Deaths
- January 2 – Tex Ritter, country music singer, 68
- February 2 – Jean Absil, organist and composer, 80
- February 15 – Kurt Atterberg, composer, 86
- February 28 – Bobby Bloom, singer-songwriter, 28
- March 7 – Alberto Rabagliati, Italian singer and actor, 67
- March 28
- Dorothy Fields, lyricist, 68
- Dino Ciani, pianist, 32 (road accident)
- Arthur Crudup, singer, 68
- April 5 - Jennifer Vyvyan, operatic soprano, 49 (bronchial condition)
- April 7 – Pete Wendling, pianist and composer, 85
- April 15 – Giovanni D'Anzi, Italian songwriter, 68
- April 17 – Blossom Seeley, US singer and vaudeville entertainer, 87
- April 25 – Pamela Courson, Jim Morrison's widow, 27 (heroin overdose)
- May 8 – Graham Bond, R&B musician, 36 (hit by train)
- May 15 – Paul Gonsalves, jazz saxophonist, 53
- May 24 – Duke Ellington, jazz musician, and composer, 75
- June 8 – Rodolfo Lipizer, violinist and conductor, 79
- June 22 – Darius Milhaud, composer, 81
- June 27
- Cliff Friend, US composer
- Lightnin' Slim, blues musician, 61
- July 18 - Gabrielle Ritter-Ciampi, operatic soprano, 77
- July 29 – "Mama" Cass Elliott, singer (The Mamas & the Papas), 32 (heart attack)
- August 6 – Gene Ammons, tenor saxophonist, 49 (cancer)
- August 9 – Bill Chase, jazz rock trumpeter, 39
- August 11 – Maria Maksakova, Sr., opera singer, 72
- September 3 – Harry Partch, composer, 73
- September 22 - Marta Fuchs, operatic soprano, 76
- September 23 – Robbie McIntosh, drummer (Average White Band), 24
- October 5 - Ebe Stignani, operatic soprano, about 70
- October 13 - Josef Krips, vioinist, 72
- October 24 – David Oistrakh, violinist, 66
- November 5 - Marguerite Namara, operatic soprano, 85
- November 8 – Ivory Joe Hunter, R&B singer, songwriter and pianist
- November 11 – Alfonso Leng, composer, 80
- November 19 – George Brunies, jazz musician, 72
- November 21 – Frank Martin, composer, 84
- November 25 – Nick Drake, singer/songwriter, 26 (overdose)
Read more about this topic: 1974 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“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)