October 1st
1708: John Blow (59) British composer and organist of Westminster Abbey and writer of over 100 anthems. He also wrote for the king and was appointed Composer to the Chapel Royal (He died at his house in Broad Sanctuary, and was buried in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey).
1975: Al Jackson (39) drummer with the legendary Stax band, Booker T and the MG's, he designed the groove and thats what the band played to (murdered after confronting an intruder in his home).
1983: Freddy Martin (76) American bandleader and tenor saxophonist (lingering illness?).
1986: Andy McVann (21) drummer in Soul of Socialism, an early incarnation of The Farm(car crash during a police chase).
1992: Harry Ray (45) US lead singer with The Moments and Ray,Goodman & Brown; The Moments had a total of 27 R&B chart hits, but his biggest hit came with Ray,Goodman & Brown's "Special Lady". He was strongly involved in writing & producing much of their material as well as performing, production and writing duties for All-Platinum's other artists. He recorded a duet with Sylvia Robinson "Sho Nuff Boogie", although it was billed as Sylvia & the Moments) in 1973.(died suddenly from a stroke) b. Dec 15th 1946
1999: Lena Zavaroni (35) UK singer, guitarist, she suffered badly from anorexia since the age of 14 (after a tragic short life, she died from pneumonia three weeks after an operation for leukotomy).
2004: Bruce Palmer (58) Canadian bassist; Buffalo Springfield/Neil Young's Trans Band (heart attack).
2005: Paul Pena (55) US multi-genre singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, who performed Mississippi Delta blues, jazz, flamenco, folk, rock and roll and Tuvan throat-singing he died in his San Francisco, California apartment after a long battle with diabetes and pancreatitis).

October 2
1976: Quentin "Butter" Jackson (57) American jazz trombonist (?).
1981: Hazel Scott (61) West Indian jazz and classical pianist and singer; born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and raised in New York City from the age of four. She performed extensively on piano as a child, then trained at the Juilliard School. She appeared in the production Priorities of 1942 and performed numerous times at the famed Carnegie Hall. She was known for improvising on classical themes and also played boogie-woogie, blues, and ballads. Her album Relaxed Piano Moodson the Debut Record label with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, is the album most highly regarded by critics today. Hazel was the first coloured lady to have her own TV show, The Hazel Scott Show, which premiered on the DuMont Television Network on July 3rd 1950. However, due to her public opposition to McCarthyism and racial segregation, the show was canceled, the final broadcast was September 29th 1950. Hazel also appeared in numerous films, including 'Something To Shout About', 'I Dood It', 'Broadway Rhythm', 'The Heat's On' and 'Rhapsody in Blue' (?) b. June 11th 1920.
1989: "Cousin Joe" Pleasant/Pleasant Joseph (81) American blues vocalist and guitarist ().
1998: Gene Autry (91) singer, guitar, actor; America's singing cowboy (lymphoma).

October 3
1966: Dave Lambert (49) jazz singer, drums; Gene Krupa's Orchestra, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Buddy Sterat, Charlie Parker. (hit by a car while changing a tyre).
1967: Woody Guthrie (55) US folk singer, guitarist, noted for his identification with the common man, and for his abhorrence of fascism, politicians, hypocritical people and economic exploitation. (Huntington's Chorea disease).
2000: Benjamin Orr (53) Bassist and vocals in the band Cars and his allstar band Big People (pancreatic cancer).

October 4
1948: Jan Savitt/Jacob Savetnick (41) Russian arranger, bandleader, violinist, and vocalist; he was invited to joined the Philadelphia Orchestra when was only nineteen. His band The Top Hatters was formed in 1937 and began touring the following year. Their songs include "720 in the Books" "It's A Wonderful World" and his theme songs "Quaker City Jazz" and "From Out Of Space". He was one of the first of the Big Band leaders to feature an African American vocalist (?) b. September 4th 1907.
1970: Janis Joplin (27) US blues singer fronting the Big Brother and The Holding Company; she lived fast and died young, an American icon and souvenir of the 1960s (died at the Landmark Hotel, Hollywood after an accidental heroin overdose).
2005: Mike Gibbins (56) drummer, Badfinger (died in his sleep at home in Florida).

October 5
1981: Jud Strunk/Justin Strunk Jr (45) American singer-songwriter and comedian; he learnt to play the banjo as a boy and began entertaining locals. He went on to to appear on national television network shows such as Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1973, he wrote and recorded the song "A Daisy a Day," which made the Billboard Top 20 on both the country and pop music charts. He also wrote and recorded three humorous songs that made it into the country music charts, one of which continues to be played on the Dr. Demento show, is "The Biggest Parakeets in Town". He also toured with the Andy Williams Road Show (Jud was a private pilot and owned a 1941 Fairchild M62-A. Tragically, he suffered a heart attack while taking off in the aircraft at the Carrabassett Valley Airport in Maine and was killed instantly along with his passenger, local businessman Dick Ayotte) b. June 11 1936
1985: Brian Keenan (42) UK drummer of The Chambers Brothers from 1965 to 1971, also played with the pre-"Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" Manfred Mann group in England. His group, The Losers, was the house band at Ondine, the first discotheque in New York City (heart attack).
1992: Eddie Kendricks (52) lead singer with The Temptations, he is noted for his distinctive falsetto singing style (lung cancer).
2004: Rodney Dangerfield/Jacob Cohen (82) "Rappin' Rodney", wrote songs for the cartoon "Rover Dangerfield", appeared on TV's Johnny Carson's Tonight Show over 70 times and was in the movies, Natural Born Killers and Caddyshack. (Complications after a heart surgery. He underwent surgery Aug. 25 2004 to replace a heart valve. He later fell into a coma and never recovered).

