Johann Strauss ll

popular name: Alain Bashung

date_of_death: March 14, 2009

age: 61

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Alain Bashung was a French singer, songwriter and actor credited with reviving the French chanson in "a time of French musical turmoil" and was one of the most influential and admired French singer/songwriters of the last 40 years. His songs were heavily influenced by American blues and rock, but he belonged to the world of Parisian chanson, inheriting the tradition of Charles Trenet, Georges Brassens and Serge Gainsbourg. He is often regarded in his home country as the most important French rock musician after Serge Gainsbourg. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s with hit songs such as "Gaby oh Gaby" and "Vertige de l'amour", and later had a string of hit records from the 1990s onward, such as "Osez Joséphine", "Ma petite entreprise" and "La nuit je mens". He has had an influence on many later French artists, and is the most awarded artist in the Victoires de la Musique history with 12 victories obtained throughout his career. Bashung died at age 61 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was interred at Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris, France.

popular name: Paul Tanner

date_of_death: February 5, 2013

age: 95

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Paul Tanner (October 15, 1917 – February 5, 2013) was an American musician and a member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Tanner gained fame as a trombonist, playing with Glenn Miller and His Orchestra from 1938 to 1942, the group's entire duration. When it disbanded, Tanner joined the U.S. Army Air Force, becoming a part of the 378th Army Service Forces Band at Ft Slocum, NY. He later worked as a studio musician in Hollywood. Tanner earned three degrees at University of California, Los Angeles — a bachelor's in 1958 (graduating magna cum laude), a master's in 1961, and a doctorate in 1975. He also was influential in launching UCLA's highly regarded jazz education program in 1958. He then became a professor at UCLA and also authored or co-authored several academic and popular histories related to jazz. Tanner played an unlikely role in the history of rock ’n’ roll when, using a device he helped invent, he performed the famous electronic accompaniment on the Beach Boys’ signature recording “Good Vibrations” and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times".

popular name: Bunk Johnson

date_of_death: July 7, 1949

age: 63

cause_of_death: Lingering effects of a stroke

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Willie "Bunk" Johnson was an prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans who lied and/or exaggerated his role in the development of jazz that historians have a difficult time understanding the truth from fiction. But what everyone agrees on is that Johnson was regarded as one of the leading trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in between repeatedly leaving the city to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Bunk Johnson spent much of his music-playing time in the southwest Louisiana/southeast Texas region with New Iberia, Louisiana as his “base” and primary residence. While in the area he played frequently with the locally-based Banner Band, which traveled in a variety of vehicles to nearby southern Louisiana and Texas towns. Unlike many other jazz musicians Bunk did not achieve great monetary wealth, but he never shied away from jobs that helped supplement his music income. Along the path of his life, Johnson worked in such jobs as funeral parlor work in Texas, dock work in San Francisco, cigar-making work in the upper mid-west, rice processing and sugar cane field truck-driving in Iberia Parish, and a music teacher in the Iberia Parish, Louisiana school system. In 1942 William Russell and two other jazz researchers went to New Orleans and made a series of records of Bunk playing with a band that included George Lewis (clarinet) and Jim Robinson (trombone). The researchers also interviewed Johnson, who claimed he had taught Louis Armstrong and Joe "King" Oliver (actually Louis Armstrong admitted he mimicked King Oliver and Bunk Johnson style - but never was taught by Bunk). With the help from contacts in Cleveland and the new recordings, Johnson set off on a wild seven-year jazz history odyssey, playing in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Chicago and Philadelphia, being praised by the press, and making dozens of records that were said to be authentic recreations of the earliest forms of jazz. The enthusiastic jazz researchers who found Johnson and promoted him, quickly discovered, however, they had created something of a monster. According to the many, Bunk emerged as essentially a manipulative con man, often begging the researchers for money, frequently getting drunk, and sometimes failing to show up for concerts. Eventually, Johnson managed to alienate most of his friends. Sidney Bechet fired him from his band and Armstrong, who in 1939 praised Bunk as his "life-long inspiration," later said angrily, "Bunk taught me nothing!" The Bunk Johnson saga ended when he suffered two strokes in late 1948. He died the following July.