Al Jackson Jr.

popular name: Scrapper Blackwell

date_of_death: October 7, 1962

age: 59

cause_of_death: Murdered (solved but no arrest)

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Scrapper Blackwell, together with Leroy Carr are arguably the two most underrated blues musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. What is undeniable is the two together created some of the most recorded blues classics including How Long, How Long Blues, Mean Mistreater Mama and When the Sun Goes Down

popular name: Ricky Wilson

date_of_death: October 12, 1985

age: 32

cause_of_death: AIDS related cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: With their bouffant coifs, thrift store fashion and dance-infected retrofitted sound, The B-52's rocked the house in the early 80s by capturing the attentions of the "so what?" generation. Founded by Ricky Wilson and his fellow killer B's, they appropriated everything that was tragically unhip and whipped up (via hook-laden pop songs) an ultra-cool, total fab pop confection. When they recorded their first album, they were picked up by Chris Blackwell of Island Records where they secured airplay and 500,000 in sales with the first two singles - Rock Lobster and Private Idaho. Unfortunately the party came to a halt when Ricky Wilson was diagnosed with AIDS during the recording of Whammy and died two years later. After four years on hiatus, the B-52’s staged a stunning comeback with their hit album Cosmic Thing. In a short time the album climbed to Number Five on the charts and selling 200,000 copies a week. The single “Love Shack” shot up to Number Three and sold over a million copies worldwide. With all that success from one album the band graduated from 1,300 seats in San Francisco’s to 14,000 seats arenas by the end of the tour,

popular name: Bunny Berigan

date_of_death: June 2, 1942

age: 33

cause_of_death: Cirrhosis of the liver

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Bunny Berigan was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era of the 1930s and early 40s. Although he composed some jazz instrumentals such as "Chicken and Waffles" and "Blues", Berigan was best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting, successfully fuse the nuanced tonal palette of Bix Beiderbecke with the bravura power of Louis Armstrong. A tall handsome dark-haired Irishman, Berigan was a charming, popular and charismatic performer deeply adored by his fans and admired by fellow musicians. The road to fame was long and hard for Berigan. He labored in less than stellar ensembles during his early years, grinding out distracted dance music in hotel orchestras at uninspiring residencies. But starting around 1930 there was growing demand for his gifts from the Dorsey Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, Paul Whiteman, Red Norvo, Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, the CBS and NBC radio networks and the Columbia, Vocalion, Decca, Victor and Brunswick record companies. More than 600 surviving records, transcriptions and airchecks are evidence of Berigan’s brilliant gift for making a song his own. Playing the trumpet equally well from the bottom to the top of its range, his horn soared above the finest bands of the Swing era, gracing the biggest hits of Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. His 1937 classic recording "I Can't Get Started" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975 and he was inducted in the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame in 2008.