October 6
1762: Francesco Manfredini (78) Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and church musician; he became musical director at St. Philip's Cathedral in his home town of Pistoia. Much of his music is presumed to have been destroyed after his death; only 43 published works and a handful of manuscripts are left ().
1978: Johnny O'Keefe (43) He was a pioneering Australian rock and roll singer of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He had his own one-hour live TV show "Six O'Clock Rock", featuring many local artists. (heart attack).
1985: Nelson Riddle (64) American bandleader, arranger and orchestrator whose long career spanned from the 1940s until the 1980s, He began taking piano lessons at the age of eight and trombone lessons at aged fourteen. After his graduation from Ridgewood High School, he spent his late teens and early 20s playing trombone in and occasionally arranging for various local dance bands, culminating in his association with the Charlie Spivak Orchestra. In 1943, he joined the Merchant Marine, serving at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York for roughly two years. During this time he continued working for the Charlie Spivak Orchestra and he studyed orchestration under his fellow merchant marine, composer Alan Shulman. After his enlistment term ended, Nelson travelled to Chicago to join the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1944; he remained the orchestra's third trombone for eleven months until drafted by the United States Army in April, 1945. In 1946 he moved to Hollywood to pursue his career as an arranger. For several years he wrote arrangements for multiple radio and record projects. He went on to form his own orchestra providing jazzy big-band style arrangements to accompany such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Matt Monro, Linda Ronstadt and many others. (liver ailments) b. June 1st 1921.
1999: Amália da Piedade Rodrigues (79) Portuguese singer, actress. She was known as the "Queen of Fado" and was most influential in introducing fado to the world outside of Portugal. She was unquestionably the most important figure in the genre’s development (died in her home at Lisbon, in Rua de São Bento which is now a museum).
2006: Claude Luter (83) French clarinet player, soprano saxophone; best known for being an accompanist to Sidney Bechet when he was in Paris, but he also worked with Barney Bigard and French writer and musician Boris Vian ().

October 7
1959: Mario Lanza/Alfredo Arnold Cocozza (38) Legendary American tenor and Hollywood movie star who enjoyed success in 1940s and 1950s. His voice was considered by some to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. He was able to sing all types of music. (died in Rome from a pulmonary embolism).
1966: Johnny Kidd/Frederick Heath (30) UK frontman and singer with Johnny Kidd & the Pirates; hit songs from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, and are remembered for appearing onstage in pirate costumes, complete with eye-patches. He was one of the pre-Beatles British rock and rollers to achieve worldwide fame (car crash; near Radcliffe, Manchester, while on tour).
1966: Smiley Lewis/Overton Amos Lemons (53) New Orleans R&B singer (stomach cancer).
2000: Dennis Sandole (87) American guitarist sharing the stage with such acts as Tommy Dorsey and a highly respected sessionist, appearing on numerous film soundtracks and records by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, among others (died in his Philadelphia, PA, home).

October 8
1772: Jean Joseph de Mondonville (60) French composer, violinist. Violinist of the Royal Chapel and Chamber, Paris ().
1834: François-Adrien Boïeldieu (58) French composer. The most significant composer in France in the early decades of the nineteenth century, he wrote comic operas that were among the best-known and most-performed of his day (cancer of the larynx).
1986: Emmanuel "Manny" Sayles (78) American jazz banjoist and guitarist ()

October 9
1941: Helen Morgan (41)American singer and actress; she toured extensively in vaudeville and starred in many films, including the 1929 Showboat (cirrhosis of the liver).
1978: Jacques Brel (49) French singer, songwriter; major influence on English-speaking writers and performers including Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, while translations of his songs were recorded by a wide range of performers from the Kingston Trio to Frank Sinatra. (cancer).
1988: Clifton 'Cliff' Gallup (58) guitarist, Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps (heart attack).
1999: Milt Jackson (76) US vibraphonist; very expressive player, Jackson differentiated himself from other vibraphonists in his attention to variations of dynamics and rhythm. He was particularly fond of the 12-bar blues at slow tempos. He preferred to set the vibraphone's oscillator to a low 3.3 revolutions per second for a more subtle vibrato.().
2003: Carl Fontana (75) trombonist and bandleader. He has long been regarded as the most fluid, innovative trombonist after J. J. Johnson, a modern trombonist with exceptional technique and ideas.(Alzheimer's disease).
2003: Don Lanphere (75) jazz saxophonist; ranked with some of the top jazz musicians of his time before he was 20, recording with such bebop trumpet legends as Fats Navarro and Max Roach in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He played gigs with Woody Herman and Charlie Parker and with big-ticket big bands such as Artie Shaw's. (liver failure).
2007: Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge (38) American rock musician with the video art and music group Psychic TV; they they released fourteen live albums in eighteen months, enough to earn them a record in the Guinness Book of World Records (undiagnosed heart condition which is thought to have been connected with her long-term battle with stomach cancer. Lady Jaye collapsed and died in the arms of her heartbroken "other half" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge).

October 10
1964: Eddie Cantor (72) an American vaudeville performer, comedian, singer, actor, songwriter. Known to Broadway, radio and early television audiences as Banjo Eyes (heart attack).
1978: Ralph Marterie (63) Italian trumpet player , big-band leader (?).
2002: Teresa Graves (54) African-American actress and singer. As the star of Get Christie Love! (1974), she was the first African American woman to play the lead in a police film and TV show. (died in a fire at her home).
2003: Eugene Istomin (77) American classical pianist, he won the Leventritt award, the Philhadelphia Youth Award and also a GrammyAward in 1970.(liver cancer).
2005: Nick Hawkins (40) guitarist with Big Audio Dynamite aka Bad (heart attack).

October 11
1963: Édith Piaf/Edith Giovanni Gassion (47) French singer and actress; one of the most popular French singers of the 1940s and '50s, internationally famous for her husky, mournful voice and her songs of loneliness and despair (cancer).
1993: Jess Thomas (66) US lyric and Wagnerian tenor; the Metropolitan Opera ().
2007: Werner von Trapp (91) Austrian-born musician and singer, member of the Trapp Family Singers who inspired The Sound of Music.(?)

October 12
1956: Don Lorenzo Perosi (83) Italian composer; the most significant Italian composer of sacred music at the turn of the twentieth century ().
1971: Gene Vincent/Vincent Eugene Craddock (36) US singer, pioneer of rock 'n' roll (perforated ulcer).
1978: Nancy Spungen (20) paranoid schizophrenic girlfriend of Sex Pistol's Sid Vicious (she was found sprawled on the bathroom floor of their hotel room clad in a black bra and panties. She had bled to death from a single stab wound to the abdomen, later traced to a knife owned by Sid Vicious. Sid died of an overdose while on bail before he could be tried for murder).
1985: Ricky Wilson (32) original guitarist with the B-52's (aids).
1997: John Denver (53) US singer songwriter (killed when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay, California).
2001: Dan Del Santo (50) American steel guitarist, guitarist, singer-songwriter; having made his presence felt on Texas' outlaw country scene during the late '70s, he had left country music by the mid-'80s and launched an Afro-Cuban band, the Professors of Pleasures. Latin music remained his prime vehicle, forming a new band in Oaxaca, Perros del Sol, he continued to perform his original songs in the Spanish language (esophageal bleeding) b. September 4th 1951
2002: Ray Conniff (85) trombone, strings, orchestra director, Bunny Berigan's Orchestra and Bob Crosby's Bobcats; popularized wordless vocal choruses and light orchestral accompaniment on a mix of popular standards and contemporary hits of the 1960s, easy listening.(passed away after falling down and hitting his head).
2006: Al Thompson (59) former Motown drummer, longtime drummer for Gladys Knight & The Pips, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole ().

