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: Johann Strauss ll

date_of_death: June 3, 1899

age: 73

cause_of_death: Pleuropneumonia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Johann Strauss II (also referred to as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger) was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a renown violinist. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, Strauss ll was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer" (Emperor Waltz), "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Frühlingsstimmen", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known. Strauss was the son of Johann Strauss I and his first wife Maria Anna Streim. Two younger brothers, Josef and Eduard Strauss, also became composers of light music, although they were never as well known as their brother.

popular name: France Gall

date_of_death: January 7, 2018

age: 70

cause_of_death: Severe infection complicated by cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: France Gall was a French yé-yé singer who first rose to fame in 1965 when, at the age of 17, she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg. What little did she know at the time was the song that she won the Eurovision Song Contest, Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, was later adapted for the song My Way made famous by Frank Sinatra. Between 1973 and 1992 she collaborated with singer-songwriter Michel Berger who she later married. Although she had a long and successful career, it wasn't without it's troubles and tragedies. Serge Gainsbourg later plunged Gall into controversy when she had a massive hit with his sexually suggestive song, Les Sucettes (Lollipops), complete with promotional images of her dressed in a skimpy bikini and licking a lollypop. She said later she had been too young to understand the double entendre of the lyrics, and refused either to perform it or to work with Gainsbourg again. She had another major international hit in 1987 with the album Babacar – including the song Ella, elle l’a, her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald – with music and lyrics by her husband and musical partner Michel Berger, who died in 1992 aged 44. She retired from recording and performing in 1997, following the death from cystic fibrosis of their eldest child, Pauline. She devoted herself largely to humanitarian work until a comeback performance in a 2015 stage show based on her and her husband’s songs.