Deaths
- January 5 – Charles Mingus, jazz musician, 56 (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)
- January 13
- Donny Hathaway, singer, 33 (suicide)
- Marjorie Lawrence, operatic soprano, 71
- February 2 – Sid Vicious, punk rocker, 21 (heroin overdose)
- March 4 – Mike Patto, rock singer, 36 (cancer)
- March 5 – Alan Crofoot, operatic tenor and host of Mr Piper, 49 (suicide)
- March 22 – Walter Legge, record producer, 72
- March 23 - Antonio Brosa, violinist, 84
- April 10 – Nino Rota, composer, 67
- April 29 – Julia Perry, composer and conductor, 55
- May 1 - Bronislav Gimpel, violinist, 68
- May 11 – Lester Flatt, bluegrass musician, 64
- May 21 – Blue Mitchell, trumpeter, 49
- June 5 – Jack Haley, Wizard of Oz star, 80
- June 29 – Lowell George, singer, songwriter and guitarist, founder of Little Feat, 34 (heart attack)
- July 3 – Louis Durey, composer, 91
- July 6 – Van McCoy, singer, 35 (heart attack)
- July 12 – Minnie Riperton, singer, 31 (breast cancer)
- July 14 – Pedro Flores, composer, 85
- July 16 – Alfred Deller, countertenor, 67
- August 19 – Dorsey Burnette, Rockabilly singer, 46 (heart attack)
- August 25 – Stan Kenton, bandleader, 67
- September 2 - Jacques Février, pianist, 79
- September 6 – Guy Bolton, English librettist, 94
- September 22 - Richard Nibley, violinist, 66
- September 27
- Gracie Fields, actress and singer, 81
- Jimmy McCulloch, guitarist (Wings), 28
- October 1 – Roy Harris, composer, 81
- October 13 – Rebecca Helferich Clarke, viola player and composer, 93
- October 22 – Nadia Boulanger, French composer, conductor, and music teacher, 92
- October 27 - Germaine Lubin, operatic soprano, 89
- November 11 – Dimitri Tiomkin, film composer and conductor, 85
- November 17 – John Glascock, rock bassist, 28
- November 30 – Joyce Grenfell, actress and singer-songwriter, 69
- December 30 – Richard Rodgers, composer and songwriter, 77
- December 21 – Nansi Richards, harpist, 91
Read more about this topic: 1979 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“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)
“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)