October 13
1974: Ed Sullivan (73) TV host, band leader. Famous for introducing new musical acts on his TV show, The Ed Sullivan Show (cancer).
2000: Britt Woodman (80) American jazz trombonist best known for his work with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus; he first worked with Phil Moore and Les Hite. After service in World War II he played with Boyd Raeburn before joining with Lionel Hampton in 1946. In the 1950s he worked with Duke Ellington. As a member of the Duke's band he can be heard on The Complete Porgy and Bess, Such Sweet Thunder, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, Black, Brown, and Beige and Indigos albums. In 1960 he moved on from Ellington to work in a pit orchestra. Later he worked with Mingus and can be heard on the 1963 album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. In the 1970s he led his own octet and worked with Toshiko Akiyoshi (?) b. June 4th 1920
2001: Peter Doyle (52) singer, songwriter. New Seekers (throat cancer).

October 14
1959: Alphonse Trent (54)American jazz pianist; he led one of the most fabled of the territory bands, an outfit that recorded just eight titles, but was quite legendary during the 1930's ().
1977: Bing Crosby/Harry Lillis Crosby (74) US singer, actor; singer of "White Christmas", starred in the "On the Road" films with Bob Hope (He died of a heart attack on a golf course in Spain, having just completed the 18th hole).
1985: Emil Gilels (77) Soviet pianist; first Soviet artist to be allowed to travel extensively in the West. After the war, he toured Europe starting from 1947 as a concert pianist, and made his American debut in 1955 playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Philadelphia (he was killed accidentally by the Russian doctor after a medical check-up).
1990: Leonard Bernstein (72) Composer, pianist, conductor, the first conductor born in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his conducting of the New York Philharmonic, and his multiple compositions, including West Side Story, Candide and On The Town (emphysema).
1998: Frankie Yankovic (83) singer, accordian; America's undisputed Polka King, the first polka artist to score a million-selling single with 1948's "Just Because", the first to perform on television, and the first to win a Grammy for Best Polka Album (he suffered a fall at his home and a died a few days later).
2006: Freddy Fender/Baldemar Huerta (69) American singer, songwriter and guitarist; Texas Tornados, Los Super Seven, solo. The first and biggest pioneer in Tex Mex music, one of the most important musicians in Tejano Music History, he is documented as The First American Hispanic and Hispanic Rock & Roll Recording Artist In Anglo Latino Musical History. He made himself a guitar at the age of six, at 10 he was singing on local radio stations and winning talent competitions. Then at 16, he joined the Marines for three years. After his discharge, he started playing Texas honky tonks and dance halls. His big break came with Falcon Records in 1957, when he recorded Spanish versions of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and Harry Belafonte's "Jamaica Farewell." The recordings both reached No1 in Mexico and South America. He signed with Imperial Records in 1959, renaming himself "Fender" after the brand of his electric guitar, and "Freddy", well.. because it sounded good with Fender.In 1974, he recorded "Before The Next Teardrop Falls" and on April 8, 1975, it reached the Number One spot on Billboard's pop and county charts, the first time in history an artist's first single reached Number One on both charts. With its success, he won the Academy of Country Music's best new artist award. Throughout his long career Freddy has appeared on 18 TV shows, in 8 films, 11 videos, and countless soundtracks, commercials, shows, tributes and is a triple Grammy Award winner. He won his first shared Grammy with the Texas Tornados, in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for "Soy de San Luis", his second shared Grammy came in with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for "Los Super Seven". Then in year 2002 he won his own Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in 2002 for "La Musica de Baldemar Huerta." (lung cancer) b. June 4th 1937.
2007: Big Moe (33) American rapper; began his career free styling on DJ Screw's mix tapes before being signed to Wreckshop Records, releasing his debut album, City of Syrup in 2000 (died of an apparent heart attack while in a coma. This is not the official cause of death).

October 15
1964: Cole Porter (73) Singer, multi-musician, composer, songwriter; he learned the violin at age 6, the piano at 8, and wrote his first operetta at 10. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" (kidney failure).
1973: Gene Krupa (64) US jazz & big band drummer; Sal Mineo starred as Krupa in the Columbia Pictures movie The Gene Krupa Story in 1959. He was the first drummer inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1978 (leukemia and heart failure).
1980: "Bobby Lester" Dallas (50) US lead singer with the Moonglows; the different styles defined the Moonglows 2 lead singers, Harvey Fuqua favored the up-tempo R&B/rock numbers while Lester sung more of the romantic ballads (Cancer).
1999: Terry Gilkyson (83) US singer, lyricist, composer; he wrote and recorded "The Cry of the Wild Goose," which became a hit song for Frankie Laine in 1950, as well as the 1953 hit song "Tell Me a Story" recorded by Jimmy Boyd and Laine. In the 1956, he formed a group called The Easy Riders with Richard Dehr and Frank Miller, having a major hit with "Marianne" selling in excess of one million copies, earning a gold disc. The three also wrote "Memories Are Made of This," which became a popular song in several versions, including an adaptation for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Terry also appeared in, as well as wrote songs for, the 1951 Western film Slaughter Trail. In the 1960s, he left the group to work for the Walt Disney Studios, writing music both for movies and the television series The Wonderful World of Disney especially "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh." In 1968 he was nominated for an Academy Award for "The Bare Necessities" from the movie The Jungle Book (died in Austin, Texas, while visiting family) b. June 7th 1916.
2004: Dave Godin (68) UK Writer, Critic. Founder of the record labels, Soul City and Deep Soul - He coined the term, Northern Soul. (lung cancer).
2008: Edie Adams (81) US singer, Broadway and television; starred on Broadway in Wonderful Town in 1953 and in Li'l Abner in 1956, and played the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers & Hammerstein's original 1957 Cinderella broadcast. She also played "Miss Olsen" in the 1960 film The Apartment. In 2003, as one of the last surviving headliners from the all-star movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, she joined actors Marvin Kaplan and Sid Caesar at 40th anniversary celebrations of the movie (pneumonia and cancer) b. April 16th 1927.
2008: Frankie Venom/Frank Kerr (51) Canadian lead vocalist and founding member with the punk rock pioneers, Teenage Head, founded at Westdale High School in Hamilton, Ontario in 1972. (natural cuses) b. ??

