Summer of Death

“Ooooh, that smell / Can’t you smell that smell / Ooooh, that smell / The smell of death surrounds you…” — Lynyrd Skynyrd

At first, I told myself it was a combination of coincidence and getting older: the longer you cover celebrities, the more of them you know and the more you know about them, so the more you notice. But it can’t be denied any longer: celebrities have dropped at an alarming rate this summer. We lost Dom DeLuise on May 4 — you may not consider early May to be summer, but Hollywood does: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this year’s first “summer blockbuster,” opened May 1 — and ever since, it’s been an incredibly funereal season. With both Michael Jackson’s funeral and DJ AM’s memorial service tonight, it seemed a good time to recap the Summer of Death. In order of expiration:

• Dom DeLuise
• veteran basketball coach Chuck Daly
• basketball star turned jazz artist Wayman Tisdale
• blues legend Koko Taylor
• actor David Carradine
• guitarist Bob Bogle of the Ventures
• Ed McMahon
• Farrah Fawcett
• Michael Jackson
• TV huckster Billy Mays
• comedian/impressionist Fred Travalena
• actor Karl Malden
• NFL star Steve McNair
• Walter Cronkite
• author Frank McCourt
• dance legend Merce Cunningham
• writer/director/producer John Hughes
• guitar innovator Les Paul
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver
• political pundit Robert Novak
• “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt
• Sen. Edward Kennedy
• author Dominic Dunne
• Adam Goldstein aka DJ AM

Anyone who reads an entertainment news blog certainly remembers most of these figures, if not all of them, and while you can’t equate the loss of a celebrity to that of a friend or loved one, their fame makes their passing something we can share as a society. With hundreds of television channels, nearly as many genres of music, and the entire Internet increasingly fragmenting our common entertainment experience, I think it’s worth noting the things we still share — and sadly, this summer’s celebrity death toll fits that bill.

Posted by: CNN Entertainment Senior Producer David Daniel