Deaths
- January 3 – Jack Oakie, 74, actor in many musical films of the 1940s
- January 23
- Terry Kath, 31, Chicago guitarist and vocalist (suicide)
- Vic Ames, 52, Ames Brothers
- January 31 – Gregory Herbert, Blood, Sweat & Tears saxophonist
- February 7 - Dimitrie Cuclin, 82, composer and musicologist
- March 4 – Joe Marsala, 71, clarinetist and songwriter
- March 11 – Claude François, 39, singer-songwriter (electrocuted)
- March 17 – Malvina Reynolds, 77, US folk/blues singer-songwriter
- March 18 – Peggy Wood, 86, actress and singer
- April 3 – Ray Noble, 74, composer and bandleader
- April 21 – Sandy Denny, 31, folk singer (Fairport Convention) (cerebral haemorrhage)
- May 1 – Aram Khachaturian, 74, composer
- May 5 – Ján Móry, 85, Slovak composer
- May 26 – Tamara Karsavina, 93, ballerina
- July 14 – Maria Grinberg, 69, pianist
- July 29 – Glen Goins, 24, Parliament Funkadelic guitarist and singer (Hodgkin's lymphoma)
- August 14 – Joe Venuti, 74, US jazz violinist
- August 24 – Louis Prima, 67, jazz musician
- September 6 – Tom Wilson, 47, producer
- September 7 – Keith Moon, 32, drummer of The Who (drug overdose)
- September 24 – Ruth Etting, 80, US "torch" singer
- October 6 – Johnny O'Keefe, 43, Australian Singer
- October 9 – Jacques Brel, 49, singer-songwriter
- October 12 – Nancy Spungen, 20, girlfriend of Sid Vicious
- October 23 – Maybelle Carter née Addington, 69, US country singer and musician, member of the Carter Family
- November 12 – Howard Swanson, 71, composer
- November 18 – Lennie Tristano, 59, jazz pianist
- December 3 - William Grant Still, 83, composer
- December 27 – Chris Bell, 27, singer-songwriter (auto accident)
Read more about this topic: 1978 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“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)
“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)