October 16
1945: James Vincent Monaco (60) Italian-born American composer of popular music; he worked as a ragtime player in Chicago before moving to New York, writing songs for musicals, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and others (?).
1982: Jakov Gotovac (87) Croatian composer, conductor of classical music. He is the author of the most famous Croatian nationalist opera, the comic Ero s onoga svijeta "Ero the joker" ().
1969: Leonard Chess (52) The founder of the Chess record label, played a pivotal role in the birth of the Chicago electric blues movement of the postwar era, launching the careers of legends ranging from Muddy Waters to Howlin' Wolf to Little Walter (heart attack).
1990: Art Blakey/Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (70) US jazz drummer; one of the inventors of the modern, bebop style of drumming. He was known as a powerful musician and a ferocious groover. He is undoubtedly one of the most influential jazz musicians ever; his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was (and remains) profoundly influential on mainstream jazz.
2001: Etta Jones (72) US jazz singer; critical success and relative commercial obscurity earned her a reputation in her lifetime as a "jazz musician's jazz singer". A highly underrated singer who rarely received the recognition she so richly deserved (cancer).
2005: David Reilly (34) US singer, songwriting, multi-musician, production partner in the electro-rock band God Lives Underwater /GLU (complications of a coma brought on by pain medication for an abscessed tooth).
2006: John Thomas Johnson (71) was an American orchestral tuba player. He performed on more than 2,000 film soundtracks, most notably John Williams' Jaws score, in which he played a high-register tuba solo as the melodic theme for the shark (cancer and kidney failure).
2007: Todor "Toše" Proeski (26) Macedonian singer songwriter; a regurlar at the Eastern European festivals and represented Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2004. He was called "Elvis Presley of the Balkans" Todor also held humanitarian concerts throughout the Republic of Macedonia. He was awarded with the Mother Theresa Humanitarian Award and in 2003 he became a Regional UNICEF Ambassador.(died near Nova Gradiška, Croatia, as a passenger in a car accident when the airbags failed to activate).

October 17
1849: Frederic Francois Chopin (39) composer, pianist; a child prodigy, performing in elegant salons & beginning to write his own pieces at the age of 8 (died of tuberculosis in Paris).
1991: Tennessee Ernie Ford (72) American singer and television performer; his booming baritone voice is best known for his grim coal-mining song "Sixteen Tons," (liver problems).
1996: Chris Acland/Christopher John Dyke Acland (30) UK drummer of the London-based shoegazing and britpop band, Lush. (Tragically, committed suicide by hanging himself in his parents' house. His bandmates were devastated and disbanded after a long period of mourning) b. Sept 7th 1996.
2001: Jay Livingston (86) Songwriter, piano, composer; he earned three Academy Awards for Best Song during the 1940s and '50s ().
2002: Chuck Domanico (58) US bass player; West Coast sessionist; worked with Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Carmen McRae, Joni Mitchell, Taj Mahal, Diane Schuur, Natalie Cole, Manhattan Transfer, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne, Oliver Nelson, John Klemmer, Roger Kellaway, Barney Kessel, Art Pepper, and many more.(lung cancer).
2002: Bashful Brother Oswald/Beecher Ray Kirby (90)vocals, banjo, dobro with Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys; for nearly 60 years, he was one of the most influential and talented dobro players in country music ().
2002: Derek Bell M.B.E. (66) oboist, hammer dulcimer, harpist; BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and Chieftains, he was the only member of the band to wear a tie at every public performance. (cardiac arrest following minor surgery).
2004: Uzi Hitman (52) Israeli singer, songwriter, composer and TV personality (heart attack).
2007: Teresa Brewer (76) American pop and jazz singer; one of the most popular female singers of the 1950s, re-emerging as a jazz vocalist in the 1980's and 1990's. Altogether, she recorded nearly 600 song titles.(died of a neuromuscular disease).
2007: Clarence "Tater" Tate (76) Bluegrass fiddle player and bassist, a member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and over the course of a 60-year-plus career, he lent support to many of the leading figures in the genre, from Bill Monroe to Jimmy Martin (long struggle with lung cancer).
2008: Levi Stubbs/Levi Stubbles (72) American lead vocalist with The Four Tops; he began his professional singing career with friends Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton to form the Four Aims in 1954. Two years later, the group changed their name to the Four Tops. The group began as a supper-club act before finally signing to Motown Records in 1963. As an actor, he provided the voice of the carnivorous plant "Audrey II" in the movie version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors in 1986 and the voice of Mother Brain in the animated TV series Captain N: The Game Master in 1989 (complications of cancer and stroke) b. June 6th 1936.

October 18
1944: Orwill "Hoppy" Jones (39) jazz cello player, bass singer in the Ink Spots where he was an important and the stablising member, after his unexpected and sudden death the band split (collapsed on stage and died after being taken home. It turned out that he had been having cerebral hemorrhages for over a year).
1994: Lee Allen (68) saxophonist; played 4 decades on dozens of hits and many hundreds of sides, by artists including Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Little Richard, Stray Cats and the Blasters ().
2000: Julie London (74) US actress and singer who was known for her smoky, sensual voice (stroke).
2007: Lucky Philip Dube (43) South African reggae musician; he recorded 22 albums in Zulu, English and Afrikaans in a 25 year period and was South Africa's biggest selling reggae artist (killed in the the Rosettenville suburb of Johannesburg. Police reports suggest he was shot dead by carjackers).
2008: Dave McKenna (78) American jazz pianist; known for his "three-handed swing", and was the leading proponent of solo piano style. Started with Boots Mussulli and Charlie Ventura in the 40's, worked with many of top swing and Dixieland musicians including Woody Herman. Gene Krupa, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Eddie Condon, Bobby Hackett but became primarily a soloist after 1967 (lung cancer) b. May 30th 1930.
2008: Dee Dee Warwick/Delia Mae Warrick (63) American soul singer, sister of Dionne Warwick and cousin of singer, Whitney Houston; best-known for her hits during the 1960s, including the #13 R&B hit "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", also a two time Grammy nominee for "Foolish Fool" and "She Didn't Know" (died after long illness) b. Sept 25th 1945.

October 19
1989: Alan Murphy (35) UK guitarist; Kate Bush/Go West/Long John Baldry/Level 42/freelanced with many other great artists (weakened by the AIDS virus, he died of pneumonia).
1995: Don Cherry (58) jazz musician (liver failure).
1997: Glen E.Buxton (49) Lead guitarist, founder member of the Alice Cooper Band (pneumonia).
2007: LaLa Brown/Yolanda Brown (21) American R&B singer and protégé of Lyfe Jennings. She was best known for being featured on his Top 10 R&B single S.E.X. (La La & her producer, JeTannue Clayborn, were found dead in their Milwaukee Loud Enuff Productionz recording studio, both had gunshot wounds and had been dead at least a day before being discovered) b. May 20th 1986.
2008: Gianni Raimondi (85) Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian composers; he made his debut there in 1948, as Ernesto in Donizetti's Don Pasquale, going on to perform world wide. Disappointingly he made few studio recordings, given the length of his career and the sheer number of internationally distinguished opera houses where he sang (?) b. April 17th 1923.
2008: Gail Robinson (62) US operatic soprano who sang with many of the world's leading opera companies during the 1970s and 1980s. She was a winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions which started her professional career (complications from rheumatoid arthritis) b. August 7th 1946.

