Joey Ramone

popular name: Cootie Williams

date_of_death: September 15, 1985

age: 74

cause_of_death: Kidney disease

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Cootie Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter who is best remembered for his tenure with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Cootie first played professionally with the Young Family Band (which included the future tenor sax superstar Lester Young) when he was 14. In his later teens, he settled in New York and worked with James P. Johnson, Chick Webb, and Fletcher Henderson. Joining the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1929, among the hundreds of Ellington recordings on which he is featured, the “miniature concertos” “Echoes of Harlem” and “Concerto for Cootie” are especially noted; he also led a small ensemble of fellow Ellington band members, Cootie Williams and His Rug Cutters, on outstanding recordings. Williams left Ellington in 1940 and spent a year in Benny Goodman’s band. In the face of the general decline of the big band business, he led a big band for much of the 1940s and rhythm-and-blues units after that. He rejoined Ellington in 1962; by then he was a somewhat coarser but no less dramatic player. After Duke’s death he played in the Mercer Ellington band into the 1970s.

popular name: Harold Arlen

date_of_death: April 23, 1986

age: 81

cause_of_death: Cancer and Parkinson's Disease

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Harold Arlen was an American composer writing over 500 songs, several known worldwide. Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. Some of his best known work includes "Over the Rainbow", "Stormy Weather", "That Old Black Magic", "Get Happy, and "The Man That Got Away".

popular name: Sandy Denny

date_of_death: April 21, 1978

age: 31

cause_of_death: Traumatic mid-brain hemorrhage and blunt force trauma from several falls

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Sandy Denny has been described as the pre-eminent British folk rock singer who was successful as a solo artist and as the lead singer of the British folk rock band Fairport Convention. For most fans of classic rock, she is remembered as the only female voice to ever grace a Led Zeppelin song. Sadly she suffered from depression, alcoholism, and self-harm which took it's toll on her personal and professional life. She died after a series of falls from stairwells that were labeled "accidental" by the coroners office.