Joey Ramone

popular name: King Curtis Ousley

date_of_death: November 13, 1971

age: 37

cause_of_death: Homicide - stabbed to death

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Playing the saxophone when he was 12, King Curtis turned down college scholarships in order to join the Lionel Hampton Band and in 1952 moved to New York to become a session musician where he recorded Nat Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Buddy Holly, Andy Williams, The Coasters, The Five Keys, Aretha Franklin and many more. His saxophone virtuosity was widely admired in rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, blues, funk and soul jazz. King Curtis and his band, The Kingpins, backed Aretha Franklin. Curtis was stabbed to death by Juan Montanez, a vagrant drug addict on the front steps of his New York home on August 13, 1971. He was only 37.

popular name: Rob Tyner

date_of_death: September 18, 1991

age: 46

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Although he originally auditioned as the bass player, Rob Tyner was the original lead singer for the original All American Detroit garage band MC5. It was Tyner who issued the rallying cry of "kick out the jams, motherfuckers" at the MC5's live concerts from 1964-72. As Rob once said, "We were Punk before there was Punk. We were New Wave before there was New Wave. We were Metal before there was Metal, and we were MC before there was Hammer."

popular name: Ruth Wallis

date_of_death: December 22, 2007

age: 87

cause_of_death: Alzheimer's disease

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Ruth Wallis performed risqué cabaret numbers for listeners worldwide during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. She was known as the Queen of the Party Song, and began her career performing jazz and cabaret songs. Ruth was a veteran of ten comedy albums which sold worldwide for over two decades. She traveled extensively as an international star doing her own songs and appeared in top supper clubs in Las Vegas, Miami and was a sensation and sell out on her tours of Australia, London and New Zealand. In the sixties, her albums enjoyed great success and were released on her own Wallis Originals label. Her signature number was "The Dinghy Song” which sold more than 250,000 copies. Her songs were banned from Boston radio and her records were seized by custom agents in Australia, but the incidents only made her more popular. In the end Ruth Wallis wrote the words and music to over 150 songs and her career spanned three decades and four continents. Wallis’s work was the inspiration for the off-Broadway revue, “Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis” in 2003. Upon her death, she was laid to rest in Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon, Massachusetts.