October 20
1977: Ronnie Van Zant (29) US singer; lead vocalist, primary lyricist, and a founding member of the Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was the oldest brother of .38 Special founder and vocalist Donnie Van Zant and current Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist Johnny Van Zant. (4 band members were killed along with the pilot, Walter McCreary and co-pilot, William Gray when the band's rented plane, a Convair 240, ran out of fuel and crashed into a swamp in Gillsburg, Missouri) b. Jan 15th 1948.
1977: Steve Gaines (27) US guitarist and vocalist with the Lynyrd Skynyrd band. He played with RIO Smokehouse, The Ravens, Rusty Day, Detroit and Crawdada, before joining the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, replacing guitarist Ed King in 1976. His skills were a major contribution to the band, as proven on the 1977 album Street Survivors. (same aircrash as above) b. Sept 14th 1977.
1977: Cassie Gaines (29) US singer; a member of female gospel vocal trio The Honkettes, who in 1975 became the backup singers for Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (air crash as abvove) b. Jan 9th 1948.
1977: Dean Kilpatrick (?) assistant road manager of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band (air crash as abvove)
1983: Merle Travis (65) US country music singer, songwriter; his lyrics often discussed the exploitation of coal miners. (died of a massive heart attack at his Tahlequah, Oklahoma home).
1984: Albert "Budd" Johnson (73) American tenor saxophonist; made his recording debut while working with Louis Armstrong's band in 1932-1933, but is more known for his work with Earl Hines. It is contended that he led Hines to hire "modernists."().
1997: Henry "The Sunflower" Vestine (52) guitarist: Mothers of Invention/Canned Heat; (died from heart and respiratory failure in a hotel outside Paris after the band had completed a tour of France).
2005: Shirley Horn (71) American jazz singer, pianist; she collaborated with many jazz greats including Miles Davis, influencing each other; Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing. She was nominated for nine Grammy Awards during her career, winning in 1999 for Jazz Vocal Album for "I Remember Miles", a tribute to her friend and encourager. Preferring to perform in small settings, as with her trio, she recorded with orchestra too, as on the 1992 album "Here's to life", which is highly rated by her fans, the title song being generally considered as her signature song. A video documentary of Shirley's life and music was released at the same time as "Here's To Life" and shared its title. She was officially recognized by the 109th US Congress for "her many achievements and contributions to the world of jazz and American culture", and performed at The White House for several U.S. presidents. Shirley was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in 2002. She was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2005., the highest honors that the United States bestows upon jazz musicians (She had been battling breast cancer and diabetes when she died from complications of a massive stroke) b. May 1st 1934.
2007: Paul Raven (46) UK rock bassist with bands Ministry and Killing Joke (heart attack).

October 21
1965: Bill Black (39) US: bass and double bass player with Elvis Presley, also bandleader of The Bill Black's Combo (died four months after surgery to remove a brain tumour).
1969: Jack Kerouac (47) beatnik writer; considered by some as the King of the Beatniks as well as the Father of the Hippies (cirrhosis of the liver).
1990: Jo Ann Kelly (46) US blues singer, acoustic guitarist; Delta style rather than rocking out with a heavy band behind her, but with a huge voice, and a strong guitar (brain tumor was diagnosed and removed in 1988, and she seemed to have recovered, touring again in 1990 with her brother before collapsing and sadly dying on this day).
1995: Maxene Andrews (79) US high harmony singer in The Andrews Sisters; throughout their long career, the sisters sold over 60 million records ().
1995: Richard Shannon Hoon (28) Lead singer, accoustic guitarist with the band Blind Melon (intense but accidental cocaine overdose in New Orleans).
2003: Elliott Smith (34) Folk-punk singer, songwriter; Heatmiser/solo (suicide).
2007: Paul Fox (56) British guitarist, singer; a founder member of the UK punk band, The Ruts. When the original lead singer Malcolm Owen died of a heroin overdose the band continued with Paul on vocals, renaming themselves Ruts DC. After the break-up of the band in the early 1980s, he joined a London rock band called Dirty Strangers, who recorded two albums, on which The Rolling Stones guitarists, Keith Richards and Ron Wood, both guested on. He went on to form Choir Militia, in 1983. This band soon folded after which he worked with Screaming Lobsters in 1987 and Fluffy Kittens from 1991 to 1994, retaining hard-core fan interest. From this point on his musical career was combined with carpentry, but he cut singles with the Chelsea Punk Rock Allstars in 1997, and ska legend Laurel Aitken in 2000. Paul revived the Ruts name and songs in 2006, touring with a line up known as Foxy's Ruts (lung cancer) b. April 11th 1951.
2007: Lance Hahn (40) US guitarist and frontman with punk band J Church (kidney disease)
2008: Peter Levinson (74) US music industry biographer; he spent nearly fifty years in the music industry as a promoter and representative for stars such as Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Lalo Schifrin, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chuck Mangione, Dave Brubeck, Rosemary Clooney, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Peggy Lee, Bill Evans, Dexter Gordon, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Fountain, Art Garfunkel, Bud Shank, Phyllis Diller, George Shearing, Chick Corea, Jim Hall, Benny Carter, Charlie Byrd, Louie Bellson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jack Lemmon and Mel Torme. His publicity work also extended into television and film (fall) b. July 1st 1934.

October 22
1935: Komitas Vardapet (66) Armenian priest, composer, choir leader, singer, music ethnologist, music pedagogue and musicologist. Regarded as the founder of modern Armenian classical music. The music academy in Yerevan is named him. There also exists a worldwide renowned string quartet named after Komitas (rumors of earlier schizophrenia or venereal disease and stress that he never fully recovered, he died in a psychiatric clinic in Paris, France).
1943: Leon Roppolo (41) US jazz clarinetist, sax, guitar; he was a prominent early jazz clarinetist, best known for his playing with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (tertiary syphilis).
1958: Jay Perkins () bass guitarist; worked with his brother Carl Perkins (brain tumour)?
1969: Tommy Edwards (47) vocalist, pianist, and composer; most remembered for his 1958 Billboard No. 1 "It's All In The Game"(died after suffering a brain aneurysm in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia).
1986: Jane Dornacker (39) Albuquerque-born actress, keyboardist, songwriter, weather reporter; founded the all-woman rock group Leila and the Snakes. (helicopter crash during a live traffic report for WNBC radio in New York. Listeners heard her terrified voice screaming "Hit the water, hit the water" as the helicopter from which she and pilot Bill Pate were reporting, fell from the sky and crashed into the Hudson River).
1989: Ewan MacColl/James 'Jimmie' Miller (74) UK folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, record producer and the father of the late Kirsty MacColl. In 2001, The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook was published, with the words and music to 200 of his songs ().
2005: Franky Gee (42) US singer with German Europop band Captain Jack (suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking with his son in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. He went into a coma and subsequently died five days later).

