Deaths
- January 9 — Jon Hager, 67, one half of the Hager Twins, gained fame on Hee Haw.
- February 7 — Molly Bee, 69, gained fame through appearances on Hometown Jamboree. (complications from a stroke)
- March 2 — Ernest Ashworth, 80, Grand Ole Opry star, best known for his 1963 Number One hit, "Talk Back Tremblin' Lips".
- March 8 — Hank Locklin, 91, Grand Ole Opry star, best known for his 1960 crossover hit, "Please Help Me, I'm Falling".
- March 25 — Dan Seals, 61, singer-songwriter of the 1980s, best known for his 1985 crossover hit, "Bop". (mantle cell lymphoma)
- April 28 — Vern Gosdin, 74, singer-songwriter known as "the Voice." (complications from a stroke)
- June 10 — Barry Beckett, 66, record producer and session musician (natural causes)
- June 24 — Tim Krekel, 58, country music songwriter (cancer)
- July 28 — Reverend Ike, 74, Ike made a guest appearance on Hank Williams Jr.'s single “Mind Your Own Business”, a Number One country hit in 1986. (complications from a stroke)
- August 13 — Les Paul, 94, recording innovator and electric guitar inventor, both which have seen significant use in country music (complications from pneumonia)
- August 14 — Warren "Gates" Nichols, 65, steel guitarist and co-founding member of the 1990s group Confederate Railroad (pancreatic cancer).
- September 27 — Ruby Wright, 69, daughter of country music legends Kitty Wells and Johnnie Wright and prominent member of her parents' touring act (heart-related illness)
Read more about this topic: 2009 In Country Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“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)
“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)
“This is the 184th Demonstration.
...
What we do is not beautiful
hurts no one makes no one desperate
we do not break the panes of safety glass
stretching between people on the street
and the deaths they hire.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)