Johann Strauss ll

popular name: Jelly Roll Morton

date_of_death: July 10, 1941

age: 50

cause_of_death: Respiratory distress due to previous stab wounds

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Along with Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory, and Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton was one of the most important musical figure to emerge from the early days of New Orleans. While most will dismiss his claim that he, Jelly Roll Morton, alone created jazz music, there can be no doubt to his technical brilliance as a pianist, composer and arranger. For it was Jelly Roll Morton who transformed the rigid confines of ragtime and ushered in the free form structures of jazz. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say" which were covered by every major jazz and dance orchestra including Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson. Sadly he never received a penny in royalties for his original compositions and he was only recognized for his contributions decades after his passing when Morton was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, elected as a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

popular name: Big Joe Williams

date_of_death: December 17, 1982

age: 79

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: As a first generation bluesman, Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams recorded more often, performed longer and lived longer than almost all of his contemporaries. In 1935 Williams recorded his signature song “Baby Please Don’t Go,” which has been covered by dozens of artists including Muddy Waters, Van Morrison (with the band Them), and Bob Dylan (who played harmonica on a Big Joe session in 1962).

popular name: Franz Schubert

date_of_death: November 19, 1828

age: 31

cause_of_death: Bacterial typhoid infection brought on by tertiary syphilis

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include "Erlkönig" (D. 328), the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (Unfinished Symphony), the "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, the String Quintet (D. 956), the three last piano sonatas (D. 958–960), the opera Fierrabras (D. 796), the incidental music to the play Rosamunde (D. 797), and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795) and Winterreise (D. 911). He gave a concert of his works to critical acclaim in March 1828, the only time he did so in his career. He died eight months later at the age of 31, the cause officially attributed to typhoid fever caused by a long-standing infection of tertiary syphilis. Appreciation of Schubert's music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased greatly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers in the history of Western classical music.