Death
He died May 15, 1956 at the age of 52. Jazz collector and scholar Brian Rust presented a memorial program in BBC Light program's "World of Jazz" on June 8. Rollini's death for a long time was somewhat of a mystery. In a brief article from England's Melody Maker, it says Adrian's brother, Arthur is "trying to solve the mystery surrounding Adrian's death. He was sent to the hospital following a severe trauma to his ankle (apparently from an auto-related accident) in the parking lot of the Green Turtle Inn at the Islamorada Key). According to the Melody Maker he was found lying in a blood-splattered car, and one of his feet was almost severed. The article also says he died of a heart attack and lung collapse. The hospital he was sent to was the James Archer Smith Hospital in Homestead, Florida. He died after an 18 day stay in the hospital. According to the recent book, Jazz and Death: Medical Profiles of Jazz Greats, the author, M.D. Frederick J. Spencer (also a coroner) went back and analyzed Rollini's death along with many other jazz greats, and discovered Rollini truly died of mercury poisoning. While in his 18 day stay, he had developed a resistance to feeding and so a glass tube had been inserted into his stomach. The tube was weighted with mercury and somehow the tube broke, exposing Rollini to mercury poisoning. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy (Dixie).
In 1998, Adrian Rollini was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Read more about this topic: Adrian Rollini
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)