Joey Ramone

popular name: Sam Butera

date_of_death: June 3, 2009

age: 81

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Sam Butera was a tenor saxophonist best noted for his collaborations with Louis Prima and Keely Smith. Butera is frequently regarded as a crossover artist who performed with equal ease in both R&B and the post-big band pop style of jazz that permeated the early Vegas nightclub scene. With Louis Prima, Butera remained the bandleader of The Witnesses for more than twenty years. During that time, he performed with Louis Prima and/or Keely Smith on such Prima-associated songs as "That Old Black Magic", "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody," "Come on-a My House," and "I Wan'na Be Like You" (from Disney's The Jungle Book). Butera is noted for his raucous playing style, his off-color humor, and the innuendo in his lyrics. The arrangement he made with Prima of "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" has been covered by David Lee Roth, Los Lobos, Brian Setzer, The Village People, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. In addition to his accomplishments as a saxophonist and composer, Butera is widely regarded as the inspiration for the vocal style of fellow New Orleans-born jazz singer Harry Connick, Jr. Upon his passing, he was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana.

popular name: Sonny Boy Williamson II

date_of_death: May 24, 1965

age: 52

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Sonny Boy Williamson II was one of the most influential harmonica players in blues history. Often compared to Little Walter and John Lee Williamson (aka Sonny Boy Williamson I), Sonny Boy Williamson II was a legendary blues character whose colorful personality, superb musicianship, unpredictable actions and frequent stretching of the truth only served to enliven his blues with a warm eccentricity. He first recorded with Elmore James on "Dust My Broom". Some of his popular songs include "Don't Start Me Talkin'", "Help Me", "Checkin' Up on My Baby", and "Bring It On Home". He toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and recorded with English rock musicians, including the Yardbirds, the Animals. "Help Me" became a blues standard, and many blues and rock artists have recorded his songs.

popular name: Dave Brockie

date_of_death: March 23, 2014

age: 50

cause_of_death: Heroin overdose

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Dave Brockie was a Canadian-American musician, songwriter, performer and mastermind / lead singer of the heavy metal band GWAR, in which he performed as Oderus Urungus. If you've never seen or heard GWAR, then imagine if KISS had a love child with Alice Cooper using sperm donation from Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even then you're only at 50% of what GWAR brings to the table. Brockie formed GWAR in 1984 as a joke side project to his Richmond band Death Piggy. With the help of several co-conspirators, the group became an outlet for Brockie's wildly creative and outrageous imagination. Band members dressed in elaborate and grotesque latex costumes, took on stage names (Brockie was known as Oderus Urungus) and created elaborate shows that saw characters eviscerated and audiences spattered with fake blood. After the 1988 debut Hell-O, which leaned in a punk rock direction and was produced by New York institution Mark Kramer, GWAR switched to a more metal-oriented style on the 1990 follow-up, Scumdogs of the Universe. Aided greatly by the heavily-played video for "Sick Of You," the group was quickly embraced by the metal crowd and Scumdogs went on to become the band's biggest-selling album. Exposure on the hit TV series Beavis And Butt-Head only heightened GWAR's profile in the early 1990s, and the band would go on to be a mainstay in the American metal scene for the next two decades.