Joey Ramone

popular name: Pamela Courson

date_of_death: April 25, 1974

age: 27

cause_of_death: Heroin overdose

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Pamela Courson was a long-term companion of Jim Morrison, singer of the Doors. Courson stated she discovered Morrison's body in the bathtub of a Paris apartment in 1971. On April 25, 1974, Courson died of a heroin overdose on the living room couch at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. Like Morrison, she was 27 years old when she died.

popular name: Max Roach

date_of_death: August 16, 2007

age: 83

cause_of_death: Complications related to Alzheimer's and dementia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Max Roach, was an American jazz drummer, composer, and one of most influential musicians in the development of bebop jazz. One of the most influential and widely recorded percussionists in modern history, Max played or recorded with such giants as Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. During his lifetime he was awarded membership into the DownBeat Hall of Fame, the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame, National Institute of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995. France named him a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, its highest cultural honor.

popular name: Ricky Wilson

date_of_death: October 12, 1985

age: 32

cause_of_death: AIDS related cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: With their bouffant coifs, thrift store fashion and dance-infected retrofitted sound, The B-52's rocked the house in the early 80s by capturing the attentions of the "so what?" generation. Founded by Ricky Wilson and his fellow killer B's, they appropriated everything that was tragically unhip and whipped up (via hook-laden pop songs) an ultra-cool, total fab pop confection. When they recorded their first album, they were picked up by Chris Blackwell of Island Records where they secured airplay and 500,000 in sales with the first two singles - Rock Lobster and Private Idaho. Unfortunately the party came to a halt when Ricky Wilson was diagnosed with AIDS during the recording of Whammy and died two years later. After four years on hiatus, the B-52’s staged a stunning comeback with their hit album Cosmic Thing. In a short time the album climbed to Number Five on the charts and selling 200,000 copies a week. The single “Love Shack” shot up to Number Three and sold over a million copies worldwide. With all that success from one album the band graduated from 1,300 seats in San Francisco’s to 14,000 seats arenas by the end of the tour,