Music History Events: Deaths
July 10, 1941 Jazz icon Jelly Roll Morton, whose "Jelly Roll Blues" was the first published jazz composition, dies at age 50.
December 22, 1939 Blues singer Ma Rainey - known as "The Mother of the Blues" - dies of a heart attack in Rome, Georgia, at age 53.
August 16, 1938 Blues legend Robert Johnson dies after being poisoned by a jealous man. Like many famous musicians who died young, he was 27 when he passed.
September 26, 1937 Bessie Smith dies of severe injuries she sustained in a late-night car accident near Clarksdale, Mississippi, at age 43. The story goes that she was refused admission to a whites-only hospital, and she bled to death. In actuality, two ambulances showed up at the scene - one for the white hospital, one for the black hospital - and being in the Deep South during segregation, she was taken to the latter, where her arm was amputated before she died. Had she been taken to the white hospital, however, she would not have been treated.
July 11, 1937 Composer George Gershwin dies at 37 following surgery to remove a brain tumor.
June 10, 1934 English composer Frederick Delius dies at age 72.
May 25, 1934 English composer Gustav Holst, known for his orchestral suite The Planets, dies of heart failure after an operation for an ulcer.
April 28, 1934 Delta blues musician Charley Patton dies of a mitral valve disorder.
May 26, 1933 Country singer Jimmie Rodgers dies at age 35 after a long battle with tuberculosis (which he sings about in "T.B. Blues.")
March 15, 1929 Alabama blues pianist Pinetop Smith is shot and killed at age 24.
July 1, 1925 French composer/pianist Erik Satie dies of cirrhosis of the liver at age 59.
July 27, 1924 Italian composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni dies.
August 2, 1921 Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso dies of peritonitis at age 48. Son Enrico Caruso Jr. attributes his father's downward health spiral to an onstage injury, having being struck by a falling pillar during a production of Samson and Delilah the year before.
March 25, 1918 French composer Claude Debussy dies from rectal cancer at his Paris home.
June 12, 1917 Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño dies at age 63 in New York City.
March 24, 1916 After a German U-boat torpedoes the SS Sussex, a passenger ferry crossing the English Channel, Spanish composer Enrique Granados drowns while attempting to rescue his wife.
May 18, 1909 Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz dies at age 48 of kidney disease.
July 14, 1908 Boston-born composer William Mason dies at age 79.
May 1, 1904 Czech composer Antonin Dvorak dies at age 62 of an undetermined illness.
November 22, 1900 English operatic composer Arthur Sullivan (The Pirates of Penzance) dies of heart failure at age 58.
August 23, 1899 Dwight Hamilton Baldwin, manufacturer of the Baldwin Piano, dies in Cincinnati, Ohio, at age 78.
May 20, 1896 German composer Clara Schumann dies after suffering a stroke at age 76.
November 8, 1890 Belgian composer Cesar Franck dies of a respiratory infection at age 67.
November 2, 1887 Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, who became famous for her role as Agathe in an 1838 production of Der Freischütz, dies at age 67.
May 12, 1884 Czech composer Bedrich Smetana dies at age 60.
February 13, 1883 German composer Richard Wagner ("The Ride Of The Valkyries") dies at age 69.
May 26, 1880 John Curwen, an English minister who co-founded the Tonic sol-fa system of music education, dies at age 64.
November 13, 1868 Italian composer Gioachino Rossini dies of pneumonia in Passy, Paris, France, at age 76.
November 4, 1847 German composer Felix Mendelssohn dies after a series of strokes at age 38.
September 23, 1835 Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini dies of peritonitis at age 33.
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