October 23
1950: Al Jolson/Asa Yoelson (64) US singer, songwriter, blackfaced minstrel, comedian (massive heart attack, Broadway lowered its lights for ten minutes in Al Jolson's honor)
1964: Bill Daniles () drummer with Buddy and the Kings (all four members of US band Buddy and the Kings were killed when their hired Cesna Skyhawk piloted by Bill Daniles, crashed nose first killing all on board. They were on their way to a gig in Harris County. Singer with the group Harold Box had replaced Buddy Holly in The Crickets after Buddy's death in a plane crash).
1964: Harold Box () Singer with Buddy and the Kings :- as above.
1984: James Petrillo (92) leader of the U.S. musicians union; in his youth Petrillo played the trumpet, he finally made a career out of organizing musicians into the union starting in 1919 ().
1999: Bobby Willis () manager and husband of Cilla Black (cancer).
2003: Tony Capstick (59) UK comedian, actor, singer and broadcaster (heart attack).
2004: Robert Merrill (87) American operatic baritone; In his early radio appearances as a crooner he was sometimes billed as Merrill Miller. While singing at bar mitzvahs and weddings and Borscht Belt resorts, he met an agent, Moe Gale, who found him work at Radio City Music Hall and with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. With Toscanini conducting, he eventually sang in two of the famous maestro's NBC broadcasts of famous operas, La traviata with Licia Albanese, in 1946, and Un ballo in maschera with Herva Nelli, in 1954. Both of those broadcasts were eventually released on both LP and CD. His 1944 operatic debut was in Verdi's Aida at Newark, New Jersey, with the famous tenor Giovanni Martinelli, then in the later stages of his long operatic career. Relatively late in his singing career, he became known for singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Yankee Stadium. He first sang the national anthem to open the 1969 baseball season, and it became a tradition for the Yankees to bring him back each year on Opening Day and special occasions. In honor of Robert's vast influence on US vocal music, on Feb 16th 1981 he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit; the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and in 1996 he was presented with The Lawrence Tibbett Award from the AGMA Relief Fund, honoring his fifty years of professional achievement and dedication to colleagues (died at home in New Rochelle, New York, while watching Game 1 of the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals.) b. June 4th 1917.

October 24
1986: Johnny Dyani (40) South African jazz double bassist and pianist who played with such musicians as Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, David Murray and Leo Smith. ()
1989: Sahib Shihab/Edmond Gregory (64) American jazz saxophonist; first played alto sax professionally for Luther Henderson at age 13, before studying at the Boston Conservatory and playing with trumpetist Roy Eldridge. In the mid forties he played lead alto with Fletcher Henderson. During the late 1940s, he played with Thelonious Monk and also found time to appear on many recordings by artists including Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and on John Coltrane’s first full session as leader for Prestige, First Trane. In the early 50's he played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band and switched to baritone. In 1959, he toured Europe with Quincy Jones, after getting fed up with racial politics in USA, he relocated to Scandinavia, where he worked for Copenhagen Polytechnic, and wrote scores for television, cinema and theatre. In 1961, he joined The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band remaining a key figure for 12 years. In the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest, he accompanied Lill Lindfors and Svante Thuresson for the Swedish entry Nygammal Vals. In 1973, he returned to the United States working as a session man for rock and pop artists and also doing some copywriting for local musicians. He spent his remaining years between New York and Europe and played in a successful partnership with Art Farmer (?) b. June 23rd 1925.
2001: Kim Gardner (55) rock bassist with The Birds, The Creation and later with Ashton, Gardner and Dyke (cancer).
2008: Premasiri Khemadasa (71) Sri Lankan musician and composer; a Maestro with a mission known as "Khemadasa Master" is one of the most influential composers in Sri Lankan music. Exploring the various styles of music around the world he endeavored to develop a unique style of music. He combined Sinhala folk tunes, Hindustani music, Western music and many other streams of music in his compositions while adapting them to fit contemporary music (died while receiving treatments at a private hospital) b. January 25th 1937
2008: Merl Saunders (74) US multi-genre pianist and keyboards; he led his own bands, as Merl Saunders and Friends, playing live dates with Garcia, Mike Bloomfield, David Grisman, Tom Fogerty, Vassar Clements, Kenneth Nash, John Kahn and Sheila E. He has worked with musicians Paul Pena, Bonnie Raitt, Phish, Miles Davis, and B.B. King. Also recorded with The Dinosaurs, a "supergroup" of first-generation Bay Area rock musicians (complications from a broken hip) b. February 14th 1934.

October 25
1980: Virgil Fox (68) American organist; known especially for his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts of the music of Bach. These groundbreaking events appealed to audiences in the 1970s who were more familiar with rock 'n' roll music, and were staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been re-mastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years (prostate cancer).
1985: Gary Holton (33) Actor and singer (drug overdose).
1990: Ikey Robinson (86) jazz & blues banjoist, singer ().
1991: Bill Graham (60)American rock concert promoter, who flourished from the 1960s until his death. (helicopter crash hitting a 200' utility tower in Sonoma County, California).
1992: Roger Miller (56) Texan country singer; best known for his humorous novelty songs, which overshadow his songwriting talents as well as his hardcore honky tonk roots. (cancer).
1993: Howie Blauvelt () bassist with Ram Jam and with Billy Joel in the Hassles (heart attack)?
2000: William Martin () Drummer, Sam The Sham & the Pharaohs (heart attack)?
2002: Sir Richard Harris (70) actor, singer, producer (Hodgkin's disease).
2004: John Peel OBE (65) BBC's longest serving radio DJ; known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm broadcasting style, John Peel was a popular and respected DJ and broadcaster. He was one of the first to play reggae and punk on British radio. His significant influence on alternative rock, Pop, British hip hop and dance music is acknowledged.(heart attack while on holiday in Peru).
2008: Muslim Magomayev (66) Azerbaijani operatic and pop singer; started as a baritone opera singer earning fame in Rossini's "Barber of Seville"; his arias from Puccini's "Tosca", Hajibeyov's "Koroghlu" and "Shah Ismayil". In the mid 60's he became a pop idol for several generations of music lovers in the USSR. He also wrote several film soundtracks, acted in films and hosted TV and radio broadcasts devoted to prominent musicians of the 20th century (died after a long illness with heart disease) b. August 17th 1942.

