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: 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.