Deaths
- January 6 — Ken Nelson, 96, record producer for artists including Hank Thompson, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and many others.
- April 22 — Paul Davis, 60, crossover artist whose collaborations with Marie Osmond and Tanya Tucker reached No. 1 in the 1980s. (heart attack)
- May 1 — Jim Hager, 61, country singer and actor who along with his twin brother Jon were regulars on Hee Haw from 1969 to 1986. (heart attack)
- May 5 — Jerry Wallace, 79, crossover artist who scored several country hits during the 1970s including the No. 1 "If You Leave Me Tonight I'll Cry" in 1972. (congestive heart failure)
- May 8 — Eddy Arnold, 89, country and pop singer whose career spanned seven decades. (natural causes)
- May 11 — Dottie Rambo, 74, southern gospel singer-songwriter. (bus accident)
- July 16 — Jo Stafford, 90, crossover artist from the 1940s with hits "Feudin’ and Fightin" and "Temptation". (congestive heart failure)
- August 11 — Don Helms, 81, steel guitarist and member of Hank Williams' Drifting Cowboys. (heart attack)
- August 31 — Jerry Reed, 71, country singer and actor best known for his 1971 crossover hit "When You're Hot, You're Hot" (emphysema)
- September 12 — Charlie Walker, 81, honky tonk singer best known for "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down" (colon cancer)
Read more about this topic: 2008 In Country Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“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)
“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)
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)