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.

popular name: R. L. Burnside

date_of_death: September 1, 2005

age: 78

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: R. L. Burnside was a Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played music for much of his life but received little recognition before the early 1990s. During his resurgence in popularity he won 4 W.C. Handy Blues Awards and was nominated for another 11 awards in 8 years as well as one for a Grammy. In 2014 he was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, Tennessee. For the last decade of his life, Burnside was championed by the international media, earned six figure sums and outsold every other black blues icon except BB King and the late John Lee Hooker.

popular name: Tommy Ramone

date_of_death: July 11, 2014

age: 65

cause_of_death: Bile Duct Cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Tommy Ramone is fondly remembered as the co-founder, songwriter and drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones. Tommy played on and co-produced the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977) and Rocket to Russia (1977), and was sole producer on the 1979 live album It's Alive. These were the discs that created the imperishable Ramones sound, with their frantic pace and skillful deployment of the band's simple guitar-bass-drums format in tracks that sometimes lasted barely a minute and a half. Though the Ramones were celebrated as the quintessential New York punk band, as Tommy once explained: "First of all, it wasn't four morons; second of all, none of it was an accident; and third of all, it's four talented people who know what they like and who know what they're doing." Upon his death, he was laid to rest at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York.