Ongoing History Daily: Onstage death, part 1
Many people say that they want to go out doing what they enjoy the most. Here’s a list of musicians who died while performing onstage.
The very first recorded instance of an artist dying in mid-performance was an actor known as Mr Cummins, an actor who passed away of cardiovascular causes on June 20, 1817. His last words were from the play. He said “May such befall me at my latest hour.”
The first recorded singer to die onstage was Frederick Federici. In 1888, he’d sung his past bit in the opera Faust when he dropped dead of a heart attack.
The first onstage death of a rock star happened in 1972 when Les Harvey of the Scottish rock band Stone the Crows was accidentally electrocuted when he touched an ungrounded microphone.
More next time
