Deaths in 2008

“Nobody had every done anything like this before” –Bebe Barron (1925 – 2008) on Anais Nin

• January 22 – Heath Ledger, Australian actor (b. 1979)
• February 13 – Henri Salvador, French singer (b. 1917)
• February 18 – Alain Robbe-Grillet, French writer and filmmaker (b. 1922)
• February 18 – Teo Macero, American record producer
• February 21 – Joe Gibbs, Jamaican record producer
• March 15 – Mikey Dread, Jamaican singer
• March 19 – Sir Arthur C. Clarke, English science fiction author and inventor (b. 1917)
• April 5 – Charlton Heston, 84, American actor
• April 20 – Bebe Barron, 82, American composer, pioneer of electronic music.
• April 29 – Albert Hofmann, 102, Swiss researcher, chemist and discoverer of LSD.
• May 12 – Robert Rauschenberg, 82, American pop artist.
• June 1 – Yves Saint-Laurent, 71, French fashion designer
• June 2 – Bo Diddley, 79, American rock and roll and blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
• June 2 – Mel Ferrer, 90, American actor, film director and producer.
• June 7 – Dino Risi, 91, Italian film director (Il Sorpasso, Profumo di donna), natural causes.
• July 4 – Thomas M. Disch, 68, American science fiction author (Camp Concentration, The Brave Little Toaster), suicide.
• July 7 – Bruce Conner, 74, American artist, natural causes.
• July 7 – Hugh Mendl, 88, British record producer.
• August 10 – Isaac Hayes, 65, American soul and funk musician, actor (South Park), stroke.
• August 17 – Manny Farber, 91, American film critic and painter.
• September 8 – Hector Zazou, 60, French composer and record producer.
• September 12 – David Foster Wallace, 46, American author and essayist, suicide by hanging.
• September 12 – Norman Whitfield, 65, American Motown songwriter (”I Heard It Through the Grapevine“), diabetes.
• September 18 – Mauricio Kagel, 76, Argentinian composer.
• September 26 – Paul Newman, 83, American Academy Award-winning actor, cancer.
• September 26 – Marc Moulin, 66, Belgian musician, cancer.
• October 11 – Alton Ellis, 68, Jamaican singer, lymphatic cancer.
• October 25 – Gerard Damiano, 80, American adult film director (Deep Throat), stroke.
• November 1 – Yma Sumac, 86, Peruvian soprano, cancer.
• November 4 – Byron Lee, 73, Jamaican musician and record producer, bladder cancer.
• November 9 – Miriam Makeba, 76, South African singer, heart attack.
• November 17 – Guy Peellaert 74, Belgian painter, illustrator and photographer.
• December 2 – Odetta, 77, American folk singer and human rights activist, heart disease.
• December 11 – Bettie Page, 85, American pin-up girl, complications from a heart attack.
• December 24 – Harold Pinter, 78, British playwright, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2005), liver cancer.
• December 25 – Eartha Kitt, 81, American singer and actress, colon cancer.