts, ragtime composer and pianist, 80
  • February 13
    • Ildebrando Pizzetti, composer, 87
    • Portia White, singer, 56
  • February 15 – Little Walter, blues singer and harmonica player, 37
  • February 28
    • Frankie Lymon, American singer, 25 (heroin overdose)
    • Doretta Morrow, dancer, 40 (cancer)
  • March 6 – Iša Krejčí, composer and conductor, 63
  • March 10 – Blind Joe Reynolds, singer-songwriter
  • March 16 – Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, composer, 72
  • April 15 – Borys Lyatoshynsky, composer, 73
  • April 25 – Harald Kreutzberg, dancer and choreographer, 65
  • May 15 - Florence Austral, operatic soprano, 76
  • May 19 – Coleman Hawkins, jazz musician, 64
  • May 24 – Bernard Rogers, composer, 75
  • May 26 – Little Willie John, blues artist, 30 (heart attack)
  • June 2 - André Mathieu, pianist and composer, 39
  • June 8 – Bumble Bee Slim, blues musician, 63
  • June 14 – Karl-Birger Blomdahl, composer and conductor, 51
  • June 15 – Wes Montgomery, jazz guitarist, 45 (heart attack)
  • June 26 – Ziggy Elman, US trumpet player, 54
  • July 21 – Ruth St. Denis, dancer, 89
  • July 27 – Lilian Harvey, actress and singer, 62
  • July 28 - Carl Ravazza, US violinist, vocalist and bandleader, 58
  • July 30 – Jón Leifs, composer, 69
  • August 5 – Luther Perkins, guitarist of The Tennessee Two, 40 (burns and smoke inhalation following a house fire)
  • August 18 – Arthur Marshall, ragtime composer, 86
  • September 19 – Red Foley, country singer, 58
  • October 8 – Frank Skinner, film composer, 70
  • October 15 – Franz Reizenstein, pianist and composer, 57
  • October 20 – Bud Flanagan, music hall star, 72
  • October 30 – Pops Foster, jazz musician, 77
  • November 8 – Kokomo Arnold, blues musician, 67
  • November 9 – Jan Johansson, jazz pianist, 37 (car crash)
  • November 11 – Jeanne Demessieux, organist, pianist and composer, 47 (embolism)
  • December 1 – Nicolae Bretan, composer, 81
  • December 9 – Percy Greenbank, lyricist, 90
  • December 14 - Margarete Klose, operatic mezzo-soprano, 69
  • December 19 – Tiberiu Brediceanu, composer
  • December 31 – Sabin Drăgoi, composer, 91
  • date unknown
    • Juan F. Acosta, composer and music teacher
    • Lucille Dompierre, pianist and arranger
    • Billy Pigg, bagpiper
    • Vincenzo Scaramuzza, pianist

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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)