Elvin Shepherd

popular name: Luther Vandross

date_of_death: July 1, 2005

age: 54

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Luther Vandross was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. Throughout his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA-certified platinum albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide. After a short stint at college and drifting through numerous groups and as a backup singer, in 1974 after a short stay with David Bowie, Luther worked with a vast array of award-winning recording artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Cat Stevens, Gary Glitter, Ringo Starr, Sister Sledge, and Donna Summer. Across the next decade, Vandross would top the US R&B charts six more times - so successful was he, and, at times, so large his girth, that he was nicknamed "the Pavarotti of pop". British audiences embraced him in the late 1980s: Never Too Much hit the British top 20 eight years after it was an American hit. At one point, he had three albums simultaneously in the top 100. Vandross's greatest hits of that era - Stop To Love, There's Nothing Better Than Love, Any Love, Here And Now, Power Of Love/Love Power - established him as the most widely admired male soul singer of the post-disco era. Vandross continued to enjoy healthy sales in the early 1990s, but his glacial pop/soul style became increasingly predictable and he was soon overshadowed by a younger, more hip-hop oriented breed of male R&B singer. His last British hit was Endless Love, a duet with Mariah Carey in 1994. All in all, Vandross has been recognized as one of the 200 greatest singers of all time (2023) by Rolling Stone, as well as one of the greatest R&B artists by Billboard. In addition, NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. He was the recipient of eight Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year in 2004 for a track recorded not long before his death, "Dance with My Father". In 2021, he was posthumously inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

popular name: Michael Bloomfield

date_of_death: February 15, 1981

age: 37

cause_of_death: Cocaine and methamphetamine poisoning

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Michael Bloomfield was an American guitarist and composer who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's legendary blues musicians such as as Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, including the single "Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's Newport Folk Festival. Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

popular name: Cass Elliot

date_of_death: July 29, 1974

age: 32

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Her unmistakable voice as a founding member of The Mamas and The Papas in songs like California Dreamin’, Monday Monday and Dream a Little Dream of Me, catapulted her into the iconography of the 1960’s.