1987 in Music - Deaths

Deaths

  • January 6 – Jaidev, Bollywood composer, 67
  • January 10 – Marion Hutton, singer and actress, 67
  • January 15 – Ray Bolger, Wizard of Oz actor (cancer)
  • January 30 – Harold Loeffelmacher, musician and bandleader (Six Fat Dutchmen), 81
  • February 2
    • Spike Hughes, jazz musician, composer and journalist, 78
    • Alfred Lion, record executive and co-founder of Blue Note Records, 78
  • February 4 – Liberace, US pianist
  • February 8 – Tony Destra, drummer, 32 (car accident)
  • February 18 – Dmitri Kabalevsky, composer
  • February 23 – Zeca Afonso, folk musician
  • February 24 – Jim Connors, radio DJ, 46 (car crash)
  • March 3 – Danny Kaye, actor, singer, dancer and comedian
  • March 6 – Eddie Durham, jazz musician, 80
  • March 15 – Don Gant, singer/songwriter, record producer
  • March 18 – Elizabeth Poston, composer, 82
  • March 20 – Rita Streich, coloratura soprano, 66
  • March 21
    • Dean Paul Martin, singer and actor, 35 (plane crash)
    • Robert Preston, actor and singer, 68
  • March 28 – Maria von Trapp, subject of The Sound of Music, 82
  • March 29 – Felix Prohaska, conductor
  • April 2 – Buddy Rich, jazz drummer, 69 (brain tumor)
  • April 7 – Carlton Barrett, reggae drummer (The Wailers), 36 (murdered)
  • April 14 – Karl Höller, composer, 79
  • May 2 – Larry Clinton, US bandleader and songwriter, 75
  • May 3 – Dalida, singer, actress and Miss Egypt 1954, 54 (suicide)
  • May 4 – Paul Butterfield, blues vocalist and harmonica player, 44 (drug overdose)
  • May 13
    • Signe Amundsen, operatic soprano, 87
    • Ismael Rivera, salsa composer and singer, 55 (heart attack)
  • May 14 – Rita Hayworth, dancer and film star, 68
  • May 24 – Hermione Gingold, actress and singer
  • May 26 – Robert Wilkins, blues guitarist and singer, 91
  • May 29 – Phyllis Tate, avant-garde composer, 76
  • June 3 – Andrés Segovia, guitar virtuoso, 94
  • June 18 – Kid Thomas Valentine, jazz trumpeter & bandleader, 91
  • June 21 – Abram Chasins, pianist and composer, 84
  • June 22
    • Fred Astaire, dancer, actor and singer, 88
    • Frank Rehak, jazz trombonist
  • June 25 – Boudleaux Bryant, Hall of Fame songwriter, 67
  • June 26
    • Henk Badings, composer, 80
    • Gábor Rejtő, cellist, 70
  • July 1 – Snakefinger, guitarist, 38 (heart attack)
  • July 7
    • Tibor Frešo, composer, 69
    • Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, pianist, 85
  • July 10 – John Hammond, producer and musician, 76
  • July 15 – Pete King, drummer (After The Fire, BAP), 28 (testicular cancer)
  • July 25 – Alex Sadkin, saxopohonist and record producer, 37 or 38 (motor accident)
  • July 26 – Joe Liggins, R&B, jazz and blues pianist, 72
  • August 2 – David Martin, bassist (Sam the Sham), 50 (heart attack)
  • August 12 – Sally Long, former Ziegfeld Follies star, 85
  • August 14 – Vincent Persichetti, composer, 72
  • August 27
    • Bruce Holder, violinist, conductor and composer, 82
    • Scott La Rock, hip-hop DJ and producer, 25 (shot)
  • September 3 – Morton Feldman, composer, 51 (pancreatic cancer)
  • September 11 – Peter Tosh, reggae musician, 42 (shot and killed in a house invasion/robbery)
  • September 21- Jaco Pastorius, jazz bassist, 35 (brain damage resulting from fight)
  • September 23 – Bob Fosse, dancer, choreographer and director of musicals, 60 (heart attack)
  • September 29 - Sebastian Peschko, pianist, 77
  • October 3 – Hans Gál, composer, 97
  • October 13 – Kishore Kumar, singer, actor, filmmaker, writer, musician and composer, 58
  • October 14 – Rodolfo Halffter, composer, 86
  • October 19 – Jacqueline du Pré, English cellist, 42 (multiple sclerosis)
  • October 28 – Woody Herman, US bandleader
  • November 12 – Cornelis Vreeswijk, Swedish singer-songwriter, 50 (liver cancer)
  • November 16 – Zubir Said, composer, 80
  • November 22 – Verna Arvey, librettist and pianist
  • November 23 – Joseph Beer, composer, 79
  • December 5 – Pappy Daily, country music entrepreneur and record producer, 85
  • December 8 - Annelies Kupper, operatic soprano, 81
  • December 10 – Jascha Heifetz, violinist
  • December 12 – Clifton Chenier, zydeco singer and accordionist, 62
  • December 18 – Conny Plank, record producer, 47
  • December 21 – John Spence, ska musician, 18 (suicide)
  • December 22 – Luca Prodan, rock musician, 34 (cirrhosis of the liver)
  • date unknown
    • Emani Sankara Sastry, Veena player and composer
    • Allen Jones, record producer

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Famous quotes containing the word deaths:

    “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)

    “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)