Joey Ramone

popular name: Big Joe Williams

date_of_death: December 17, 1982

age: 79

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: As a first generation bluesman, Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams recorded more often, performed longer and lived longer than almost all of his contemporaries. In 1935 Williams recorded his signature song “Baby Please Don’t Go,” which has been covered by dozens of artists including Muddy Waters, Van Morrison (with the band Them), and Bob Dylan (who played harmonica on a Big Joe session in 1962).

popular name: Les Brown

date_of_death: January 4, 2001

age: 88

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Les Brown was an American musician, big band leader and composer best known for his nearly seven decades of work with the big band Les Brown and His Band of Renown (1938-2001). The Band of Renown began in the late 1930s, initially as the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils, led by Brown while he was a student at Duke University. During his tenure the band had ten number-one hit songs including "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm", "Sweet and Hot" and "Sentimental Journey" featuring Doris Day. Les Brown and the Band of Renown also performed with Bob Hope on radio, stage and television for almost fifty years. They did 18 USO Tours for American troops around the world, and entertained over three million people. Les Brown was the first president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Today the band performs under the direction of his son, Les Brown, Jr.

popular name: Adolph Rickenbacker

date_of_death: March 21, 1976

age: 88

cause_of_death: Cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Adolph Rickenbacker was a Swiss-American remembered as one of the co-founders of the Rickenbacker guitar, and one of the key people who was responsible for the creation and adoption of electric guitars that managed to change the shape and sound of the modern music industry altogether. The Rickenbacker International Corporation (RIC) grew out of the first company founded for the sole purpose of creating and manufacturing fully electric musical instruments and amplifiers-the Los Angeles-based Electro String Instrument Corporation. Founded in 1931 by Adolph Rickenbacker and George D. Beauchamp, this pioneering firm produced "Rickenbacker Electro Instruments", the first modern electric guitars. RIC's history now spans 92 years in business on the leading edge of music trends that have changed popular culture forever. Played by Hawaiian musicians of the 1930s to jazz bassists of the 1990s, by the Beatles the Byrds and Tom Petty (to name just a few) the ringing sound of Rickenbacker instruments has helped define music as we know it today.