Joey Ramone

popular name: Cowboy Copas

date_of_death: March 5, 1963

age: 49

cause_of_death: Plane crash

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Cowboy Copas was an American country music singer who was popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. In 1943 Copas achieved national fame when he replaced Eddy Arnold as a vocalist in the Pee Wee King band, and began performing on the Grand Ole Opry. His first solo single, "Filipino Baby", released by King Records in 1946, hit number four on the Billboard country chart, and sparked the most successful period of his career. While continuing to appear on the Opry, Copas recorded several other hits during the late 1940s and early 1950s, including "Signed Sealed and Delivered", "The Tennessee Waltz", "Tennessee Moon", "Breeze", "I'm Waltzing with Tears in My Eyes", "Candy Kisses", "Hangman's Boogie", and "The Strange Little Girl". Copas' 1952 single, "'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered", reached number eight on the Billboard country chart, but it was his final top-40 hit for eight years. Although Copas did not maintain his popularity of the late 1940s through the next decade, he continued to perform regularly at the Grand Ole Opry, and appeared on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee. After a lackluster partnership with Dot Records, Copas surged to the top of the charts again in 1960 with the biggest hit of his career, "Alabam", which remained number one for three months.

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.

popular name: Gene Vincent

date_of_death: October 12, 1971

age: 36

cause_of_death: Combination of a ruptured ulcer, internal haemorrhage and heart failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: More threatening than Elvis, wilder than Jerry Lee Lewis and sexier than Buddy Holley, Gene Vincent was the real thing. A swaggering, unrepentant rock 'n' roll singer and guitarist, he represented a dangerous embodiment of the defiant tension that gave birth to rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. While Presley made the transition from a defiant, rebellious rock icon to a bloat Vegas lounge singer, Gene Vincent was, remained, and died a rocker. The grave of Gene Vincent can be found at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.