Frank Alamo

popular name: Jeff Porcaro

date_of_death: August 5, 1992

age: 38

cause_of_death: Heart attack due to occlusive coronary artery disease caused by atherosclerosis resulting from excessive cocaine use

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Jeff Porcaro was a founding member of the band Toto with his brother, Steve, and four others. The group’s hits included ″Hold the Line″ in 1977, ″Rosanna″ in 1982 and ″Africa″ in 1983. Interestingly enough, when Jeff was seventeen, he got his first professional gig playing in Sonny & Cher's touring band.

popular name: Bunk Johnson

date_of_death: July 7, 1949

age: 63

cause_of_death: Lingering effects of a stroke

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Willie "Bunk" Johnson was an prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans who lied and/or exaggerated his role in the development of jazz that historians have a difficult time understanding the truth from fiction. But what everyone agrees on is that Johnson was regarded as one of the leading trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in between repeatedly leaving the city to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Bunk Johnson spent much of his music-playing time in the southwest Louisiana/southeast Texas region with New Iberia, Louisiana as his “base” and primary residence. While in the area he played frequently with the locally-based Banner Band, which traveled in a variety of vehicles to nearby southern Louisiana and Texas towns. Unlike many other jazz musicians Bunk did not achieve great monetary wealth, but he never shied away from jobs that helped supplement his music income. Along the path of his life, Johnson worked in such jobs as funeral parlor work in Texas, dock work in San Francisco, cigar-making work in the upper mid-west, rice processing and sugar cane field truck-driving in Iberia Parish, and a music teacher in the Iberia Parish, Louisiana school system. In 1942 William Russell and two other jazz researchers went to New Orleans and made a series of records of Bunk playing with a band that included George Lewis (clarinet) and Jim Robinson (trombone). The researchers also interviewed Johnson, who claimed he had taught Louis Armstrong and Joe "King" Oliver (actually Louis Armstrong admitted he mimicked King Oliver and Bunk Johnson style - but never was taught by Bunk). With the help from contacts in Cleveland and the new recordings, Johnson set off on a wild seven-year jazz history odyssey, playing in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Chicago and Philadelphia, being praised by the press, and making dozens of records that were said to be authentic recreations of the earliest forms of jazz. The enthusiastic jazz researchers who found Johnson and promoted him, quickly discovered, however, they had created something of a monster. According to the many, Bunk emerged as essentially a manipulative con man, often begging the researchers for money, frequently getting drunk, and sometimes failing to show up for concerts. Eventually, Johnson managed to alienate most of his friends. Sidney Bechet fired him from his band and Armstrong, who in 1939 praised Bunk as his "life-long inspiration," later said angrily, "Bunk taught me nothing!" The Bunk Johnson saga ended when he suffered two strokes in late 1948. He died the following July.

popular name: Antonio Salieri

date_of_death: May 7, 1825

age: 74

cause_of_death: Effects of dementia caused by a head wound

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Antonio Salieri was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher. Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career, he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils. In the last year of his life he struggled with health issues related to a head injury and passed away at the age of 74.