October 26
1952: Hattie McDaniel (57) US singer, actress; best remembered for her Academy Award-winning role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, but she had a big singing career too, touring with the Showboat company and others (cancer).
1966: Alma Cogan (34) UK singer (stomach cancer).
1994: Wilbert Harrison (65) vocals, piano, guitar; Canned Heat/solo ().
1995: Gorni Kramer/Kramer Gorni (81) Italian bandleader, accordian, double bass, composer, songwriter; one of the most famous Italian songwriters, musicians and band leaders of the 20th Century. He wrote over a thousand songs ().
1996: Scott Murray/Murray Schaff (69) US sax player and singer with Murray Schaff and his Aristocrats in the 50's, known as a very uninhibited act in show business. Later had his own trio and bands under the name of Scott Murray, he also owned the Open End nightclub in New York City in the 60's (?).
1999: Hoyt Axton (61) US singer, songwriter, piano, guitar, actor; Wrote the song "The Pusher" of Easy Rider fame (died after a series of heart attacks).

October 27
1949: Ginette Neveu (30) French violinist; a violin virtuoso who dazzled audiences in her Europe and UK with her performances, and listeners around the world with her recordings.(Ginette and her brother boarded a plane for an America tour. The plane crashed in the Azores, with no survivors).
1980: Steve Took (31) UK drummer, percussion, bass, piano and harmony vocals; Tyrranosaurus Rex (choked on a cherry stone, after some magic mushrooms had numbed his throat).
1990: Xavier Cugat (90) Spanish violinist, band leader; one of the pioneers of Latin-American dance music. During his eight decade long career, Cugat helped to popularize the tango, the cha-cha, the mambo and the rhumba.(He died in Barcelona, his band continues to perform under the direction of dancer, musician and vocalist Ada Cavallo).
2000: Walter Berry (60) Austrian bass-baritone opera singer; He studied voice at the Vienna Music Academy and made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1947 ().
2000: Winston Grennan (56) Jamaican drummer, famous session player from 1963 to 1973 in Jamaica and in New York City through the 1970s and '80s. He has toured and recorded with Bob Marley to Marvin Gaye to to Dizzy Gillespie to The Rolling Stones and dozens in between. He appeared in the film 9 1/2 Weeks in 1985, with his Ska Rocks band, which he assembled in the 1980's and which stayed active in various incarnations until his death. (cancer) b. September 16th 1944.
2002: Tom Dowd (77) Producer, engineer. Engineered numerous jazz dates by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Ray Charles, among others; a producer for Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chicago, MeatLoaf and the James Gang. (emphysema).
2007: Ricky Parent (41) American drummer with the band Enuff Z'nuff, was involved in other bands and projects including a brief stint with Alice Cooper as well as playing with Sass Jordan and Tod Howarth's Frehleys Comet (cancer).

October 28
1965: Earl Bostic (52) US alto saxophonist; own bands which became important training grounds for up-and-coming jazzmen like John Coltrane, Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine, Benny Golson, Jaki Byard (heart attack).
1975: Oliver Nelson (43) US jazz saxophonist; began learning to play the piano when he was six, and started on the saxophone at eleven. From 1947 he played in "territory" bands around Saint Louis, before joining the Louis Jordan big band from 1950 to 1951, playing alto saxophone and arranging. After six albums as leader between 1959 and 1961 with such musicians as Kenny Dorham, Johnny Hammond Smith, Eric Dolphy, Roy Haynes, King Curtis and Jimmy Forrest, Oliver's big breakthrough came with The Blues and the Abstract Truth, on Impulse!, featuring the tune "Stolen Moments," now considered a standard. This made his name as a composer and arranger, and he went on to record a number of big-band albums, as well as working as an arranger for Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Eddie Davis, Johnny Hodges, Wes Montgomery, Buddy Rich, Jimmy Smith, Billy Taylor, Stanley Turrentine, Irene Reid, Gene Ammons and many others and he led all-star big bands between 1966 and 1975. Oliver also spent a great deal of time composing music for television and films, including Death of a Gunfighter, Ironside, Night Gallery, Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and Longstreet, and producing and arranging for pop stars such as Nancy Wilson, James Brown, the Temptations, and Diana Ross (heart attack) b. June 4th 1932
2001: Gerard Hengeveld (90) Dutch classical pianist, music composer and educationalist; especially known for his compositions of study material for piano.().
2003: Oliver Sain (71) Saxophone player, band leader, songwriter, producer, Archway studio owner and all-around St. Louis music legend; exerted an influence on the evolution of St. Louis soul and R&B that is rivaled only by that of his close friend and infrequent collaborator Ike Turner (died from a bone cancer that had followed on from a previous bladder cancer he developed in 1995).
2004: Gil Melle (72) composer, saxophonist, artist; his band The Electronauts was the first all-electronic ensemble to perform at Monterey. He wrote the music for "The Andromeda Strain" "Night Gallery" and over 125 other movies & TV shows. He painted album covers for Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins.(Heart attack).
2007: Porter Wayne Wagoner (80) US country music singer; famous for his flashy Nudie suits and blond pompadour. He was a featured performer on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee and moved to Nashville, joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1957. He introduced a young Dolly Parton to his long-running television show, The Porter Wagoner Show which ran on syndicated television from 1960 to 1981.. Together, "Porter and Dolly" were a well-known duet team for many years. His 81 charted records include two No.1 hit "Satisfied Mind" and “Misery Loves Company”; and many top 10 hits including “I've Enjoyed As Much of This As I Can Stand”; “Sorrow on the Rocks”; “Green Green Grass of Home”; “Skid Row Joe”; “The Cold Hard Facts of Life”; and “The Carroll County Accident”. Among his hit duets with Dolly Parton were a covers of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind"; "We'll Get Ahead Someday"; "Just Someone I Used To Know"; "Better Move it on Home"; "The Right Combination"; "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" and "Making Plans". He also won three Grammy Awards for gospel recordings (lung cancer) b. August 12th 1927.

