Joey Ramone

popular name: Édith Piaf

date_of_death: October 10, 1963

age: 47

cause_of_death: Ruptured aneurysm due to liver failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: The most popular singer in France in the 1950s, Edith Piaf gained international recognition through her emotional songs of doom and tragic love. Unlike her contemporaries Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier, Piaf achieved stardom through her French recordings and not the English translation of her hits. Like her songs, she died tragically young from drug and alcohol dependency after the loss of her true love in a plane crash.

popular name: Hugo Montenegro

date_of_death: February 6, 1981

age: 55

cause_of_death: Emphysema

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Hugo Montenegro was an American orchestra leader and composer of film soundtracks. His best-known work is derived from interpretations of the music from Spaghetti Westerns, especially his cover version of Ennio Morricone's main theme from the 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He composed the musical score for the 1969 Western Charro!, which starred Elvis Presley. Montenegro's electronic works were decisive and influential for the future generations of electronic musicians, giving a retro/futuristic edge by the use of the Moog synthesizer, and helped to push its popularity. His version of the main theme from Hang 'em High reached #59 in Canada. In 1968, his hit "Aces High" placed at #11 on the Billboard Year-End Chart of the Top Hits of 1968.

popular name: Jimmy Van Heusen

date_of_death: February 6, 1990

age: 77

cause_of_death: Complications after stroke

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: James Van Heusen was an American composer who wrote songs for films, television and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song. In 1940 Jimmy teamed up with the lyricist Johnny Burke and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Swinging on a Star" (1944). Van Heusen then teamed up with lyricist Sammy Cahn. Their three Academy Awards for Best Song were won for "All the Way" (1957) from The Joker Is Wild, "High Hopes" (1959) from A Hole in the Head, and "Call Me Irresponsible" (1963) from Papa's Delicate Condition. Cahn and Van Heusen also wrote "Love and Marriage" (1955), "To Love and Be Loved", "Come Fly with Me", "Only the Lonely", and "Come Dance with Me" with many of their compositions being the title songs for Frank Sinatra's albums of the late 1950s. Van Heusen wrote the music for five Broadway musicals: Swingin' the Dream (1939); Nellie Bly (1946), Carnival in Flanders (1953), Skyscraper (1965), and Walking Happy (1966). All in all Jimmy composed over 1000 songs of which 50 songs became classic American standards. Van Heusen songs are featured in over 600 films and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song 14 times in 12 different years (in both 1945 and 1964 he was nominated for two songs), and won four times: in 1944, 1957, 1959, and 1963.