October 29
1953: William Kapell (31) American classical pianist; critics considered him the most promising American pianist of the post-World War II generation (Flying back to US from his last performance in Geelong of his 37 concert tour of Australia, the plane hit King's Mountain, outside San Francisco; all of the crew and passengers were killed instantly).
1963: Michael Holliday/Norman Milne (37)UK singer; popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, who sang in a very similar style to Bing Crosby (suffered from stage fright and had a nervous breakdown in 1961; he committed suicide two years later).
1969: George Murphy "Pops" Foster (77) Bassist; Pops was one of the first important bassists and he kept the tradition of slap bass solos alive into the late '60s. Foster was playing in bands around New Orleans as early as 1906. He also played trumpet & tuba (he died in San Francisco were in his later years he had made his home).
1971: Duane Allman (24) guitar; Allman Brothers. He was noted for his mastery of the slide guitar as well as intensity and soulfulness on "standard" lead and rhythm guitar, also a sort after session player. (Motorbike accident, Duane lost control of his Harley Sportster while trying to swing left, striking the back of the truck or its crane ball).
1979: Raymon "Tiki" Fulwood (34) US drummer; in the late 1960s, he was the house drummer for the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia when he met guitarist Eddie Hazel and bassist Billy Bass Nelson core of the The Parliaments musical backing group, soon he replaced drummer Harvey McGee. The group later became known as Funkadelic. He also played drums in the Tyrone Davis band between stints with P-Funk, and later was briefly employed by Miles Davis. He is also a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic (stomach cancer) b. May 23rd 1944
1981: Georges Brassens (60) French singer-songwriter, many of his songs have been translated into 20 languages (cancer).
1986: Jerome Darr (75) American guitarist; Washboard Serenaders/Buddy Johnson's band, Jonah Jones and many others, he was also a very busy studio musician ().
2003: Franco Corelli (82) Italian tenor operatic singer; New York's Metropolitan Opera (He died in Milan, having suffered a stroke earlier that year).
2008: Mike Baker (45) American lead singer with the progressive metal band Shadow Gallery, also performed guest vocals on the single "Day Sixteen: Loser" from Ayreon's 2004 album The Human Equation. (heart attack) b. September 2nd 1963

October 30
1522: Jean Mouton (63) singer, composer, teacher; he was one of the most important motet composers of the French Renaissance period, he was a court composer for a king. Of his music, 9 Magnificat settings, 15 masses, 20 chansons, and over 100 motets survive (He died in St. Quentin, France and is buried there).
1945: Xian Xinghai (40) Chinese composer. Although he composed in all the major musical forms which includes two symphonies, a violin concerto, four large scale choral works, nearly 300 songs and an opera, he is best known for his Yellow River Cantata upon which the Yellow River Concerto for piano and orchestra is based. During the Sino-Japanese War, '37-'45, he wrote vocal works that encouraged the people to fight the Japanese invaders, including Saving the Nation, Non-Resistance the Only Fear, Song of Guerrillas, The Roads Are Opened by Us, The Vast Siberia, Children of the Motherland, Go to the Homefront of the Enemy, and On the Taihang Mountains, among others. In 1938 he became dean of the Music Department at Lu Xun Institute of Arts in Yan'an. It is at this time that he composed the famous Yellow River Cantata and the Production Cantata. In 1940 Xian went to the Soviet Union to compose the score of the documentary film Yan'an and the Eighth Route Army. In 1941 the German invasion of the Soviet Union disrupted his work and he attempted to return to China by way of Xinjiang but the local anti-communist warlord, Sheng Shicai, blocked the way and he got stranded in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan. It was here that he composed the symphonies Liberation of the Nation and Sacred War, and the suites Red All Over the River and Chinese Rhapsody for winds and strings. Both the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou were named after him (Tuberculosis; he developed pulmonary tuberculosis due to overwork and malnutrition. After the war, he went back to Moscow for medical treatment but could not be completely cured and died in a hospital nearby the Moscow Kremlin) b. June 13th 1905.
1968: Malcolm Hale (27) lead guitar, trombone, vocals, Spanky And Our Gang ( (died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a faulty space heater).
1984: Wells Kelly () Drummer, Orleans / Meat Loaf (heroin overdose).
2000: Steve Allen (78) American composer and pianist; also comedian and writer instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. Allen is called the father of TV talk shows. (cardiac arrest triggered by a minor traffic accident that occurred earlier that day).
1927: Bill LeSage (73) UK pianist, vibraphonist with the Johnny Dankworth Seven and others; part of the first wave of British bebop musicians to emerge in the late 1940s, and remained a lifelong devotee and highly skilled exponent of the form throughout a long and distinguished career (cancer).
2002: Jam Master Jay / Jason William Mizell (37) US rapper, the founder and DJ of Run-DMC, prior to this he played drums and bass in earlier garage bands. He founded the 'Scratch DJ Academy' in Manhattan for children interested in DJing. In 1989, he established the label Jam Master Jay Records, which scored a strong success in 1993 with the band Onyx. He also connected Chuck D with Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin. (murdered by an assassin's single bullet at his recording studio in Queens, New York) b. January 21st 1965.
2003: Steve O'Rourke (63) manager Pink Floyd (suffered a stroke and died while in Miami, Florida, USA).
2007: Linda S. Stein (62) American former manager of the Ramones and others; left band management and became a "real estate agent to the stars" (murdered in her apartment by former personal assistant Natavia Lowery)
2007: Robert Gerard Goulet (73) was a Grammy and Tony Award winning American entertainer. He rose to international stardom in 1960 as Lancelot in Lerner and Loewe's hit Broadway musical Camelot. His long career as a singer and actor encompassed theatre, radio, television and film (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung desease).
2008: Didier Sinclair (43) French disc jockey and music producer (died after a long illness) b. ??

October 31
1989: Roger Scott (46) UK radio DJ (cancer).
2000: Watanabe Kazuki (19) Japanese guitarist and of founder Raphael. (drug overdose).
2003: Dr. Srinivasa Iyer (95) Indian vocalist; one of the great Carnatic vocalists of the twentieth century. He was the youngest recipient of the Sangeetha Kalanidhi awarded by the Music Academy in 1947 ().
2005: John "Beatz" Holohan (31) American drummer in the band Bayside (at approximately 3:13am in Cheyenne, WY, after leaving their Boulder, Colorado show, Bayside's tour van hit a patch of ice, skidded off the road, and flipped over, John "Beatz" Holohan was killed).
2008: Sir John Pearse (69) British-born guitarist and folk singer; he wrote and presented the first ever series of televised guitar lessons for the BBC, "Hold Down a Chord". Moving to the USA in '78, he designed products for the Martin Guitar Company & co-founded Breezy Ridge Instruments, for the purpose of marketing his line of guitar strings, guitar accessories, it became the vehicle for his musical inventions and theories (passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Germany) b. 1939

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